Die Junge Akademie continues its dialogue event from 2024 onJune 6 2025 and once again invites you to an in-depth exchange between funding institutions, universities and scientific institutions and refugee scientists. The dialogue will focus on the topics of return and mentoring. In two panel discussions, moderated by science journalist Jan-Martin Wiarda, the participants discuss how refugee academics in Germany can be supported by mentoring programmes and shed light on the challenges and opportunities that arise for academics who are considering returning to their countries of origin.

Since 2015, numerous programmes have been set up in Germany to provide short-term support to academics who have fled - whether due to war, military conflicts or threats to academic freedom. Funding institutions such as the DAAD, the DFG and the Humboldt Foundation have developed targeted concepts to offer affected researchers a perspective. Especially after the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022, new measures were implemented in a short space of time. But what lessons can be learned from these programmes for the future? And how can the scientific community better prepare for future crises?

Die Junge Akademie addressed these questions at a dialogue event on 21 June 2024 in Berlin. Representatives of funding institutions, universities and refugee and host researchers exchanged experiences and discussed best practices. The focus was on programmes such as the Hilde Domin Programme (DAAD), the Walter Benjamin Programme (DFG), the Philipp Schwartz Initiative (Humboldt Foundation) and MSCA4Ukraine (EU). The event not only provided space for reflection on previous measures, but also for a critical review of the German academic system as a whole. The perspectives of refugee academics made it clear that structural challenges go beyond individual funding measures and that long-term solutions are required.

Flight, repression and academic freedom: In this podcast series, the hosts shed light on current challenges of internationalisation in science and higher education policy. Together with their guests, they discuss how support for refugee academics can succeed, the consequences of increasing repression and restrictions on academic freedom in authoritarian regimes for international cooperation and how de-globalisation affects academic careers and scientific progress.

This podcast series follows on from the previously published episodes of the Research Group Engaged Science.

See all episodes

Since the founding of the Research Group Internationalisation in 2016, the concept and practice of internationalisation in the academic world have undergone extreme change in the wake of a changing "world order" and global power asymmetries - one could even speak of an era of post-internationalisation or "second wave internationalism". Within the framework of a one-day ideas workshop on 4 October 2023 in Potsdam, the working group would like to critically reflect on current concepts and practices of internationalisation and consider where Die Junge Akademie can set priorities in this important field of science policy. Existing initiatives in Die Junge Akademie and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, such as the TransEurope network, the exchange with the German Israeli Foundation and the various ALLEA initiatives, as well as existing reflections on diversity and sustainability, should also be included.

Book Cultures to listen to: As part of the Leipzig Book Fair 2019, the RG Internationalisation organised the panel discussion "Book Cultures". In the series Forschungsquartett on the podcast platform detektor.fm, the first part of this discussion appeared as a podcast on 2.9.2021. The second episode was published on 7.10.2021. The third and final part on the topic of "Homogenisation" followed on 4.11.2021. (in German)

As part of the event at the Leipzig Book Fair 2019, Jan Hennings (CEU Vienna) and Sebastian Matzner (King's College London) spoke with Michael Hagner (ETH Zurich), Miloš Vec (University of Vienna) and Glenn Most (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa/University of Chicago) about internationalisation in the academic system and its impact on the process and actors of academic publishing.

As part of the RG Internationalisation, Jan Hennings and Sebastian Matzner organized a panel discussion on "Book Cultures". Together with guests Michael Hagner (Chair for Science Studies, ETH Zürich), Miloš Vec (Professor of European Law and Constitutional History at the University of Vienna and Permanent Fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences) and Glenn Most (Professor of Greek Philology at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Visiting Professor at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin), they discussed, among other things, to what extent the globalization of supply and visibility of scientific publishers causes changes in the sciences.