Success at UHH’s new teaching award: “Researching and Shaping Climate Futures” shortlisted

6 May 2025

Photo: Foto: UHH/Göttling

The lecturers of “Researching and Shaping Climate Futures” (from left): Michael Brüggemann, Johanna Baehr, Simone Rödder, Jana Sillmann, Lars Kutzbach, Leonard Borchert and teaching assistant Pritha Mandal. Jörn Behrens and Matthias Revers are missing.

Lecturers from the Master’s class “Researching and Shaping Climate Futures” were finalists for the University of Hamburg’s newly introduced teaching award. Johanna Baehr, Jörn Behrens, Leonard Borchert, Lars Kutzbach, Matthias Revers, Simone Rödder and Jana Sillmann were honored in the category “Courageous and boundary-breaking teaching” at an award ceremony on May 6, 2025.

The aim of “Researching and Shaping Climate Futures” is to integrate research in the Cluster of Excellence “Climate, Climatic Change, and Society” with teaching in the School of Integrated Climate Sciences. “With our interdisciplinary team of dedicated colleagues, we have been experimenting with research-oriented team teaching for many years,“ says Prof. Dr. Johanna Baehr, finalist and spokesperson for the Cluster of Excellence. "We are delighted that this achievement has been recognized and would like to thank the students who nominated us,” adds Prof. Dr. Lars Kutzbach, who has been coordinating the class for three years. “Without their courage and commitment, this course would not be possible." The fields covered in "Researching and Shaping Climate Futures" include climate modeling, oceanography, mathematics, sociology, communication sciences and soil science.

The award recognizes outstanding teaching and aims to interest the public in innovative teaching methods. A total of 275 nominations for the award were received from members of the University of Hamburg (students, lecturers, researchers and administrative staff) - self-nominations were excluded. “The introduction of the new teaching prize, which is awarded exclusively to lecturers at the University of Hamburg, was an important step towards appropriately recognizing the passion, creativity, commitment, innovative strength and courage of our lecturers to further develop what already exists,” said Prof. Dr. Natalia Filatkina, Vice President for Studies and Teaching, at the award ceremony in the atrium of the State and University Library.