Fall 2025 Graduates Celebrate the Completion of their Theses

As the Fall 2025 semester comes to an end, Bard College Berlin celebrates its graduating cohort. Over the past weeks, sixteen students have finalized and submitted their written thesis, accompanied by individual thesis presentations open to students and faculty of BCB. 

An academic right of passage, graduating students are free to choose whatever topic aligns with their personal interest and specific field of study. This semester's theses covered various topics, such as migration studies, classical and contemporary literary studies, examination of economic disparities, and much more.

Frishta Hashimi wanted to write something pertaining to her own culture, yet not widely understood in the West. “Hawala, [an informal value transfer system that operates outside traditional banking channels,] is often discussed in Western contexts only in terms of illegality or security concerns, but not in terms of trust, family support, or small business survival,” she says. She wrote a thesis titled “How the Hawala System in Afghanistan Shapes Trust among Individuals and Small Businesses: A Case Study of Afghan Migrants and Their Use of Hawala for Cross-Border Remittances?” Hashimi noted that the most crucial part of her research was collecting and analyzing interviews, which made the topic “more personal and meaningful,” shaping the direction of her analysis. “They brought real voices and experiences into the thesis and helped me connect the academic literature to people's realities,” she adds.

Štepánka Slámová was inspired by a class on Political Economy of Eastern Europe which she took during her semester abroad at the Central European University. She aimed to write a thesis that would combine economics and politics, while focusing on her home country, Czechia. “ I realized I was completely unaware that my country's and even my family's livelihoods were dependent on foreign capital. This led me to want to connect the dots between Central European countries' reliance on external investors and the disparities between peripheral and metropolitan areas,” she explains. For Slámová, it was important to acknowledge the limitations and the often difficult availability of the data she needed: “I struggled for weeks trying to find local-level data and in the end had to merge various national-level datasets together.” Ultimately, it was the choice of a simple approach which “did not require many additional variables” that helped her remain focused within her research. Her thesis is titled “FDI and Regional Disparities in the Visegrad Four: Did COVID-19 Widen the Gap?”

Masooma Hashemi’s thesis bears the title “Women’s Economic Contribution in Afghanistan (1960–2021).” She chose her topic because “most research on Afghan women focuses on vulnerability, while their economic contributions receive far less attention,” she explains. Despite this oversight, Afghan women demonstrate remarkable resilience through the continuation of their education and work, despite conflict. “I wanted to highlight this resilience through a long-run, data-driven analysis that is often missing in existing studies,” Hashemi says. She considers the key step of her research to be the analysis of long-term data: “Once I mapped sixty years of trends, the disconnect between improvements in education and stagnant labor-force participation became clear. That insight shaped the direction of the thesis and helped me understand the deeper structural factors at play.”

As a part of this semester’s graduation cohort, Hana Lotfy chose to produce a creative component along with a written thesis. The creative component allows students to connect their academic research with an artistic final project. Lotfy wrote a thesis titled “Mimetic Desire: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald and How They Became Fiction.” Her creative component turns the literary and philosophical layers of her thesis into “an opportunity for visual connection.” As Lotfy explains, “I felt like the only way I could express my own personal connection to their story was through painting.” The paintings were exhibited as a part of Open Studios at Monopol.

This semester’s graduates will have the opportunity to participate in the Commencement ceremony in May 2026.

By: Hana Trenčanová '28

Post Date: 12-17-2025