Teaching Lab

Institutes for Advanced Study provide an important space for research, but such institutions may also be able to create new ideas in teaching. Therefore, the KWI is not only open to scholars but also to students from the three universities of the University Alliance Ruhr (UA Ruhr) in order to support the cooperation within the region even on small-scale study program levels. Furthermore, employees and fellows are invited to reflect their projects under the aspect of doing both research and teaching: Where and how is it possible to include students; how can they enrich the respective projects and, early and autonomously, become acquainted with academic methods?

Our teaching lab is deliberately connected to all other working areas of the KWI. This way, students are able to give feedback to specific formats and strategies of science communication, because they have not yet deeply internalized the routines of academic communication and are able to contribute alternative and innovative ideas. Students’ experiences are valuable even from a literary perspective as well as from the position of the sociology of culture: Students embody a diverse range of ways of usage and consumption, of experiences with popular cultural artefacts and genres as well as specialised expertises, all of which can contribute positively to our exploration of the art and media systems. Finally, research in the fields of cultural studies can be complemented by different perspectives of learning and teaching: As an example, it has not yet been investigated sufficiently how students, by reading, writing and many other practices, gather knowledge in a variation of disciplinary and national contexts; and how these core competences can be improved to suit new learning environments and new acculturations without ignoring the histories and effects of traditional cultural techniques and technologies.