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16.10.2023: Welcome Ceremony for Incoming Students and Farewell of Graduates 2023

The view from the terrace of the Faculty of Arts.
Photo: Christian Rieck
The view from the terrace of the Faculty of Arts.

On October 16, the Chair of War Studies celebrated its annual welcome ceremony to usher in the new academic year. As in the years before, we welcomed the incoming cohorts at the University of Potsdam, bade farewell to our graduates, and awarded prizes and scholarships.

In the Master’s degree programs “War and Conflict Studies” (WCS) and “International War Studies” (IWS) the Chair was able to welcome a total of 35 incoming students and say goodbye to another 35 graduates. Prof Dr Sönke Neitzel congratulated the incoming students on their decision to come up to Potsdam and the graduates on their successful completion of their studies. The Dean of Studies of the Faculty of Arts, Prof Dr Monika Fenn, read out the graduate certificates of the graduates who were present during the ceremony.

The Association of Friends of the Chair of War Studies was able to award two merit scholarships of 7,000 EUR each for excellent students of IWS: Ms Penelope Wessel from Germany as well as Mr Stephen Crowley from Ireland have passed their first year of study of the double degree with flying colors, and traveled back to University College Dublin after the ceremony where they are spending their second year of study. In collaboration with the Kinderstiftung Kreuzberg the Chair was happy to broker a social scholarship that represents a big help for the student in question in securing the funding for her tuition. Thank you very much.

This year, the prize for best graduate of the past year went to Ms Sarah Westvik (IWS), who graduated with the greatest success and with the best possible grade. In her moving speech she took us from her first academic experiences in Singapore to her graduate studies in Dublin and thanked her student peers as well as the lecturers who guided her. Ms Westvik had already won a merit scholarship for IWS the year before. We congratulate her on this great achievement!

The evening ended with pretzels and red wine on the magnificent terrace of the Philosophicum, where students, lecturers and guests could again engage in informal chats. As every year the Association of Friends of the Chair of War Studies deserves our heartfelt gratitude – for the support of this event, as also for the funding of the prize for best student and both merit scholarships. Through this support, the Association of Friends contributes greatly to the success of both MA programs run by the Chair.