Meet our 2026 Civic Freedom Residents-Elect

In residence in Odessa this summer!

Christine Hamel is a German radio and television journalist with ARD, with more than twenty-five years of experience covering politics, society, and international affairs. Since 2014, she has reported extensively on Russia’s war against Ukraine and wider shifts across Eastern Europe.
Matthew Porges is an Oxford-based anthropologist whose work explores war, conflict, and post-conflict societies, with research spanning the Balkans, North Africa, and questions of pluralism, fragmentation, and moral life after violence.
Nick Sturdee is a British documentary-maker, journalist and writer whose work has explored culture, conflict, and social change across the former Soviet world since 1991. He has reported on Ukraine for decades, covered Russia’s full-scale invasion from Hostomel and the southern front, and this summer will work in Odessa on language, identity, urban change, and everyday life under war.