On November 2, 2024, Bard Berlin hosted an open source workshop with OSINT for Ukraine to examine human rights violations in Ukraine and Syria.
On January 29, 2025, Fred Abrahams and Marija Ristic ran a workshop at the transmediale festival in Berlin called Pro Test: Monitoring Protest from Afar on using open source techniques and tools to monitor police abuse.
On December 17-18, 2024, a group of visiting students from Al Quds Bard College received training in open source human rights research.
Working with Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps (DVC), Bard College Berlin is one of eight universities in the world where students take part in the hands-on work of using open-source digital evidence for human rights accountability. Meeting regularly during the academic year, students get trained in open source techniques and contribute to projects by NGOs, media, international organizations and others. Past projects include the Iranian Archive run by the organization Mnemonic, which documents human rights violations during the 2022 protests in Iran, and a public letter to universities in the United States about the right to protest sent jointly by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union. In September 2024, students participated in the DVC Summit in Geneva, Switzerland with DVC teams from the University of Cambridge, University of Essex, University of California-Berkeley, Hertie School,Geneva Academy for International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and Ibero University in México City.
Fred Abrahams is an experienced researcher, writer and human rights advocate with expertise in war crimes investigations and research methodologies. At Human Rights Watch for nearly three decades, he most recently oversaw the Crisis & Conflict, Arms and Technology divisions, including the Digital Investigations Lab, and led the organization’s internal research training.
Marija Ristic is an experienced journalist, editor and filmmaker working at Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Programme.