Hiddensee/Greifswald, 14–17 August 2025.
After an intense week of work on the isle of Hiddensee, the interdisciplinary multi-term seminar “Klimaschutz, Sicherheit und Energietransformation im Ostseeraum” (‘Climate Protection, Security and Energy Transformation in the Baltic Sea Region’) came to a successful close. The multi-day stay marked the highlight of the block seminar, which had been offered for the second time at the University of Greifswald and was met with great interest among students from various disciplines.
At the centre of the excursion were the presentation and joint reflections on the seminar papers and research questions developed over the course of the semester. The students engaged with highly topical issues concerning the transformation of energy policy in the Baltic Sea region — such as hydrogen technologies, the role of peatlands in climate protection, and implications for security policies.
What made the seminar stand out was its consistently interdisciplinary approach combined with practical orientation: by linking perspectives from legal science and political science with methodological concepts such as resilience and legal design, new insights into complex challenges were opened up. The aim was not only to highlight existing research approaches, but also to enable students to develop their own interdisciplinary questions and address them with academic rigor. The presentations demonstrated the success of this objective.
The stay on Hiddensee provided the ideal setting for focused work, practice-oriented excursions, open exchange, and productive discussions between students and lecturers. A prior excursion to the Greifswald peatland had already laid the thematic foundation by making the relevance of peatland landscapes for local climate protection strategies tangible.
“The combination of research, practical relevance, and joint reflection in an inspiring environment such as Hiddensee clearly motivated the students,” summarised Prof. Rodi, the seminar’s organiser. “Such formats show how fertile interdisciplinary work can be and how essential it is to involve the expertise of other disciplines — especially when it comes to future-oriented topics such as energy, environment, and security.”