Thinking Fast in Turbulent Times

Nicole Deitelhoff

F.A.S. Feuilleton ranks PRIF Director among Germany's most important intellectuals

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntags­zeitung (F.A.S.) has featured Nicole Deitelhoff in a list of the 28 most impor­tant German intellec­tuals. In a special edition of the Feuilleton pub­lished on September 21, 2025, on “Thinkers” who offer “today's most illu­minating analyses, theses, and theories,” she is por­trayed as a Researcher who supports the return of the con­cept of peace to public dis­course with patient expla­nations. This includes the guest article written together with Christopher Daase in SPIEGEL at the be­ginning of the year, in which the two PRIF Resear­chers point out ways out of the war in Ukraine.

In times of war on Europe's external border, her strategic consi­derations and res­ponses to pressing questions were characte­rized “above all by flexibility”: Deitelhoff pos­sesses “the ability to adapt to cons­tantly changing, dynamic war situ­ations.”

The Director of PRIF shares this fast thin­king with the other honored thinkers, who include Hito Steyerl, Elfriede Jelinek, Navid Kermani, and Jürgen Habermas, among others.

Prof. Dr. Nicole Deitelhoff is Exe­cutive Director at PRIF and head of PRIF’s Re­search Department International Institutions a Professor of International Re­lations and Theories of Global Order at Goethe University.