The Clough Center Elections Series. February 27: Untangling Germany’s Elections -

Spring 2025 Seminars, The Clough Center Election Series

The Clough Center Elections Series. February 27: Untangling Germany’s Elections

The Clough Center will host Dr. Sonja Kreibich for a lecture on Germany’s recent elections on February 27, part of a Spring 2025 Seminar. Following her talk, notable scholars will present on German politics. Dr. Kreibich, the German Consul General in New England, has a rich diplomatic background and academic credentials.

3–4 minutes

The Clough Center is delighted to host Dr. Sonja Kreibich, who will deliver a lecture on Germany’s recent elections and current political landscape. This lecture is part of the Clough Center’s Spring 2025 Seminar, which focuses on elections across the globe. Dr. Kreibich serves as the Consul General of Germany to the New England States, based in Boston. As a diplomat deeply engaged in German politics, her talk promises to be both thought-provoking and insightful.

The event will take place on February 27 at 5:00 PM in the Murray Room on Boston College’s main campus: Registration link

Sonja Kreibich/Center for European Studies Harvard

Sonja Kreibich took up her post as the Consul General of Germany to the New England States in July 2022. Before arriving in Boston, she served at the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin as the Head of Division for Pan African Issues, Southern Africa and the Great Lakes from 2018-22. Prior to this, she served as the Head of Unit for European Migration Policy from 2014-2018, and as press spokesperson in the Speaker’s Office from 2002-2006. Sonja’s roles within the Foreign Office have taken her abroad to the German Permanent Mission to the UN in New York as well as to the German Embassy in Bucharest, Romania. She studied law at the University of Bonn and at the University of Edinburgh and obtained a doctorate from the University of Bonn.

Following Dr. Kreibich’s lecture, three distinguished scholars specializing in German politics will also present lectures: Anja von Rosenstiel (Boston University), David Spreen (Harvard University), Hannes Kerber (Boston College), and Jonathan Laurence (Boston College and Clough Center Director)

Anja von Resenstiel is a mediator and practicing attorney both in Boston and in Germany with expertise in the law of banking & finance, capital markets, fintech and in international estate planning. She is currently counsel at a leading German law firm, offering her legal advice on U.S-related cases with an emphasis on regulatory, compliance and international private law aspects of digital assets and decentralized finance.

David Spreen is a historian of modern Germany with research interests in the inter-/transnational entanglements of decolonization, the global Cold War, and the broad social and cultural transformations of the postcolonial period. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2019 and joins Harvard from Berlin, where he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Freie Universität. His current book project explores the impact of decolonization on cultures of radical protest—Maoism in particular—in divided Germany.

Hannes Kerber is an Assistant Professor of Political Philosophy at Boston College, where he studies and teaches primarily 18th century political thought. Prior to joining BC, he was the academic program director at the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung and a lecturer in philosophy and religious studies at the University of Munich, Germany. In 2022/2023 he held a position as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and in 2024 as a visiting professor at the Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy.

Jonathan Laurence is Director of the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy and Professor of Political Science at Boston College. He received a B.A., summa cum laude, from Cornell University, a C.E.P. at Sciences Po, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University. His principal areas of teaching and research are comparative politics and religion and politics in Western Europe, Turkey and North Africa. Prof. Laurence’s latest book is Coping with Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism and the Modern State (Princeton University Press, 2021).

The seminar participants are encouraged to read the speakers’ suggested readings. The readings are accessible via the links below: