News 2025

Maksym Butkevych spent almost two years and four months in Russian captivity before he was released in a prisoner exchange in October 2024. On 5 March 2025, the Ukrainian journalist and human rights activist spoke about his experiences at the event ‘Ukraine's struggle for freedom, justice, human rights and the future of Europe’. The evening at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities was organised by the Competence Network for Interdisciplinary Ukrainian Studies (KIU) in cooperation with the Zentrum Liberale Moderne.

24 February 2025 marks the third anniversary of Russia's attack on Ukraine. For the past three years, Ukrainians have not only been at war, but also living under martial law. During his KIU fellowship at Viadrina, Ukrainian law professor Prof Dr Viktor Muraviov is investigating how this restricts the fundamental rights of the population and whether the rule of law can still be upheld.

How can moral emotions divide and unite in politics? This is the focus of the joint project "Moral Emotions in Politics - How They Unite, How They Divide" (MORES). As a first result, film scholar Dr Thomas Scherer, who is coordinating the project at the Viadrina, has now published an article on European television series that provide populist answers to the crisis of political representation. In the interview, he talks about what the series heroes have over real politics, how anger fuels political careers and why populism could be good for democracy.

How can freely available sources such as social media posts, satellite images, media reports and Google Street View data be used to research pressing socio-political issues? Two seminars at the European New School (ENS) addressed this question in the winter semester 2024/25. Under the guidance of Prof. Dr Miglė Bareikytė and Dr Silvan Pollozek, students used special research methods to investigate war and migration issues.

The remuneration of music creators in the streaming sector as well as transparency, diversity and market power - these points are the focus of the final report by the Digital Culture Research Network, which is co-led by Viadrina economist Prof Dr Jana Costas. Together with Prof. Dr Patrick Vonderau (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg), she published the study "Remuneration in the German market for music streaming" on 11 February 2025. The final report includes a legal opinion by Viadrina scholar Prof Dr Philipp Hacker.

Viadrina students Tom Sauer and Awanish Srivastava took part in the International Student Conference (ISC) at the Universitas Katolik Parahyangan (UNPAR) in Indonesia from 20 to 25 January 2025. Following the motto "Empower the Youth, Shape the Future", they exchanged ideas with other international students and, at the end, took on the roles of politicians from the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) as part of a model general assembly in Jakarta.

While the war in their home country continues, 20 Ukrainian academics are currently executing their research projects at the Viadrina and elsewhere, funded by the scholarship programme of the KIU Competence Network for Interdisciplinary Ukrainian Studies. One of them is Prof Dr Tetyana Panchenko, who has been researching Ukrainian refugees in Germany for the last three years. She is interested in what ideas they had when they came to Germany, how they are integrating and whether they can imagine returning to Ukraine.

The Brazilian linguist Anderson Lucas Macedo has written an award-winning dissertation on language variation in Cape Town, South Africa, at the Viadrina and his home university, the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF) in Rio de Janeiro. For his work, which was supervised at the Viadrina by Prof Dr Konstanze Jungbluth, he has now received the prize for the best dissertation of 2024 from his university. He will be a guest at the Viadrina again at the end of January.