People

Katrin Boeckh, Prof. Dr., is a Senior Researcher at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg (Germany) and a Professor of East and Southeast European History at LMU Munich. Within“Denkraum Ukraine” / “Think Space Ukraine”, she coordinates the thematic field Flight, Migration and Value Transfer.

Her research interests include ethno-national conflicts, state and church in socialist countries, institutions of late Stalinism, and the discourse of values in post-Soviet transformation, focusing on Ukraine, the Soviet Union and the countries of Yugoslavia. She is a corresponding member of the Pontifical Historical Commission and a member of the Scientific Historical Commission of the German Bishops’ Conference. She is leading a research group on the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe after the Second World War and their integration in Germany/Bavaria.

Her most recent monograph is: Back to the USSR. Russlands sowjetische Vergangenheit (2023). Further publications are: Stalinismus in der Ukraine: Die Rekonstruktion des sowjetischen Systems nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (2007); Ukraine. Von der Roten zur Orangenen Revolution (2007), as editor (with Oleh Turij): Religiöse Pluralität als Faktor des Politischen in der Ukraine (2015). 

Ulf Brunnbauer completed his PhD at the University of Graz in 1999 with a thesis on household structures and economics in the Rhodope Mountains (19th-20th century). In 2003 he started working at the Institute for East European Studies at the Free University of Berlin and in 2006 he habilitated with a study on social policy in communist Bulgaria (1944-1989). Since 2008, he has been Professor of Southeast and East European History at the University of Regensburg and head of the Southeast Institute. From 2012, he was Managing Director of the IOS and became the first full-time Scientific Director in 2017 after the Institute was accepted into the Leibniz Association. Ulf Brunnbauer is a member of the steering committee of “Denkraum Ukraine” / “Think Space Ukraine” and heads the research area “Flight, migration and value transfer” together with Prof. Dr. Katrin Boeckh. 

His research focuses on the social history of the Balkans in the 19th and 20th centuries, in particular historical family research, migration history, and labor history. He also studies nation-building, Muslim minorities in south-eastern Europe and the historiography of the region. More recently, he has shed light on the global-historical connections of Southeast Europe, with a focus on social history and historical anthropology. 

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Herbert Küpper is the Managing Director of the Institute for East European Law in Regensburg and holds the Chair for European Public Law and its Jurisprudence at Andrássy University Budapest. In the Center “Denkraum Ukraine” / “Think Space Ukraine”, he co-leads the research field "War, Peace, and Post-War Order” with Prof. Dr. Cindy Wittke.

His research focuses on the law of East European and Central Asian states, particularly Hungarian law, the comparative legal handling of totalitarian state crimes, comparative constitutional and administrative law, and legal translation.

He studied at the University of Cologne and King’s College London, completed his legal training in Cologne and Budapest (Hungarian Ministry of the Interior), and received his habilitation with a venia legendi in Constitutional and Administrative Law, East European Law, and Public International Law. His research residencies include the Hungarian Academy of Science in Budapest and the Centre for Asian Legal Exchange in Nagoya. He has acted as an expert advisor in legislative processes in Germany and Hungary.

Prof. Dr. Cindy Wittke is head of the Political Science Research Group at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg. Her research is situated at the intersections between international law, international politics, peace and conflict research, and area studies. In the coming years, she will focus on three topics in the field relating to the politics of international law: 1) the role of international law discourses in unresolved territorial conflicts in Eastern Europe, 2) peace negotiations, peace agreements and post-war orders since the end of the Cold War from a cross-regional comparative perspective, and 3) a long-term research project on politics and laboratories of international law in Eastern Europe. In “Denkraum Ukraine” / “Think Space Ukraine”, she is co-coordinator of the thematic line “War, Peace and Post-War Order”. Cindy Wittke is the author of a monograph on peace agreements published by Cambridge University Press, as well as numerous articles in peer-reviewed international journals. In the fall of 2024, her first nonfiction book for a wider audience was published by Quadriga Verlag/Bastei Lübbe: Frieden verhandeln im Krieg. Russlands Krieg, Chancen auf Frieden und die Kunst des Verhandelns (co-author: Mandy Ganske-Zapf).

Antje Himmelreich has been a research assistant for the law of the post-Soviet states at the Institute for Eastern European Law in Regensburg since 2008. She has been teaching Eastern European law at the Faculty of Law at the University of Regensburg since 2019. As part of the "Denkraum Ukraine" / “Think Space Ukraine”, together with Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Herbert Küpper and Prof. Dr. Cindy Wittke she leads the field of “War, Peace, Post-War Order”.

Her research focuses on the law of Eastern European and Central Asian states, with a particular focus on Ukrainian and Russian law. She publishes the annual “Focus on the Legal Development of Ukraine” in the “Jahrbuch für Ostrecht” and several times a year the “Chronicles of the Legal Development of Ukraine” in the journal “Wirtschaft und Recht in Osteuropa”. Since 2009, she has regularly carried out German-Ukrainian research and teaching projects on various topics relating to democracy and the rule of law as part of the DAAD programs “Supporting Democracy in Ukraine” and “East-West Dialogue”. Her most recent project is a pilot project funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research entitled “‘Restorative Justice’ in Ukraine: The (lack of) coming to terms with Soviet injustice from 1991 to the present day”.

Thomas Steger is chair of Leadership and Organization at the University of Regensburg, Germany. He is a board member of the project “Denkraum Ukraine” / “Think Space Ukraine”. His academic interests include employee participation and ownership as well as corporate governance, both with particular interest in the region of Central and Eastern Europe.

His most recent publications include “The key to Organizational Democracy and Corporate Sustainability? – The Role of Employee Shareholder Associations in German Listed Companies (forthcoming, Business and Society Review, 2024) as well as “Management and Business Ethics in Central and Eastern Europe” (Special Issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, co-edited with Anna Soulsby and Anna Remisova, 2021).

Oleksandr Zabirko is a senior researcher (Post-Doc) at the Slavic Department of the University of Regensburg and a member of the management board at the research center “Denkraum Ukraine” / “Think Space Ukraine”. His research focuses on literary models of spatial and political order, contemporary Russian and Ukrainian literatures, and speculative fiction. His recent publications include Literary Forms of Geopolitics: The Modeling of Spatial and Political Order in Contemporary Russian and Ukrainian Literature (in German, 2021) and Figurations of the East (in German, co-edited, 2022). He also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of European Studies and the book series Ukrainian Voices.