Individual projects

History of the Burda Family Business in the 20th Century

The research project examines the history of the Burda family and its business over the course of three political systems (Weimar Republic, Third Reich, Federal Republic of Germany) and thus…

PhD Project: Awards for Democracy?

The television age began with high hopes. The new leading medium was supposed to serve democratisation, and nowhere was this claim reflected more than in the Adolf Grimme Prize. Endowed…

Experiences in Opposition

During their time in opposition from 1979/82 to 1997/98, British and German social democracy underwent fundamental changes. Initially, the Labour Party and the SPD could still be regarded as the…

Heisenberg-Project: Criticism in Crisis?

The period "since the Boom" is characterized by a reordering of the relationship between market and state and between capitalism and democracy. Regardless of whether one describes this change as…

Heisenberg-Project: Critique in Crisis?

The period "since the Boom" is characterized by a reordering of the relationship between market and state and between capitalism and democracy. Regardless of whether one describes this change as…

Ferdinand Tönnies’s Letters

Ferdinand Tönnies‘s (1855–1936) correspondence provides an important window into the establishment and formation of sociology as an independent discipline, as well as the transnational and trans-disciplinary context in which scholars…

Forschungskolleg NRW: Future Water

Humanity’s intensive water use is rapidly changing the dynamics within water bodies such as rivers, lakes, groundwater and seas. As a result, the science of sustainable water use has become…

Working Group “Humans and Animals in the Ruhr Area”

The working group “Humans and Animals in the Ruhr Area” builds on collaborations between museums of the Ruhr Area and the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen…

Working Group: The Cultural Study of Periodicals

Since March 2018, the Working Group is  continued at the Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung. Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in periodicals as an object of study. New…

Styles of Life 2.0

F. Tenbruck’s concept of lateral sociation (querläufige Vergesellschaftung) refers to the sociological possibility and probability that manifold sociation processes have, in all likelihood throughout history, been a feature of existing…

NoVaMigra

Several, partly interconnected crises have profoundly challenged the European project in recent years. Among them especially the reactions to the arrival of 1.25 million refugees in 2015 called into question…

Crisis and Civil society

The objective of the research project consists in examining the contribution civil society en-gagement can perform in the reform process Greece is currently going through. Greece has not been the…

Documents – Memories – Historiography

The project aims to analyze the only fragments that are restored of the Nazi propaganda film revolving around the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The film, produced in 1944, is a document…

Dissertation Project

Dissertation Project at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at Goethe University Frankfurt. Doctoral Canditate: Britta Acksel Supervisor: Prof. Gisela Welz (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt). Second Supervisor: Prof. Jörg Niewöhner (Humboldt-Universität Berlin) Funded…

Annotated Temporalities

Who reads long novels today — and why? In the context of the DFG Priority Programme "Times of the Aesthetic", this research project seeks to analyse forms of temporality in…

BioDisKo

The joint project „BioDisKo” focusses for instance on the future-orientated field of “bio-based circular economy” including development, trial and reviewing of early, target group orientated, participative and communicative approaches and…