As part of the Science Year 2024 - Freedom, Hidden Research is performing stories and conflicts about scientific freedom by endangered and refugee scientists worldwide. The performances are based on interviews with researchers and extracted leitmotifs that are dramaturgically constructed in the form of dialogues. Hidden Research brings these theatrical dialogues into the public space and thus creates points of contact with the anonymous, personal experiences of the scientists. Hidden Research is based on close cooperation between thematically relevant research projects from the humanities, social sciences and theatre studies, affected researchers and performance artists and dramaturges who deal intensively with the topic of academic freedom.

The Berlin Center for Global Engagement (BCGE) is coordinating the project in close scientific collaboration with the BUA project Co2libri. The SCRIPTS Cluster of Excellence, Center for Comparative Research on Democracy (CCRD) of Humboldt University, the BUA Obj. 2 Fostering Knowledge Exchange, and the BUA Forum on Diplomatic Resilience are also supporting the project.

Hidden Research is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the Science Year 2024 – Freedom, a fundamental value currently facing threats that were long unimaginable. Two anniversaries highlight its significance for Germany this year: 75 years of the Basic Law and 35 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Science Year 2024 therefore explores various dimensions of freedom. What exactly is freedom? Are freedom and democracy connected? Where does freedom begin? With a wide range of participatory activities, the Science Year 2024 provides a framework for cross-generational discussions about freedom, its value, and its significance – both with one another and with science. It addresses freedom today, tomorrow, and worldwide.

The Science Year is an initiative of the BMBF in collaboration with Science in Dialogue (WiD).

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The team

Dr. Sarah Wessel, Project Management
Sarah works as a consultant at the Berlin Center for Global Engagement - a center at the Berlin University Alliance that deals with academic freedom, among other things. She is an anthropologist and political scientist with a regional focus on the Arab world and its relations with Europe. Currently, she is intensely engaged with the global increase in authoritarian tendencies, knowledge justice, and cooperation with diverse contexts in the Global South.

Aldo Spahiu, Director
Aldo was born in 1981 in Tirana, Albania. Following the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe and the revolution in Albania, he moved to the city of L'Aquila, in the Abruzzo region in Italy where he studied performing arts. Subsequently, he worked both as an actor and director in various national and international projects. In 2018, he moved to Berlin, where he works as a circus trainer at CABUWAZI and is a guest artist at the Berliner Ensemble (“EXIL”).

PD Dr. Andrea Fleschenberg dos Ramos Pinéu
Andrea has been working at the Institute for Asian and African Studies in theTransregional Southeast Asian Studies department at Humboldt University Berlin since 2018/19. Her thematic focus includes socio-political inequalities and policy-making challenges arising from various forms of displacement and migration, as well as challenges posed by multiple hegemonies and colonial legacies for (critical) qualitative social research and methodological approaches in heterogeneous and volatile contexts of the Global South. Andrea is the academic coordinator of the project "co2libri: Conceptual Collaboration: Living Borderless Research Interaction" at the Berlin University Alliance. The project aims to make knowledge, theories and research practices from the 'Global South' visible in Berlin's research landscape.

Maria Elisa Silva de Almeida
Maria is originally from Brazil, where she completed a Bachelor's degree in Journalism and subsequently worked as a reporter. She moved to Berlin in 2012 and completed a Master's degree in Media and Political Communication at the Freie Universität Berlin in 2018. Since then, she has held positions in event management, public relations, academic administration and project coordination at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Robert Koch Institute. Since January 2024, she has been working as a consultant for science communication and public relations at the Cluster of Excellence “Contestations of the Liberal Script (SCRIPTS)”.