FILMUNIVERSITAT BABELSBERG KONRAD WOLF

Their core work

Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf is Germany's only dedicated film university, located in Potsdam. They combine professional film and media arts education with research into documentary practice, visual storytelling, and the political uses of video. Their H2020 participation reveals two research capabilities: contributing media and visualization expertise to interdisciplinary landscape and environmental history projects, and leading research into how video functions as a tool for activist self-representation within migrant and diaspora communities. They are one of very few European academic institutions that can bridge cinematic methodology with social science and humanities research questions.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first H2020 project (TerraNova, 2019), the university contributed to research centred on landscape reconstruction, past energy regimes, land use, and low-carbon futures — topics where their role was likely to provide visual or media methods to a broader environmental humanities consortium. By 2021, with VIDEOACT, their focus shifted entirely to social activism, diaspora communities, migration, and video as a medium for political voice. The trajectory is a clear move from environmental and spatial humanities toward social justice, community media, and participatory documentary research.

They are moving toward participatory and activist media research, with particular depth in migration, community integration, and how marginalized groups use video as a political instrument — a direction with growing relevance for social cohesion and cultural policy research.

How they like to work

They have demonstrated both leadership (VIDEOACT, as MSCA-IF coordinator hosting a fellow) and supporting roles (TerraNova, as third party in a large consortium). Their one coordinator role involved supervising an individual researcher rather than managing a large multi-partner project, which suggests they are most comfortable as a specialist contributor bringing film and media expertise to consortia led by others. The 22 partners and 12 countries reached via TerraNova reflect their integration into broad interdisciplinary European academic networks.

Their combined portfolio touches 22 unique consortium partners across 12 countries, the bulk of which came through the large TerraNova landscape research consortium. Their network is pan-European and academically oriented, with no evidence of strong ties to any single partner or country beyond Germany and the MSCA program.

What sets them apart

As Germany's only dedicated film university, Filmuniversität Babelsberg holds a genuinely rare position: it can embed professional cinematic and documentary practice directly into academic research, something that social science or humanities departments elsewhere cannot replicate. Their proven ability to host MSCA fellows in activist and community media research makes them a credible anchor for European projects at the intersection of migration, cultural identity, and participatory media. For consortium builders working on social integration, cultural heritage, or human-environment communication, they fill a gap that no standard university media department can.

Highlights from their portfolio

• VIDEOACT
  Coordinated by the university as an MSCA Individual Fellowship, this project is notable for its precise and unusual focus — using film practice as a research method to study political activism and diaspora identity among Turkish communities in Germany, placing it at the intersection of migration studies, media arts, and social documentation.
• TerraNova
  A large multi-partner MSCA Innovative Training Network running four years (2019-2023), covering landscape history, energy transitions, and human-environment interaction — demonstrating the university's reach into interdisciplinary environmental humanities well beyond their core media arts identity.