Press releases
Popakademie Talks in the Winter Semester of 2026
28. October 2026
During the 2026–2027 winter semester, the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg will once again host the Popakademie Talks series. Guests from the music and cultural sectors will explore the topic “The Relationship Between Art and Democracy.” The first Popakademie Talk took place in cooperation with the University of Mannheim as part of its Action Week for Diversity, Participation, and Equal Opportunity, as well as the city of Mannheim’s “einander.aktionstage” event series.
On Tuesday, October 20, starting at 7 p.m., the first talk took place with artist Eva Sauter (ok.danke.tschüss) and political scientist Julius Diener. Laura Volk served as moderator, and Laura di Natali provided musical accompaniment for the evening. The talk was organized in cooperation with the University of Mannheim as part of the Action Week for Diversity, Participation, and Equal Opportunity and the “einander” Action Days hosted by the Mannheim Alliance for Living Together in Diversity. Faravaz will be our guest on Tuesday, November 10, starting at 7 p.m. She is an Iranian singer and songwriter who lives in Berlin. Born in Tehran, she performed and released music in a country where women are prohibited from singing publicly as solo artists—and was arrested as a result. In 2018, she left Iran and built a new career for herself in Germany. She is the founder of “The Right to Sing e.V.,” an organization that supports women who are silenced by their governments; there are currently active cases in Iran and Afghanistan. The documentary “My Orange Garden,” about her life, is available on The New Yorker. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Der Spiegel, on the BBC, on ARTE, and in Missy Magazine, among others.Sonja Eismann will be our guest on Tuesday, December 1, starting at 7:00 p.m. She is a journalist and cultural studies scholar. Eismann studied comparative literature in Vienna, Mannheim, Dijon, and Santa Cruz (USA) and was a co-founder of the magazine *nylon* and *Missy Magazine*, where she remains a member of the editorial staff to this day. She has worked as a writer and journalist for publications including *Spex*, *taz*, *Freitag*, and *Deutschlandfunk Kultur*, and conducts research on gender representations in pop culture. From 2016 to 2022, she was a member of the Music Council at the Goethe-Institut, and in 2024 she held the chair in pop music at the University of Paderborn. In September 2025, her book *Candy Girls: Sexism in the Music Industry* was published.Admission is free for all events; registration is not required. The events will take place in Room 001 at the Popakademie.