EDUC-Team University of Potsdam

Since October 2019, Katja Jung is working as project manager of the European Digital UniverCity at the University of Potsdam. She is responsible for the strategic design of the alliance and coordinates various work packages on topics such as the digital infrastructure, innovative virtual teaching scenarios, physical mobility and the development of transversal skills and digital competences of students and teachers. In her previous position at the Freie Universität Berlin, she collected relevant experiences as Managing and later also Academic Director of the blended learning program MA Intellectual Encounters of the Islamicate World. The course dealt with the history of ideas in the medieval Arabic-speaking world and was primarily aimed at students from Israel and Palestine. Other participants came from countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the USA and the Netherlands. 

Katja Jung began her academic career with a master's degree in political science, international law and sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich and the University of Bath (United Kingdom). In 2009, she completed her doctorate at the Institute of Sociology at the LMU.

• Expert input to the workshop “Digital Transformation: Higher Education and Research for Sustainable Development”, DIES und DIE Bonn (November 2018)
• Presentation at the conference „Internationalisierung der Curricula an Hochschulen: Initiativen, Konzepte, Maßnahmen“, University of Göttingen (November 2016)
• Presentation at the conference GML 2016: Grundfragen des multimedialen Lehrens und Lernens, CeDis, Freie Universität Berlin (March 2016)
• The corporeal endowment of protest: From the rationality of the better argument to the visibility of authenticity; Presentation for the Workshop “The Body: A Critical Engagement with the Corporeal Turn“, BGSMCS, FU Berlin (June 2012)
• Verweigerung als gesellschaftliche Grundhaltung, Lecture at the new year reception of the city of Mindelheim (January 2011)

Since February 2020, Nancy Wegner is working as a team assistant in the European Digital UniverCity project. She is responsible for the administrative process of outgoing scholarships and helps with organizing events. Prior to that she studied Business Communication at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin. 

Max joined EDUC in September 2020 as an IT professional. He will be working on supporting and enhancing the EDUC portal and integration with existing and future partnering Universities. Among others, previously he was working as a Backend Developer in Kyiv, Ukraine since 2019, as a civic activist since 2015, as a Business Analyst for a global IT-company at one of their offices in Eastern Europe since 2011, and started his career as a dedicated Fullstack developer in 2007.

Wiebke Giese has been the EDUC Mobility Manager since August 2020 and is responsible for the supervision of mobilities carried out within the EDUC alliance. She studied German and English/American Studies at the University of Potsdam as well as Modern Languages and English Literature at the University of Southampton.

In her previous job at the University of Potsdam’s International Office, she worked as an assistant to the Erasmus+ institutional coordinator, particularly in the administration of inter-institutional agreements. She has worked at the Berlin Secretariat of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) in the field of general education/ schools and at the University of Potsdam’s Chair for Teaching English as a Foreign Language, where she supervised an international COIL seminar.

Giovanni Fonseca has been working since May 2021 as a pedagogical engineer for the European Digital UniverCity (EDUC) alliance at the Centre for Quality Development in Teaching and Learning at the University of Potsdam. As part of his work, he advises and supports educators in the conception and implementation of innovative teaching-learning scenarios in the context of experimenting with various virtual mobility formats.

Giovanni studied electrical and electronic engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and discovered at the age of 15 that his true passion was education by helping his classmates to better understand mathematics and physics. His experience in education amounts to more than 20 years, during which he has had the opportunity to participate in a variety of projects, both in formal, non-formal and informal education; within various educational institutions, but also non-governmental organizations, as well as independently as an international consultant in education, sustainability, and digitalization.

Since 2011, he has been a member of the international network for education for sustainable development  ESD Expert Net, where he has coordinated together with his colleagues the Go! Global programme for international virtual school exchanges.

From his professional experience, he has developed an educational methodology called #OrganicLearning, which sets out some guidelines for future-proof education.

Katharina Kloss joined the EDUC Team in March 2021 as Research Manager and is responsible for EDUC-SHARE.

Before joining the EDUC team, she worked for the research program Zukunftsphilologie and its journal Philological Encounters (Brill) as well as for the federal program Zusammenhalt durch Teilhabe at the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb). She studied political science, history, and comparative literature at Freie Universität Berlin, Sciences Humaines et Sociales at Paris Nanterre University, and European Studies on Society, Science and Technology at the universities of Maastricht and Aalborg.

Judith Rode has been working as Summer School Manager in the European Digital UniverCity project at the University of Potsdam since September 2020. She is in charge of the implementation of short-term mobilities between the partner universities within the framework of international summer schools at the University of Potsdam.

In her previous position, she worked for the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD e.V.) where she coordinated university cooperation and scholarship programs and contributed to the DAAD's public relations work with regard to the web, publications and events. Judith Rode studied History and Italian at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Università degli Studi di Perugia, Italy.