The program for the Symposium on Crisis Early Warning
Please download the program as a PDF.
Wednesday 17.09.
08:15 – 09:00 Registration & Coffee
09:00 – 09:45 Welcome & Keynotes
State Minister Florian Hahn, Federal Foreign Office
State Secretary Nils Hilmer, Federal Ministry of Defence
Prof. Carlo Masala, Head, Center for Crisis Early Warning
09:45 VIP Policy Panel: “Crisis Early Warning in times of perpetual crises – still worth it?”
Chair: Prof. Carlo Masala, Head, Center for Crisis Early Warning
Philipp Rotmann, Director, Global Public Policy Institute
Anka Feldhusen, Director for Civilian Crisis Prevention and Stabilization, FFO
followed by Coffee Break
11:00 – 12:30 Research Panel I: “Leveraging Large Language Models in Crisis Early Warning”
Chair: Dr. Hannes Müller, Institute for Economic Analysis
Dr. Edoardo Vigano, Witten/Herdecke University
Dr. Egemen Bezci, University for Continuing Education Krems
Laura Braun, Center for Crisis Early Warning
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch
13:30 – 15:00 Research Panel II: “Advancing Methodological Approaches in Crisis Early Warning”
Chair: Dr. Paola Vesco, Uppsala University
Prof. Thomas Chadefaux, Trinity College Dublin
Chandler Williams, Peace Research Institute Oslo
BND Desk Officer
15:00 – 16:15 Workshops (parallel)
Session 1: Interactive Scenario Lab – A Case Study on Strategic Foresight (Willy-Brandt-Saal)
Session 2: Hybrid Threats – State-Targeted Cyber Attacks as Digital Smoke Before Escalation? (Adenauer-Saal)
Session 3: Data driven Anticipatory Action (Stresemann-Saal)
16:15 – 16:45 Coffee Break
16:45 – 17:45 Policy Panel I: “How to warn? – lessons and best practices”
Chair: Isabelle Arradon, International Crisis Group
Andreas Pérez Fransius, European External Action Service
Minako Manome, Development Risk Practice Unit, UNDP
Dr. Philip AbdelMalik, Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, WHO
Colonel (GS) Oliver Esdar, Chief of Branch MEO I 3, Federal Ministry of Defence
17:45 – 19:00 Canapés & Fingerfood (Genscher Forum)
Thursday 18.09.
08:15 – 09:00 Check-in & Coffee
09:00 – 09:15 Welcome
09:15 – 10:45 Research Panel III: “Conflict Onset and Civil War Recurrence in Crisis Early Warning”
Chair: Dr. Nadine O’Shea, Technical University of Munich
Lotta Rüter, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Hannah Frank, Trinity College Dublin
Dr. Namig Abbasov, Arizona State University
10:45 – 11:00 Coffee Break
11:00 – 12:15 Workshops (parallel)
Session 4: Central Risk Factors in Early Warning (Stresemann-Saal)
Session 5: Think Like an Adversary – A Practical Exploration of the Disruptive Potential of AI (Willy-Brandt-Saal)
Session 6: Pimp My Dataset – Enhancing Existing Event Datasets with Large Language Models (Adenauer-Saal)
12:15 – 12:30 Plenary Workshop Recap
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch
13:30 – 14:15 Policy Panel II: “Global Commons or national silos? Informed decisions through common datasets”
Chair: Anka Feldhusen, Dir. for Civilian Crisis Prevention and Stabilization, FFO
Dr. Martin Frick, World Food Program
Prof. Clionadh Raleigh, Armed Conflict Location & Event Data
Dr. Barbora Šedová, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
14:15 – 15:45 Research Panel IV: “Exploring New Data in Crisis Early Warning”
Chair: Prof. Melanie Sauter, Universität Mannheim
Christoph Deppe, Helmut Schmidt University
Dr. Allison Koh, University of Birmingham
Dr. Anne Schneibel, German Aerospace Center
15:45 – 16:00 Closing Remarks: Anka Feldhusen, Federal Foreign Office