Title: Panel Discussion | Rapid Response: 2025 German Federal Elections
After the collapse of the traffic light coalition in the German government in December 2024, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) called for new elections in February 2025. Early voter polling projects that the Christian Democrats (CDU) will be the largest party in the Bundestag, followed by the radical right party (the AFD, i.e. Alternativ fuer Deutschland) in second place, then the Social Democrats and the Greens. Join us for a rapid response panel discussion on the German Federal election results, featuring Professor Terri Givens, University of British Columbia (Canada), Sabrina Zajak, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Ruhr University Bochum and Professor Andrea Roemmele, Dean of the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin (Germany). IES Director Mia Fuller and IES Associate Director Akasemi Newsome will moderate the discussion.
Terri Givens earned her BA in International Relations from Stanford University and received her MA and PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. She began her academic career at the University of Washington in Seattle from 1999 to 2003. She went on to serve as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin from 2003 to 2015, where she founded the Center for European Studies and was Vice-Provost for Undergraduate Curriculum and International Affairs. As Provost at Menlo College from 2015 to 2018, Givens led efforts to develop programs for first generation students, update curriculum and create infrastructure for evidence-based assessment. Givens was the Provost’s Academic Lead and Advisor on McGill’s Action Plan to Address Anti-Black Racism from 2021-2023 and most recently served as Associate Dean for EDI in the Faculty of Arts at McGill University.
Andrea Römmele is Professor of Political Communication and Vice President at the Hertie School in Berlin. Her research interests include comparative political communication, political parties and election campaigns. She was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Modern German Studies 2012/13 at the University of California in Santa Barbara, Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC and at the Australian National University in Canberra. She earned her master’s degree from San Francisco State University as part of a cross-registration program with the University of California at Berkeley, her doctorate from the University of Heidelberg and her habilitation from the Free University of Berlin. She was a member of the election campaign teams of Gerhard Schröder and Hillary Clinton. Regular media appearances (e.g. on Maybritt Illner, Tagesschau, zeit.de, Focus, ARD Morgenmagazin, ZDF, New York Times). Since 2021 she has her own democracy report on ARD-alpha. For more details seewww.andrearoemmele.de. In her book “Zur Sache” she deals with the topic of dispute and the culture of dispute as the central prerequisites for democracies; her latest book “Demokratie neu denken” was published by Campus Verlag on September 18, 2024. In 2024, Andrea Römmele was a Thomas Mann Fellow in Los Angeles. There she was working on megatrends and democracy. During the US presidential election, she reported live from Washington for various radio and TV stations.
Prof. Dr. Sabrina Zajak is head of the department of Consensus & Conflict at the German Center for Immigration and Migration research. She is also an associate professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Ruhr University Bochum. She will be joining the panel on the German Federal Election results later this month.
Dr. Akasemi Newsome is the Associate Director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies. At the Institute, she is also Executive Director of the Center for German and European Studies, Executive Director of the Peder Sather Center for Advanced Study, Co-Director of the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence in European Union Studies and Founding Executive Director of the Center of Excellence for French and Francophone Studies. She is also Associate Director at UC Berkeley’s Global, International and Area Studies research hub.
Mia Fuller is the Director of the Institute of European Studies. Fuller is the Gladyce Arata Terrill Distinguished Professor of Italian Studies and also served as Department Chair of Italian Studies from 2019-2024. She continues as Director for the Program for the Study of Italy at IES, a position she began in 2016. Mia Fuller is a cultural anthropologist and urban-architectural historian whose research concerns the interplays of physical space with political power. Combining fieldwork with archival and bibliographic research, she has published extensively on architecture and city planning in the Italian colonies, winning an International Planning History Society book prize in (2008) for Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities, and Italian Imperialism(link is external) .She is currently completing a revised edition (in Italian) of this book, as well as a new book titled Monuments and Mussolini: A Cultural History of Fascist Memory.
If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Ray Savord at rsavord@berkeley.edu or (510) 642-4555 with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days before the event.