KAS-Fellowship

Prof. Dr Dr h.c. Christoph M. Schmidt holds the Chair of Economic Policy and Applied Econometrics at the Faculty of Management and Economics at Ruhr University Bochum and, at the time of his fellowship, was President of RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research in Essen. In addition, he has been and continues to be a member of numerous committees. Among other roles, he served as a member of the German Council of Economic Experts from 2009 to 2020, acting as its Chair from 2013 to 2020. His multiple award‑winning work focuses particularly on issues relating to energy, health, and labour market economics, and he is actively engaged at the interface between academic research and evidence‑based policy advice. During his fellowship, he supported the foundation through publications and participation in seminars and panel discussions, contributing to the development of scientifically grounded responses to pressing societal and economic challenges such as decarbonisation, the AI revolution, and questions of competitiveness and innovation policy.

Lars Zimmermann is co-founder and was board member of GovTech Campus Deutschland e.V. during his fellowship – 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.  

Prof. Dr. Antje Boetius was Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, and Professor of Geomicrobiology at the University of Bremen during her fellowship. 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.

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 held the position of Chairman of the Munich Security Conference during his fellowship. 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.

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.