Karoline Engel receives the Leibniz Talents Award for her master's thesis in the summer of 2025. The Leibniz Talents Award is presented each year to recognise the most excellent theses at Leibniz University Hannover.

In her master's thesis at Territorial Design & Urban Planning, Karoline Engel worked on ‘Overlays – Vacancy, Appropriation and Transformation in the Silesia Region’. She highlights how a new awareness of the overlay of cultural layers in the region, both among young people in Poland and in Germany, can become a starting point for cooperation and cultural dynamics. Different perspectives and conflicts regarding ‘entangled heritage’ and ‘conflicted memories’ can be integrated into positive visions for the future for specific places and spaces in order to contribute to the social and economic development of a border region in Europe.