Research

Research profile

In its research focus, the Faculty of Cultural Studies endeavours to address current problems of the present, to set substantive and innovative accents and to assert itself as a research university. Research and teaching in the Bachelor's and Master's degree programmes as well as in the research training groups are closely linked.

For a European university, Europe is naturally one of the focal points. Europe is understood as an open and dynamic cultural area. The spectrum ranges from the „bridge cities“ Frankfurt (Oder) with the Viadrina and Słubice with the Collegium Polonicum to the cultural, political and economic role among world cultures, on the world market and in world politics. Between these two poles of the local and the global, research and research-related teaching focus on the cross-border regions of Europe, on German-Polish relations, on the special West-East dynamics of a Europe in the process of enlargement and, most fundamentally, on the transformations, tensions and balances between rival nation states in the difficult process of a „Europeanisation of Europe“ through ideas, interests and institutions.

PhD students receive support and funding for their dissertation project at the central Viadrina Centre for Graduate Studies. Dr Philipp Zessin-Jurek (currently on academic leave and represented by Dr Henrik Bispinck) is also available for advice as a contact person at the faculty.

Current research projects (selection)

Short description

The project closes existing research gaps on the emergence and the consequences of modernisation attempts and blockades in the GDR, which continue to this day, in an inner-German and East-Central European comparison. For the first time, modernisation processes in business and science as well as their results and consequences are comprehensively analysed using historical, sociological, political science and economic approaches. These processes are compared with equivalents in West Germany, but also in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Ukraine. The aim is to broaden the perspective of analysis beyond the German-German framework in order to gain new insights.

Project management

Prof. Dr Dagmara Jajeśniak-Quast

Funding

The project is funded by the BMBF.

Term

2018 - 2025 (2nd funding phase 2023 - 2025)

Partners
University of Bremen, Technical University of Berlin, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)

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Short description

The junior research group investigates how the linguistic and multimodal interaction between humans, (domestic) animals and machines affects „posthumanistic“ communication and interpersonal interaction. The research group also addresses questions about ideologies of language and communication that underlie human-initiated communication with animals and machines. The aim of the project is to develop a theory of post-humanist communicative practices.

Project management

Dr Miriam Lind

Förderung

The Emmy Noether Research Group is funded by the DFG

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Term

2023-2029

Short description

The project „War Sensing“ investigates how data from social, mobile and sensor-based media influence media perceptions, representations and knowledge politics of military conflicts alongside the reporting of traditional media. The project focuses in particular on the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.

Project management

Prof. Dr Miglė Bareikytė

Funding

The project is funded by the DFG as part of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) „Media of Cooperation“ at the University of Siegen.

Term

2024-2027

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Short description

MORES investigates the influence of positive and negative emotions on the stabilisation and destabilisation of democratic societies. The focus is on the question of how the polarising effect of emotions can be contained and how positive emotions can promote social cohesion. The aim of the project is to systematically analyse the interactions between emotions, values and politics and to make these findings usable for democratic decision-making processes.

Project management

Prof. Dr Timm Beichelt, Prof. Dr Daniel Illger

Funding

The EU project is funded as part of the Horizon Europe programme.

Term

2024 - 2026

Partners
Centre for Social Sciences Budapest (CSS), Adam Mickiewicz University (UAM), Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), European University Institute (EUI), Game in Society (GIS), Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ), University of Lorraine (UL), European Citizen Action Service (ECAS)

Short description

Forced by political censorship and a process of exclusion and persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany that began on a massive scale as early as 1933, the developments in literature, philosophy and music at the time were characterised more strongly than in other periods by a (critical) reflection on artistic, aesthetic, cultural and religious traditions. In particular, the relationship to traditions of German, Jewish and European cultures has become a crucial question for intellectuals, writers and musicians of Jewish origin. The doctoral programme aims to expand knowledge of Jewish cultural life in an increasingly separate Jewish cultural sphere within Nazi Germany since 1933 in the three aforementioned disciplinary sub-areas, which - in contrast to existing work in the field of history - is still largely a desideratum in research.

Project management

Prof. Dr Kerstin Schoor

Funding

The doctoral programme is funded by the Hans Böckler Foundation.

Term

2024 - 2026

Partner

Prof. Dr Christian Wiese (Martin Buber Professorship for Jüdische Philosophy of Religion and Buber-Rosenzweig Institute for Modern and Contemporary Jüdische Intellectual and Cultural History at the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, Prof. Dr Jascha Nemtsov (Professor of Jüdische Geistes- und Kulturgeschichte der Moderne und der Gegenwart at the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main). Dr Jascha Nemtsov (Chair for the History of Jewish Music at the Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar)

 

 

 

Prizes and awards

  • Prof. Dr em. Karl Schlögel has been awarded the prestigious Gerda Henkel Prize. According to the jury, he has not only significantly shaped our understanding of the modern history of Russia, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but also established his own genre of historical narrative, which visualises the spatial dimension of history in a unique way.
  • Claudia Dathe receives the Sonderpreis der Literaturhäuser for her translations from Ukrainian and the mediation of Ukrainian culture.
  • First and second place awarded to graduates of the faculty at this year's Innovation Awards of the City of Frankfurt (Oder):
    • The first prize went to Antje Wilke (MA Soziokulturelle Studien graduate) for her masters thesis on „Eine ,sozialistische Stadtkrone‘ für Frankfurt (Oder): The emergence and significance of the Halbe Stadt residential complex“ (supervised by Prof Dr Paul Zalewski).
    • The second prize went to Adrian Piprek (BA Cultural Studies graduate) for his final thesis on the topic „Where are the limits of friendship? – The factors influencing the coexistence of citizens of the GDR and VRP on the Oder-Neiße border between 1972 and 1980“ (supervised by Dr Mark Keck-Szajbel and Felix Töppel).
  • Anka Steffen was awarded the Dissertation Prize of the Society for Global History for her dissertation on the Silesian linen economy in a global context.
  • Prof. Dr Andrii Portnov receives the Ab Imperio Award for the best book in the field of imperial European history of the 20th century for his work „Dnipro – An Entangled History of a European City“.

 

  • First place at this year's Innovation Awards of the City of Frankfurt (Oder) went to Clara Philine Janus (MA Literature graduate) for her masters thesis on the topic of „Havarie als Grenzereignis – Essayistische Verhandlung des Mittelmeeres als Grenzraum im Film Havarie von Philip Scheffner“. The masters thesis was supervised by Prof Dr Andrea Allerkamp.
  • Claudia Dathe honoured with the Wilhelm Merton Prize for European Translations 2022. The award ceremony took place on 11 November 2022 in the Kaisersaal of the Römers in Frankfurt am Main.
  • Ewe Benbenek, graduate of the BA Cultural Studies and MA Literary Studies: Ästhetics – Literature – Philosophy, was honoured with the Förderpreis für Nachwuchsdramatikerinnen des Landes Baden-Württemberg.
  • Prof. Dr Andrii Portnov honoured with the Dialogue Prize of the German-Polish Society
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  • Claudia Dathe has been honoured with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier honoured her for her work as a translator of contemporary Ukrainian literature, her outstanding contribution to a greater understanding of Ukrainian society and her voluntary commitment to Ukrainian cultural workers.
  • Piotr Franz, graduate of the BA Cultural Studies and MA Culture and History of Central and Eastern Europe, was honoured with the Scientific Award of the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland for his doctoral thesis. The thesis on right-wing educational networks in Poland in the early 20th century was supervised by Prof Dr Werner Benecke and Prof Dr Andrii Portnov.
  • Prof. Dr Claudia Weber receives Italian history prize „Premio Friuli Storia“ for her book "Der Pakt. Hitler, Stalin and the history of a murderous alliance" ("Il patto" in the Italian translation).
  • PD Dr Christian Dietrich with the Friedrich Ebert Prize 2022 from the Weimar Republic Research Centre (Friedrich Schiller University Jena) for his habilitation on the topic "Im Schatten August Bebels. Social Democratic defence against anti-Semitism as protection of the republic 1918-1932" was honoured.
    • Senior Scholar Prof. Dr Michał Buchowski elected Corresponding Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Polska Akademia Nauk, PAN).
  • Charlotte Amanda Rieck, graduate of the MA Multimodalität – Discourse – Media, honoured with the Excellence Award of the German-French University (DFH) for outstanding academic achievements in bi- and trinational study programmes.
  • Gabi Manns, a graduate of the Soziokulturelle Studien master's programme, has been awarded the Promotional Prize of the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland for her masters thesis on "Fragments, breaks and continuities of a place of remembrance - the building of the New Synagogue in Poznań". The award ceremony took place on 9 July 2021 at the Polish Embassy in Berlin.
    • Prof. Dr Katja Diefenbach, Professor of Philosophy of Culture / Philosophy of Cultures receives Sonderpreis „Geisteswissenschaften International“ for her publication „Speculative Materialism. Spinoza in post-Marxist philosophy“.
  • Didem Leblebici (MA „Language – Media – Society“) receives the DAAD Prize 2021 for outstanding achievements and social commitment of international students.
  • Ewe Benbenek, graduate of the BA Cultural Studies and MA Literary Studies: Ästhetics – Literature – Philosophy, honoured with the Mülheimer Dramatikpreis 2021.
  • Three Viadrina students received this year's Innovation Awards of the City of Frankfurt (Oder) from Lord Mayor René Wilke and Viadrina President Prof Dr Julia von Blumenthal. The first prize went to Sophie Laaß (graduate of the BA Kuwi) for her BA thesis on the topic „Entrepreneurial understanding of market economy in East Germany 30 years after the system change“. Marlene Reincke (MES graduate) took second place with her MA thesis on the topic of „Skilled labour from Poland in the engineering and IT sector in the federal states bordering Poland“.
  • Adrianna Rosa-Zarzycka, graduate of the Master's programme in Cultural Management and Cultural Tourism, receives the first prize of 1.200 euros as part of the Innovation Award of the Lord Mayor of the City of Frankfurt (Oder) 2020 for her masters thesis on "Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice as European Capital of Culture – Opportunities and possibilities for the German-Polish twin city".
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  • Prof. Dr Gangolf Hübinger, former holder of the Chair of Comparative Cultural History of Modern Times with special consideration of the philosophical aspects of cultural studies, was honoured with the Prize „Zeitgeschichte digital“ on 5 November in Potsdam. The award-winning article „Max Weber and Contemporary History“ can be read on the Docupedia Contemporary History portal.
  • Prof. Dr Sascha Münnich, holder of the Chair for the Sociology of Economics, has been awarded the Karl Polanyi Prize by the Economic Sociology Section of the German Sociological Association for his article „Profit as Social Rent: Embeddedness and Stratification in Markets“ in the journal Sociological Theory. The article can be read here: SAGE Journals
  • Malte Spitz from the Chair of German-Jewish Li­te­ra­tur and Kul­tur­ge­schi­chte, Exile and Migration, received the Petra Ernst award;Petra Ernst-Kühr-Preis of the Society for European-Jewish Literary Studies (EJLS) for his masters thesis on Heinrich Heine's change of name.
  • Dr Markus Nesselroth, research assistant at the Chair of Kultur und Geschichte Mittel- und Osteuropas, has been awarded the Fritz Theodor Epstein Prize by the Association of Eastern European Historians (VOH) for his dissertation entitled „Dem Holocaust entkommen. Polish Jews in the Soviet Union, 1939 – 1946“.
  • Dr Susann Worschech has been awarded the Post-doc Prize of the State of Brandenburg 2019 for her article on Europeanisation in the peripheries. (You can read the award-winning article here: " The 'making' of Europe in the peripheries: Europeanisation through conflicts and ambivalences ")
  • Prof. Dr Karl Schlögel was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on 2 October 2019. The historian of Eastern Europe was honoured by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at Bellevue Palace as one of 25 citizens who are shaping our society and our future with energy and courage, even overcoming borders.
  • Dr. Luana Martin-Russu, a doctoral student at the Faculty and former member of staff at the Chair of European and International Politics, has been awarded the Funding of the Brandenburg Postdoc Network for her research project on measuring Europeanisation in Central and Eastern Europe with the help of machine learning.
  • Veronika Dyminska, graduate of the Master's programme in Kultur und Geschichte Mittel- und Osteuropas (KGMOE), receives the HiKo_21-Nachwuchspreis 2019 of the Historische Kommission zu Berlin for her dissertation project on Ukrainian emigration in Berlin between 1919 and 1945.
  • Elisabeth Boxberger, a graduate of the Protection of European Cultural Heritage (SEK) master's degree programme, was awarded the Straubing University Prize 2019 for her masters thesis on "The Straubing Air Base: its construction history and typological evaluation as an architectural example of Luftwaffe air bases from 1933 to 1945". Here you can find an abstract of the work (PDF).
    • Dr Susann Worschech was awarded the Landeslehrpreis 2019 for the seminar „Participation and Urban Development in Border Regions“.
  • Dr Clara Frysztacka, research assistant at the Chair of European Contemporary History, with the Klaus Mehnert Prize of the German Society for East European Studies (DGO) for her dissertation on "Zeit-Schriften. The Construction of the Historical Time of Modernity" was honoured.
    • Dr Markus Nesselroth, research assistant at the chair of Kultur und Geschichte Mittel- und Osteuropas, was honoured with the Irma Rosenberg-Förderpreis for his doctoral thesis on the topic „Der Vernichtung entkommen: Experiences of Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1939-1946)“.
  • Prof. Dr Andreas Reckwitz receives the Leibniz Prize 2019, the most prestigious research award in Germany.

PhD and habilitation

Early-career researchers have the following opportunities for qualification at the Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences:

  • In the area of doctoral studies, you can choose between a structured PhD as part of the International Doctoral Programme in Social and Cultural Sciences and an individual doctorate.
  • Postdocs, on the other hand, can go through a formal habilitation procedure or acquire the "additional academic achievements" required to obtain a professorship outside of formal procedures (e.g. second book, articles in peer-reviewed journals, etc.).

Doctoral studies at the Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences

Habilitation

Prerequisites for admission to the habilitation procedure are:

  1. Proof of a qualified PhD from a German or international university,
  2. Proof of additional academic qualifications,
  3. Proof of sufficient teaching experience after the PhD,
  4. Written statement in favour of the application for admission to the habilitation procedure by a professor of the Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences.

Please consult the habilitation regulations for detailed provisions.

Funding opportunities for early-career researchers

Short description

The Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences offers two types of scholarships for doctoral students:

  • The Start-up Grant: This scholarship is intended to fund qualified doctoral students who are at the beginning of their PhD in order to provide them the opportunity to secure long-term funding for their doctorate by obtaining a full scholarship from an external institution.
  • The Completion Grant: This scholarship is intended to fund qualified doctoral candidates who are in the final phase of their PhD, so they can concentrate fully on completing their PhD.

 

Current calls for applications

Application deadline: 23 March 2025

 

Short description

The Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences offers funding for doctoral students and postdocs:

  • Travel grants: Travel grants are awarded for active participation in events that correlate with students' research. This includes, in particular, participation in external conferences. In addition, research stays with the aim of generating sources are funded. The funding mentioned in the guideline for network meetings (overall faculty interest) and meetings to initiate projects (third-party funded projects) is currently not offered.
  • Publication grants: Publication, editing and translation grants can be awarded for corresponding projects.

The funding mentioned in the guideline for the organisation of conferences, meetings, colloquia, scientific workshops and workshops in teaching is currently not offered.

Applications can be submitted at any time. Please use the relevant application forms (see below).

Important: An application is only possible if the applicant can prove that they have actively applied to the Viadrina Center for Graduate Studies (VCGS) for funding for the same purpose. In the event of funding approval from the VCGS, the faculty can co-finance the project if the funds granted by the VCGS are not sufficient. If funding is cancelled by the VCGS, the faculty can fund the project up to the maximum rates stipulated in the guidelines. In any case, please submit proof that you have applied for funding from the VCGS.

Contact: Research Department

Prof Dr Timm Beichelt

Dean and Dean of Research

  • Große Scharrnstraße 59 | 15320 Frankfurt (Oder)
  • Room: HG 060 / Logenhaus Room LH 112
  • beichelt@europa-uni.de

Dr Philipp Zessin-Jurek

Structuring and internationalising of the qualification phase

Currently on academic leave and represented by Dr Henrik Bispinck

Dr Henrik Bispinck

Administrative employee for research and qualification

Kathrin Göritz

Administrative support PhD and habilitation