Transatlantic Student Summit

TRANSATLANTIC STUDENT SUMMIT (TSS) PROGRAM

TRANSATLANTIC STUDENT SUMMIT 2024/25

TRANSFORMATIONs, CRISES, and ELECTIONS

The 2024/25 Transatlantic Student Summit (TSS) will address the transatlantic relationship between the U.S. and Germany in the Super Election Year 2024.

2024 is characterized by elections: the presidential election in the United States, parliamentary elections in the EU, and state elections in Saxony, Brandenburg, and Thuringia are all happening over the span of just four months.

The TSS fellows will address the elections guided by an engaging program of workshops, lectures, and discussions with experts and local politicians, and a research trip to the American Northeast. The program enables participants to freely explore common challenges and opportunities of Central Germany and the American Northeast, culminating in a short report that connects academic work with informal and personal observations, fostering transatlantic understanding.

Travel Plans

As part of the TSS program, the fellows will travel to the United States for a research trip, to meet with experts, politicians, University students, and locals. This trip will take them to Washington DC, Pennsylvania, and New York.

This year’s cohort

Jürgen Viet Anh Höpfel – Leipzig

Jürgen was born and raised in East Leipzig, still living there to this day. He currently works as a Student Assistant at the Department of Human Geography at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, where he is also pursuing a Master’s degree in International Area Studies – Global Change Geography. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and American Studies and Political Science, also from Martin-Luther-University. He currently researches the affective everyday realities of contemporary structural change in the Central German coalfield for his ongoing Master’s thesis. Understanding structural change as part of the long durée of post-socialist and post-industrial transformation in the region, he employs ethnographic fieldwork in an effort to glean insights into what it means to be ‘structurally changed’ on the ground. He hopes to continue this work in the form of a PhD. Relatedly, as a Transatlantic Student Summit Fellow, he aims to emphasize bottom-up, emotional, and embodied perspectives and experiences of overlapping crises and transformations in the context of the upcoming elections across the Atlantic.

Lukas Herzog - Dresden

Lukas Herzog is a Master's student in International Relations and holds a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from TU Dresden. Outside of academia, he has volunteered as an International Elections Observer and has published on foreign policy and security topics related to Moldova and the Black Sea region. His prior internship experiences include working at a research institute focused on authoritarianism, a strategic government and company consultancy, and a non-profit foundation dedicated to building a better-functioning society. In his free time, he loves connecting with friends from across and beyond Europe, reading about politics and history, and enjoying opera.

Ludwig Große - Leipzig

Ludwig Große was born in California but raised in Berlin by parents from southern Saxony-Anhalt. His family history led him to spend a year abroad in California to explore his Place of Birth, move to Leipzig to attend University like his Granduncle had done, and spend another year abroad in Oklahoma as part of his B.A. in American Studies. He now works as an intern for DAIS dedicated to fostering transatlantic understanding, as part of the last leg of his B.A. and plans to stay in Leipzig for the M.A. American Studies program. As part of the TSS fellowship, he wants to explore and understand the charged and changing political and cultural landscapes in Saxony and the United States. As a hobby photographer, he hopes to complement the fellows’ written work with visual observations.

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