Former Journalists-in-Residence

Paul Stoop

Paul Stoop is the founding fellow who helped us in shaping the program, which has been hosting journalists from summer term 2020 on. A science and news editor with Der Tagesspiegel for a decade and head of the communications department of the Berlin Social Science Center (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung - WZB) from 2005 to 2017, Paul joined the Cluster in late October 2019.

Caspar Dohmen

Caspar Dohmen is a working freelance journalist, mainly for public broadcasters (ARD, DLF, SWR and WDR) and the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
His main topics are the world of labor, world trade, a sustainable economy and the monetary system. He is a published author, moderator and lecturer. As a guest at the cluster "The Politics of Inequality", the economist dealt from mid-October to mid-December 2021 with the social fundamentals of the ecological transformation. Caspar Dohmen teaches business journalism in the Plural Economics program at the University of Siegen; he is a member of the board of curators of the Zukunftsstiftung Bildung and a member of the network Weitblick.
His own journalistic work has won several awards, including the 2016 Willy Bleicher Preis for his radio feature on trade unionists. He has written various books, most recently "Lieferketten" was published by Wagenbachverlag in 2021. More info on his homepage

Julia Friedrichs

The journalist Julia Friedrichs studied journalism in Dortmund and Brussels. Since then, she has worked as a freelance author of reports and documentaries for ARD, ZDF and Die Zeit. With the editorial team "docupy" she released the film "Ungleichland". She has written several highly acclaimed books, including the bestseller Gestatten: Elite. Auf den Spuren der Mächtigen von morgen“ (2008), „Deutschland dritter Klasse. Leben in der Unterschicht“ (with Eva Müller and Boris Baumholt, 2009), Ideale. Auf der Suche nach dem, was zählt“ (2011) also „Wir Erben. Was Geld mit Menschen macht“ (2015) and most recently „Working Class. Warum wir Arbeit brauchen, von der wir leben können“ (2021).

She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Axel Springer Prize for Young Journalists, the Young Journalists Award of the Franco-German Journalism Prize, the Dr. Georg Schreiber Media Prize, and the Grimme Prize in 2019. Julia Friedrichs lives with her family in Berlin. More about Julia Friedrichs

Isa Hoffinger

Isa Hoffinger was a guest at the Cluster „The Politics of Inequality” starting in October 2020. As an editor by profession, she gathered work experience as freelance journalist, foreign correspondent and as reporter. She has worked for several media such as the „Deutschlandfunk“, „Norddeutscher Rundfunk“, „Bayerischer Rundfunk“, „Südwestrundfunk“, „Ostdeutscher Rundfunk Brandenburg“, „Süddeutsche Zeitung“, „Die Zeit“, „Die Welt“ and the „Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung“. Her main focus is politics and society.

During her time at the Cluster, Isa examined the narratives used in movies, texts and in social media concerning inequality. She focused a particular interest in the way individuals stage themselves online and how narratives of inequality have an impact on our economy, work life and individual expectations as well as on political decisions.

Felix Rohrbeck

Felix Rohrbeck has visited the Cluster „The Politics of Inequality” starting in June 2020. His practical training at the broadcasting company „Norddeutscher Rundfunk“ was followed by his time with „Gruner & Jahr Wirtschaftsmedien“ (Financial Times Germany, Impulse) and by five years as editor for the economy department of the newspaper “ZEIT”. He has been a freelance journalist for several types of media since 2019 and has been awarded with numerous journalistic awards with the “Otto-Brenner-Preis” being his latest in 2019. Felix spent his time at the Cluster with research into issues regarding inequality and tax evasion.

Vanessa Sadecky

Vanessa Sadecky is a freelance multimedia journalist from Zurich, Switzerland. She has worked for newspapers and magazines such as the “NZZ am Sonntag” or “VICE” since 2014 and focuses in her work on socio-political topics. During her time at the Cluster, she has worked on a narrative podcast that investigates possible strategies to tackle social inequality with particularly focusing on discriminating algorithms, alternative economy systems and the socio-economic and cognitive backgrounds behind different kinds of extremism.

Bettina Schön

Bettina Schön was at the Cluster as journalist-in-residence from May to July 2024. During her diploma studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, she has worked for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, ProSieben and Süddeutsche Zeitung, followed by a traineeship at Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR).
At NDR, she worked as an editor and reporter in the domestic politics department (Panorama), as well as for Tagesschau, Tagesthemen and the foreign desk. She has managed the studios in Singapore, Beijing, and London, and reported from there for ARD.
From 2013, she was deputy editor-in-chief of ARD-Mittagsmagazin at Bayrischer Rundfunk. From 2017, she re-established the ARD-Mittagsmagazin department at rbb (Berlin). Her team is also responsible for the shows Brennpunkte, ARDextra, as well as election programs.
She also works on cross-media projects, such as the long-term documentary “Local Heroes” about the challenges that local politicians face. For this project, she received the awards Deutscher Fernsehpreis and Vielfalt der Demokratie, among others.
Bettina Schön is currently researching inequalities in healthcare.

Kia Vahland

Kia Vahland is an opinion editor at the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a published author, and a lecturer in Munich. As a guest at the cluster "The Politics of Inequality" in October and November 2021, the art historian and political scientist focused on cultural institutions in the public sphere and cultural participation. Kia Vahland teaches at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and at the German School of Journalism; she was the 2020 and 2021 jury spokesperson for the first German Sachbuchpreis. Her own work has won several awards, including the 2016 Michael Althen Prize for Criticism from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for the art market research "Meister, die vom Himmel fallen". Her artist biography "The Da Vinci Women. The Untold Feminist Power of Leonardo’s Art" (Black Dog & Leventhal publishers 2019 / Insel Verlag 2019) was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Sachbuchpreis and has been translated into several languages. Most recently, she published "Schattenkünstler. Von Caravaggio bis Velázquez" (Insel Verlag 2021).