Founded in 1989, KWI is an interdisciplinary research centre for the humanities and cultural sciences, in the tradition of international Institutes for Advanced Study. As an interuniversity institution connecting the Ruhr University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, and the University of Duisburg-Essen, the institute works with researchers from these supporting universities as well as further partners from the federal state of NRW and other places within and beyond Germany. Since October 2020, KWI has offered an international fellowship programme for researchers in the postdoc phase, supported in part by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation; this programme has brought more than 50 colleagues to the institute thus far. KWI is a place within the Ruhr area to share the results of ambitious humanities research with interested parties from the city and region. For the past few years, we have structured our civic engagement through annual themes.
KWI’s research areas are regularly readjusted by the directors, rotating every 10 years, and their team of researchers. Since April 2018, literary scholar Julika Griem has been responsible for the KWI programme. In the course of her tenure, research fields have been organised as follows: projects related to Constellations of Historical Impact reconstruct how the study of history always renegotiates the meaning of the past; the field of Visual Literacy foregrounds the hermeneutic and heuristic logics inherent in images, taking their disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts into account. Under the heading Aesthetic Practices, we are interested in a wide cross-section of artefacts and their specific cognitive and affective conditions of perception and contexts of reception. This focal point also includes regular events on literature and other arts. In the field Dialogues between Cultural and Social Sciences, we ask how philological and sociological theories and methodologies can be combined more symmetrically. Under Science Studies, we investigate the role that language, symbols, narratives, images, and media play for self-descriptions and external descriptions of the sciences, broadly conceived. Finally, the Teaching Lab serves to develop new events and formats for the humanities and cultural sciences that can be exported as prototypes for research-oriented teaching.
In various ways, reflection on humanities research itself has become a central focus of the institute’s work since 2018: What can it mean today to conduct research in the cultural sciences between formations organized along disciplinary and interdisciplinary lines? What are the expectations of relevance, demands for meaning-making, and diagnoses of crisis that confront the corresponding academic fields? In light of dynamic technological changes unfolding with AI, how do we define and reorganize established forms of criticism and commentary, routines of reading and writing, collecting, documenting, and arguing? Under what social and economic conditions does our work take place, and which business models are driving structural transformation in the publishing market and its constitutive fictions of authorship? How do we find and choose our topics in the first place? Which funding logics, systemic constraints, and undesired effects influence research in the cultural sciences? Is it possible to analyse these factors so that they might be changed and improved? With such questions regarding the practical, institutional, and epistemological prerequisites, foundations, and consequences of our work, the institute’s team also highlights a perspective on science and higher education that needs to be continuously sharpened. As part of the ambitiously developed University Alliance Ruhr (UA Ruhr), we recognize the possibility and responsibility of inviting open discussions about our working conditions and their societal dimension. At the same time, KWI has proven itself as a host and supporting institution for projects funded by the DFG, ERC, and Humboldt Foundation that fit with our programme.
To open up further spaces of resonance for our activities, we have been running the KWI Blog since March 2020, in careful editorial collaboration, presenting internal and external contributions on a wide range of topics – and also welcoming guest authors. Since autumn 2025, KWI has been cooperating with the journal Merkur to produce the Krumme Straße podcast, illuminating and enriching our work in Essen and Berlin through different conversational constellations.
On the KWI website, you can find upcoming dates, calls, and recordings from events, along with information about people, publications, and research projects.
We look forward to your visit!
