Viadrina welcomes new students: This is how the winter semester 2025/26 starts

Viadrina welcomes new students: This is how the winter semester 2025/26 starts

The European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) welcomes its new students this week. On Monday, October 6th, numerous welcome and information events took place on campus. A particularly sociable get-together in the Kleist Forum offered the first-year students the opportunity to find out about the university, the twin cities and the diverse cultural offerings.

The official lecture period in the winter semester 2025/26 begins on Monday, October 13th. Various public events are planned in the coming weeks that will address socially relevant topics. These include aspects such as dealing with right-wing extremism, the role of artificial intelligence (AI), challenges in everyday economic life in the border region and ecological crises.

Socially relevant events

On Wednesday, October 15th, the Viadrina debates will open with a discussion on “Power shifting through AI: who benefits, who loses?” Discussants include Prof. Dr. Lena Ulbricht, Dr. Ulf Buermeyer and Prof. Dr. Philip Hacker. Another notable series is the “Beyond Sustainability” lecture series, which begins on Monday, October 27th and examines ecological crises from different perspectives.

Attention is also paid to right-wing extremism: The lecture series “How to deal with right-wing extremism?” starts on Tuesday, November 11th and will be accompanied by various guests. The Ukraine Lecture Series, starting on Tuesday, October 14, will focus on infrastructure and resilience in Ukraine. In addition, the “Neighborhood as an Economic Engine” conference will take place on Thursday, November 27th, looking for practical solutions for the German-Polish economic area.

Practical seminars and interdisciplinary approaches

Various practical courses are also planned for the winter semester, such as a seminar on Heinrich von Kleist and the opera “Prinz Friedrich von Homburg”. Other topics include “Midnight Madness in Cottbus” in collaboration with the film festival, “Economics of Migration” by Prof. Dr. Felix Weinhardt and a seminar on German-Israeli relations by Dr. Markus Nesselrodt.

There are also exciting events for those interested in Göttingen. The lecture series “Forest in Change” every Tuesday from 6:15 p.m. in the auditorium at Wilhelmsplatz deals with the significant challenges that forests face in the area of ​​tension between climate change and social demands. There is increasing focus on protecting these habitats as they are essential for biodiversity, carbon storage and as a renewable resource.

The series includes a variety of lectures, including from renowned universities such as the University of Freiburg and the Technical University of Munich. An overview of the dates of the lectures shows the thematic diversity that expresses the challenges of climate change and the possibilities of adapting forests to these conditions.

The importance of sustainability is not only noticeable in lectures, but also in how students perceive universities. Studies show that more and more prospective students are making their choice of university dependent on their commitment to sustainability. In an analysis of the QS World University Rankings, 1,800 universities were examined with regard to their sustainability strategies and practices.

This year's leader was the University of Toronto, which is at the global top with 100 points. In Germany, RWTH Aachen is in tenth place with 83.5 points and has thus established itself as a leading technical university in the field of sustainable development.

Overall, these developments show that universities are not only a place of knowledge, but also actively contribute to solving current challenges in society and the environment.