Studium Generale: Internationales

Aims and Objectives

Foreign students are invited to get acquainted with German history, culture and politics by attending a series of lectures as well as engaging with everyday life and rhythm of contemporary Berlin.

Participants

Exchange and guest students, number of participants restricted to 30 students

Teaching Program

Students are invited to study German society and everyday life in Berlin in several ways as by Dynamic lectures (on German history, culture and politics);
Visits to Berlin institutions of public interest (such as Bundestag and media);
Excursions and walks to important places of historic interest as well as of modern Berlin (Märkisches Museum, DHM, Stasi-Museum; architecture; streets; the ‘Bayerisches Viertel’ around the BSEL; Berlin’s industrial past; Berlin in the Cold War; the Brandenburg Gate and the Holocaust Memorial; Berlin’s present culture and subcultures).

Literature

To be announced at the beginning of the seminar

Your first job is one of the biggest decisions of your life. Don't leave it up to chance, and stop mass applying. In this workshop you learn to apply with purpose: where to apply, how to get the interview and how to start the job well, with real examples from hiring in banks and fintechs.

A Career Chosen on Purpose

• Why starting from the job postings skips the most important steps
• Which industries interest you, and which companies are active in them
• Global corporate, smaller company or startup, and the working life each one means
• The functions inside a company, and how different each one feels

Applying With Purpose

• How to find a way into the companies you want
• How an open role comes about inside a company
• How to stand out as a high-potential candidate and get the interview
• Why this company, why this role, why you
• Your CV and cover letter, and what makes them believable
• How AI can help you and how it can hurt you
• Online applications and the extra questions in them

Interviewing With Purpose

• How to prepare for the interview
• Your energy from the first second
• How to show you can solve their problems without coming across as arrogant
• What to do with a question you can't answer
• The importance of asking questions
• Taking notes and following up

Starting the Job With Purpose

• What graduates told me surprised them most when they started work
• The building blocks of success: orientation, action, persuasion and branding
• Mistakes from real life
• Inspiring stories of junior colleagues, and what they have in common

Individual Sessions

After the workshop, you can book an individual online session to work on your own job search. Bring your CV, your cover letter or a job posting you are interested in.

Ein Seminar des Projekts "Bildungsbaustein Israel“ des Mideast Freedom Forum Berlin (MFFB) 

Das Seminar bietet eine multiperspektivische Einführung in die Geschichte und Gegenwart des israelisch-palästinensischen Konflikts. Ausgangspunkt ist die historische Entwicklung der Region von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart: Machtansprüche verschiedener Akteure, das Entstehen von jüdischer wie arabischer Nationalbewegung und die Staatsgründung Israels 1948.

Im Mittelpunkt steht die Frage, warum der Konflikt trotz wiederholter Verhandlungsinitiativen – vom Friedensschluss mit Ägypten bis zu den Oslo-Abkommen – bis heute ungelöst ist. Zugleich wird die deutsche Debatte kritisch in den Blick genommen: Wo beginnt israelbezogener Antisemitismus, wo endet legitime Kritik an der Politik Israels? Und wie verhält es sich auf der arabisch-palästinensischen Seite mit der Trennlinie zwischen historischer Analyse und politischer Propaganda?

Themen sind unter anderem Flucht und Vertreibung, die Lebensrealität arabischer Israelis, Regimekritik in der Region sowie die Folgen aktueller Kriege. Ein besonderer Fokus liegt auf der vergleichenden Betrachtung von Antisemitismus und Rassismus: Wo bestehen Parallelen, wo Unterschiede?

Das Seminar lädt zur offenen, wissenschaftlich fundierten Diskussion ein, in der auch widersprüchliche Positionen nebeneinanderstehen dürfen.

Learn the basics of academic writing and kickstart your writing with planning and drafting techniques! Fine. Think you’re done? Well, you got to know: Writing is rewriting. So revise your text, your first draft.

Ever heard of freewriting, looping, annotated outlines, mind mapping, top-down and bottom-up writing, reader-based and writer-based prose, the CARS-model? Or effective revision techniques for completing a text?

This workshop follows a hands-on-approach to getting you started with or revising your term paper. Although we will be covering models of the writing process and features of writing skill development, theoretical input is limited to necessary basics.

Most important is to see where you are with your term paper and how you can devellop it. Therefore, bring your text with you to work on it in the workshop.

By trying out different writing techniques, we will tackle questions like:

• Gardener or an architect: what type of writer are you?
• What are your theses and/or research questions? And how to formulate them?
• How do you structure a term paper and come up with an outline?
• Instead of feeling used by the literature, how do you stay in charge?
• Writing blocks and writing flow: how to avoid the former and invite the later?