War in Ukraine

For a report on the current situation in Ukraine, there are numerous experts at the TU Dresden who are at your disposal with expertise in political science, but also in cultural studies and, in some cases, many years of experience in research on Eastern Europe. 

Prof. Dr. Dominik Steiger
Professor of International Law, European Law and Public Law
Scientific Director of the Center for International Studies
 

Areas of specialization include:

• Public international and European law
• Law of the United Nations
• International protection of human rights
•  international business law 
• German and foreign constitutional law

Prof. Dr. Klavdia Smola
Professor of Slavic Literary Studies

Areas of specialization include: 

• Russian, Polish, Czech and Ukrainian culture as well as cultures of Eastern European minorities
• Alternative and dissident art and literature
• Border phenomena and transfer processes in literature, culture and science

Prof. Dr. Holger Kuße
Professor of Slavic Language History and Linguistics
 

Areas of specialization include: 

• Studies of discourse (esp. Russian philosophical discourse, political and religious discourse, and advertising in Slavia) 
• Linguistic theory (esp. on the relationship between semantics and pragmatics)
• Cultural studies linguistics, discourse and argumentation linguistics, semantics and pragmalinguistics of contemporary Slavic languages

Prof. Dr. Anna Holzscheiter
Professor of Political Science with a focus on international politics

Areas of specialization include: 

• Emergence, impact and change of international organizations
• Relations between (inter)state and societal actors in international politics
• Creation and contestation of norms from the perspective of language and discourse analytical approaches in international relations

JProf. Dr. Tim Buchen 
BKM Junior Professor for Social and Economic Networks of Germans in Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th Century

Areas of specialization include: 

• German-Eastern European interconnections
• Jewish history
• history of (German) imperialism in Eastern Europe
• migration and settlement policy
• history of minorities

Prof. Dr. Marianne Kneuer
Professor of Political Systems and Comparative Politics

Areas of specialization include: 

• Functional logics of democracies and autocracies
• democratic and autocratic transformation
• external factors (promotion and diffusion) of democratization and autocratization
• foreign policy of autocratic regimes
• legitimation strategies of autocracies
• Impact of digitalization on political processes: e-democracy, e-participation and e-government

Dr. Matthäus Wehowski
Research Associate at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies

Areas of specialization include: 

• Ukrainian history and culture of memory (see current publication)
• comparative history of East Central Europe 
• nationalism and religion
• media history
• history of the Cold War
• history of transformation

Marta Kozłowska, M.A. 
Research Associate at MIDEM (Mercator Forum Migration and Democracy)

Areas of specialization include:

• Migration and Flight in Poland
• Migration discourses
• Central Eastern Europe/Visegrád Group
• Polish politics
• social integration and solidarity

Expert Opinions on the Discussion about the Planned Abolition of Article 219a

Article 219a of the German Criminal Code prohibits “offering, announcing or promoting abortions”. This primarily affects physicians who wish to provide information about whether and how they perform abortions. Until now, the mere publication of this information has made them liable to prosecution.

A draft bill from the Ministry of Justice now argues for the abolition of article 219a and once again moved the debate about the legal regulation of abortions into the public focus. By abolishing the paragraph, the federal government would fulfill one of the promises it made in the coalition agreement.

At the same time, this debate is also fueling the debate about article 218 of the German Criminal Code. Article 218 makes abortion itself a punishable offense, unless the conditions of impunity explained in article 218a are met.

In the debate about both articles, philosophical, historical, political and, last but not least, medical lines of argumentation collide and paint a complex picture of the situation. The following experts from the TU Dresden will provide information on the topic with their expertise:

Prof. Dr. Nikita Dhawan
Professor of Political Science with a focus on political theory and the history of thought

Fields of expertise:

• postcolonial-queer-feminist history of ideas
• global justice
• Human Rights

Prof. Dr. Dagmar Ellerbrock
Professor of Modern and Contemporary History

Fields of expertise:

• gender history
• body history
• violence and emotion
• social history
• european and transnational history
• intentional non-knowledge and transformation processes
• history of emotions

Prof. Dr. Tamara Jugov
Professor of Practical Philosophy

Fields of expertise:

• analytical political philosophy and social philosophy, esp.
• social and global justice
• theories of power and domination critique
• questions of feminist philosophy