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KAS-Fellowship

Christoph M. Schmidt is the KAS Fellow 2025

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Prof. Christoph Schmidt Sven Lorenz/RWI
Prof. Dr Dr h.c. Christoph M. Schmidt, KAS Fellow 2025

Each year, the KAS Fellowship integrates an important person and their external perspective into our foundation’s work.

 

Integration into the Foundation’s Work

The Fellowship of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, in short KAS-Fellowship, aims to integrate a person of the public with an external perspective into the work of the foundation. The selection of experts for the Fellowship is based on interdisciplinary motives and the intention to influence the tasks and aims of the foundation’s projects with future-oriented, but also admonishing voices of the society. Self-critical reflection is essential in order to do justice to our core work, the political education. Addressing social change as an element of our own development is both the mission and the challenge of the KAS Fellowship. The sociologist Armin Nassehi (KAS Fellow 2021), the diplomat and security expert Christoph Heusgen (KAS Fellow 2022), the marine researcher Antje Boetius (KAS Fellow 2023) and the digital and technology expert Lars Zimmermann (KAS Fellow 2024) are followed from January 2025 by the economist Christoph M. Schmidt.

 

KAS Fellow 2025: Christoph M. Schmidt

Prof. Dr Dr h.c. Christoph M. Schmidt is President of the RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research in Essen and holds the Chair of Economic Policy and Applied Econometrics at the Faculty of Management and Economics at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He was and is a member of various boards and councils, including the German Council of Economic Experts from 2009 to 2020, where he served as chairman from 2013 to 2020. He has also been a member of the Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation (EFI) since 2024. In his award-winning work, he focuses on issues of energy, health and labour market economics and is involved at the interface between research and science-based policy advice. For Christoph M. Schmidt, the foundation's diverse work opens up the opportunity to emphasise the contribution of economics to key social issues in various fields of activity and to embed it in an interdisciplinary discourse. In particular, the foundation's international network on the one hand and its work on fundamental political and economic questions on the other make it an ideal partner for discussing the organisation of the social market economy in the 21st century in various contexts. Together with the foundation, Christoph M. Schmidt wants to formulate science-based answers to pressing social and economic questions, for example in the areas of labour market, health and energy policy.

 


Former KAS Fellows

The following overview will provide information about and video interviews on our former KAS Fellows.

2024: Lars Zimmermann

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Interview with our KAS Fellow 2024, Lars Zimmermann

(only in German)

YouTube, onlinekas

Lars Zimmermann is co-founder and board member of GovTech Campus Deutschland e.V., the world's first innovation, development and learning space for the modernisation of government and administration. The federal government and the federal states are driving the Campus forward as a joint platform with the aim of developing digital innovations and technologies for the federal, state, and local governments together with the tech scene and making them available for reuse. Lars Zimmermann has been involved in the areas of state modernisation and administrative reform for many years and has developed, initiated and implemented a large number of measures and projects in this area. As one of Germany's most innovative minds at the interface of technology, politics and social change, he has accompanied and challenged the foundation in 2024 with new ideas and concepts in numerous background talks, panel discussions, podcasts and publications on the topics of digitalisation, state modernisation and artificial intelligence.  

2023: Prof. Dr. Antje Boetius

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Interview with our KAS Fellow 2023, Professor Antje Boetius

(only in German)

YouTube, onlinekas

Prof. Dr. Antje Boetius is Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research and Professor of Geomicrobiology at the University of Bremen. In her award-winning work, Antje Boetius deals with issues such as biodiversity, the effects of climate change, the relationship between humans and nature, and science communication. During her fellowship at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, she was particularly active in the fields of sustainability, climate protection, and innovation. With numerous lectures, panel discussions, publications, and media formats, she has been instrumental in helping the foundation to formulate new political answers to key questions about the future and to emphasize the importance of science for a democratic society. She remains an important member of the KAS-family as an immensely knowledgeable, inspiring and extraordinarily impressive personality who has brought a lot of fresh sea air into the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.

2022: Prof. Dr. Christoph Heusgen

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Interview with our KAS Fellow 2022, Professor Christoph Heusgen

(only in German)

YouTube, onlinekas

Ambassador Christoph Heusgen was for many years the foreign policy advisor to German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel and Germany's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York from 2017 to 2021. As a renowned expert on German foreign and security policy, he currently holds the position of Chairman of the Munich Security Conference. During his time as a KAS-Fellow 2022, Prof. Dr. Heusgen advised and supported the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, particularly on the topic of security. This included over thirty appearances and participations in a wide variety of formats, such as the classic panel discussions and talks in coordination with the KAS foreign offices, but also podcast talks and exchanges on Twitter spaces.

2021: Prof. Dr. Armin Nassehi

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Interview with our KAS Fellow 2020/2021 Professor Armin Nassehi

(only in German)

YouTube, onlinekas

Professor Armin Nassehi holds the chair at the Institute for Sociology at the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. He was born in Tübingen and grow up in Gelsenkirchen and Teheran. In Munich, he teaches and researches in the area of General Sociology and Social Theory, with a special focus on culture, politics and knowledge production. Professor Armin Nassehi is one of the leading academic voices in social discourse. He has received multiple awards for his achievements and efforts in making sociological analyses on current social problems understandable for the wider public. With this role and function, he supported the foundation for one year as the first KAS Fellow.

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Competitiveness of Europe

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December 17, 2024
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