They delve into the deeper layers upon which the foundation of culture rests. These researchers explore how today’s conflicts have developed, reconstruct the past using new techniques, and find new ways to foster collective memory.

• Prof. Dr. Barbara Vetter (Freie Universität Berlin): When she describes her field of work, it takes the ground right out from under your feet. Vetter’s subject matter operates on a meta-level: Why do the laws of nature exist? How do I know that I am the same person as I was yesterday? In an interview, she once remarked that answers to questions about what constitutes the subject and how free it is in its actions could be found in *Star Trek* just as easily as in the works of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. For her theory of potentiality, Vetter was awarded the Leibniz Prize in 2026.

• Prof. Dr. Sharon Macdonald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): The social anthropologist was one of the first top academics to move from Oxford to Berlin in the wake of Brexit. She is one of the most innovative researchers in the fields of museums and cultural heritage. How do the objects we exhibit end up in museums, and why? And what constitutes World Heritage in the 21st century? These are among her central questions. In Berlin, Macdonald directs several centres; currently, for instance, she is exploring how to design large collections in a way that is less centred on the West. For her, museums are not static entities but should constantly respond to their surroundings.

• Prof. Dr. Henny Piezonka (Freie Universität Berlin): When people in Europe settled down 8,000 years ago, they first had to learn how to cope with the growing amounts of waste around them. Piezonka is researching what they did with broken pots, animal bones, and other remnants, and whether they even reused some of these items. Together with an international team, she is examining archaeological sites across Europe. This original perspective on the past could also provide new ideas for our current approach to waste management.

• Dieu Ly Hoang (Technische Universität Berlin; Universität Oxford): Her turbulent family history is one reason why the art historian today researches the temples, statues and other artefacts of the Cham, an ancient people of Vietnam. Hoang grew up in Hanoi and later in Nauen, Brandenburg, and completed her master’s degree in art history at TU Berlin, where the postcolonialism expert Bénédicte Savoy discovered and nurtured her talent. For her doctoral thesis, in which she aims to reconstruct Cham art and free it from colonial framing, Hoang has been awarded an Oxford scholarship of £40,000 per year.

• Prof. Dr. Anita Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin): The Romanist explores how language exerts power and influence, with a focus on the Early Modern period. She elucidates what we can learn from the communicative forms of that era for today’s digital media landscape, establishing her own centre, “echo”, to this end. Traninger shaped gender studies in Berlin, co-founded the literature excellence cluster “Temporal Communities”, and is a recipient of the Leibniz Prize. She has now also been awarded the Berlin Science Prize.

• Prof. Dr. Caterina Schürch (Technische Universität Berlin): New ideas often emerge precisely where disciplinary boundaries blur, as demonstrated by the Junior Professor of History of Science. As both a biologist and a historian, she examines how biologists, chemists, and physicists collaborated, learned from one another, and generated new insights in the first half of the 20th century, drawing on laboratory notebooks, letters, photographs, and experiments. For her research, she has now been awarded the Emerging Researchers Prize of the Berlin Science Award, endowed with €10,000.

• Prof. Dr. Hubert Mara (Freie Universität Berlin): Examining cuneiform on millennia-old clay tablets using computers: Mara combines archaeology with modern computing technology. He develops methods that analyse artefacts in 2D and 3D and can automatically detect even the smallest features, such as script characters or impressions on ancient seals. He has founded a dedicated institute for archaeoinformatics – to drive his field into the future.

• Prof. Dr. Christina von Braun (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): She is the grande dame of cultural studies. Professor, author, filmmaker: in countless works, von Braun has explored the interplay between intellectual and bodily history, established women’s and gender studies in Germany, and illuminated the tension between religion and modernity. In her latest book, she – for the first time together with her husband Tilo Held – places contemporary society on the couch and analyses the significance of the unconscious for developments over the past 200 years.

All of them were presented today in Der Tagesspiegel (October 7, 2026) within the framework of the series “The 100 Most Important Minds in Berlin Academia 2026” (T+, in German).