Research profile of the TRA 4 ‚Individuals, Institutions and Societies‘

Within the Transdisciplinary Research Area (TRA) 4, researchers investigate the complex relationships between individuals, institutions and societies. From there, they develop a new perspective on micro-phenomena (e.g. development of personality, competences and individualization) as well as macro-phenomena (e.g. world society, globalization). The aim is for example, to identify key factors that influence social cohesion, equal opportunities, efficiency, resource protection and the development of individual skills in the context of all these factors.

Further information on the structure of the TRA ‘Individuals & Societies’.


Our Profile Areas

In order to ascertain the wide spectrum of research questions in the context of the TRA ‘Individuals & Societies’, many different perspectives need to be taken into account. Economical questions crossover with legal, political, sociological and religious questions etc.

The TRA currently focusses on developing three profile areas, which bundle the research interests of our members in an outstanding way:

Ethics

The profile area 'Ethics' represents a core area of our TRA and at the same time, with its high relevance for various already existing projects, such as 'Autonomy and Autonomous Systems', 'Digitalization, Law and Economy', it is an important cross-cutting topic of our other profile areas. The projects in the profile area 'Ethics' address questions concerning e.g. public health or the social consequences of the Corona pandemic. This cross-cutting theme aims to bridge the gap between the life sciences (medicine, philosophy, theology, ethics, law, etc.) and societal contexts (e.g. education, culture, market, politics).

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At the heart of this profile area, the Hertz Professorship for 'Life Ethics' was filled in 2021 with Prof. Christiane Woopen, MD. With her research on ethically and legally relevant aspects of societal problems and challenges, which can only be answered by involving various disciplines from the humanities, social sciences and life sciences, Christiane Woopen establishes a link between the different research areas represented in the TRA. For this purpose, the 'Center for Life Ethics' was founded, whose research focuses on four systemically interacting dynamics that particularly characterize changes in our time: mechanization, economization, ecologization and globalization of our lives.

The expertise of the profile area 'Ethics' is furthermore complemented by Prof. Dr. Aimee van Wynsberghe within the framework of an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship for 'Applied Ethics of Artificial intelligence' since December 2020. Both scientists work closely with each other and with many other members of our TRA on the development and expansion of this profile area.

Projects in the profile area 'Ethics'

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Svenja Kranich
Prof. Dr. Daniela Pirazzini
PD Dr. Simone Knewitz

Staff
Hanna Bruns (WMA)

Information about the project
The overarching question of the research project aims at a better understanding of changing power structures and hierarchies in contemporary societies, taking into account both the individual (e.g. regarding self-determination, freedom of the individual) and society (e.g. regarding questions of social participation) as well as the role of institutions (e.g. regarding discrimination). Democratization in this sense is understood as an increase in the participation of all social groups as well as a (supposed) flattening of hierarchies.

Events
  • Interdisciplinary Workshop (12.09.2023): "Democratisation, roles, and discourse"
Teaching events
Publications

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Cornelia Richter

Staff

Torben Alles 

Information about the project
Further information will follow

Events
Teaching events 
Publications
Further information
  • Call for Papers (Deadline: 31.07.2020)
    • 1st place: Dr. Martin Breuel (Köln): „Lüge, Bullshit, Propaganda? ‚Postfaktische Politik‘ und das Rationalitätspotential der Demokratie‘“
    • 2nd place: Florian Buchmayer (Bremen): „Das Gerede vom Postfaktischen als diskursive Wende“
    • 3rd place: Eytan Celik (Bayreuth): „Fake News als Bedrohung für die moderne Gesellschaft – eine kantische Perspektive“
  • Prize Question 2020-2022 (Deadline: 31.12.2021): What is truth under the conditions of digitalization? An epistemological question in conversation with hermeneutics, philosophy
    of religion and sociocultural phenomenology
    • Award winner: Dr. Matteo Belgrano (Philosophie, UCA/CONICET)

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Mathias Schmoeckel
Prof. Dr. Martin Keßler

Staff
Ji Chen (SHK)

Sophie von Depka-Prondzuynski (SHK)

Information about the project
In the Age of Enlightenment, natural and human rights were not only called for programmatically, but also proclaimed politically - as in Virginia in 1776. Civil rights do become parts of institutions. As universal as the legal claims as such are, the circumstances that led to their very implementation are just as diverse. The project investigates decisive moments and developments that added in various counties and ages to the political establishment of fundamental rights.

Teaching Events
Further information

Project leader
Dr. Andreas Odenthal 
Prof. Dr. Cornelia Richter

Staff
Rasmus Wittekind (WMA)

David Renz (SHK)

Information about the project
The project examines the possibilities of an appropriate perception, description and interpretation of the (crisis-like) experience of world-societal transformation processes (such as the regional and global effects of climate change, increased mobility and migration, digitalization and artificial intelligence, biotechnology, democracy and governmentality) from a theological and religious studies perspective. Already the semantizations of such complexes of phenomena operate with concepts, categories, linguistic images and value patterns that have implications for the imaginary and real space of action for dealing with, shaping and norming such challenges. The project investigates which notions of salvation, agency and integrity are associated with certain semantizations and thus meaning-making processes in future scenarios.

Events
Teaching events
Publications
  • Daniel Bauer: Impulse von Habermas' Genealogie für die Selbstverortung des christlichen Glaubens in der nachmetaphysischen Moderne. Eine praktisch-theologische Perspektive. In: ThGl 112 (2022), S. 166-181.
  • Andreas Krebs: Erdverbundenheit. Zur Kritik der gnostischen Struktur in Christentum und Moderne, in: Simone Horstmann, Gregor Taxacher (Hg.), Animate Theologies. Ein (un)mögliches Projekt?, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2022, 73–95.
  • Cornelia Richter (Hrsg.): The Illusion of the Obvious. On Truth and Reliability in Times of Crisis. Special Issue. JRAT 8, 2022/1, Brill: 2022.
  • Stefan Walser: Identitätsfindung und Glaubensdynamik. Implikationen für die systematische Theologie, in: Klaus von Stosch / Stefan Walser / Anne Weber (Hg.): Theologie im Übergang. Identität – Digitalisierung – Dialog (Kirche in Zeiten der Veränderung 12) Freiburg i. Br. 2022, 89–113.
  • Heidrun Mader: Hagar, die beschnittene Sklavin, und Sara, die unbeschnittene Freie: Eine Neuinterpretation der Allegorie in Gal 4,21-31 im Kontext des galatischen Konfliktes, in Korinna Zamfir/Uta Poplutz (ed.), Neutestamentliche Briefliteratur (Die Bibel und die Frauen: Eine exegetisch kulturgeschichtliche Enzyklopädie 2.2), Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 2022
    Andreas Odenthal/Cornelia Richter (Hrsg.): Semantisierung in Zukunftsdiskursen. Theologische Analysen krisenbezogener Sprachbilder. Herder: 2023.

Project leader
Dr. Matthew Ryan Robinson

Staff
Miriam Dorlaß (SHK)
Saskia Held (SHK)

Jan Thelen (SHK)

Information about the project
The ‘What Does Theology Do, Actually?’-project aims not to do theology, but to observe what theologies do, in and for the communities in which theologies circulate and hold meaning. How is theology understood and practiced as a semantics of global society? What kinds of problems do theologies solve and how? These questions are pursued, moreover, with specific attention given to the “transcultural”.

Events
Publications

Project leader
Dr. Charlotte Gauvry

Information about the project
Creation of an interdisciplinary and international research forum to develop new criteria for determining whether and when non-human entities, such as non-linguistic animals, new brain organisms, or advanced AI systems can be considered conscious.
 
Events
Teaching events 
Publications
  • U. Peters. 2023. « Unjustified Sample Sizes and Generalizations in Explainable AI Research: Principles for More Inclusive User Studies. IEEE Intelligent Systems (main author; co-authored with Mary Carman)
  • C. Gauvry, T. Rüber. 2024. « Extrapolating Consciousness in Isolated Hemispheres. Hemispherotomy as a new challenge », Revue de métaphysique et de morale, Numéro Special issue : « New research on consciousness », forthcoming in 2024.
Further activities

Dr. Björn Schmitz-Luhn 

Mitarbeiter*innen:
Johanne Stümpel 
Silke Gaertzen 

Information about the project
For the Think Journey, leading experts from different disciplines have been invited to present their respective views on the future. Students, young scientists and interested members of the public have the opportunity to meet the experts and discuss how new ideas for an ethically based design of the future can emerge.

Events

Project leader

Dr. Hendrik Ohnesorge

Information about the project
The project aims to assess whether the neural mechanisms of reward processing underlie the soft power exercted by personalities, ideas or symbols.
Further information will follow
Project leader

Dr. Maarit Thiem

Information about the project
Migration is currently one of the major societal challenges in all regions of the world and is increasingly identified as a new line of conflict in Western democracies. Bonn is home to a high density of expertise in the research areas surrounding displacement and (forced) migration, both at universities and in non-university research. In 2020, a research mapping on this topic area took place under the umbrella of the Bonn Alliance for Sustainability Research. Since then, a lot has happened, new projects have emerged in this field, and new colleague have joined. As a reflexive-critical attitude of researchers on this topic is particularly important both in the research process and in the communication of the results to a broader public, we need to anchor research on this topic in collaboration with non-academic and nun-university actors.

The Project is supported by Bonn Research Alliance (BORA)

Events

Digitalization/AI

More information to follow.

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Prof. Dr. Huw Price, who was Bertrand Russel Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge until 2020, supports our profile area 'Digitization/ AI' as one of our Distinguished Emeritus Professors. He is considered one of the leading philosophers of science today.

The expertise of this profile area is also supplemented by Prof. Dr. Aimee van Wynsberghe, who has already started at the University of Bonn in December 2020 as an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship for ‘Applied Ethics of Artificial intelligence’.

Projects in the profile area 'Digitalization/AI'

Project leader
Dr. Charlotte Gauvry

Information about the project
A cycle of interdisciplinary conferences to study the philosophical, political and medical (neurological and psychiatric) effects of the use of AI systems on mental health.

Events
Teaching Events

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Jens Schröter
Prof. Dr. Kathrin Friedrich
PD Dr. Christoph Ernst

Staff
Fiona Torke (WHF)

Information about the project
The starting point of the planned Research Group is the reflection of the current understanding of 'digitalization' along a critical reexamination of the analog/digital distinction. For this purpose, historical-systematic and cross-cultural reappraisals of the concepts of analog and digital operations in paradigmatic fields of knowledge and practice are conducted. On the basis of the conceptual pair continuation/discretization we can arrive at an understanding of digitization processes that is historically grounded and sensitive to cultural differences. This culminates in a program of comparative digitization research which allows for a systematic and culturally specific assessment of contemporary discourses and practices of 'digitization' and their (dis)continuities to past digitization phases.

Publications
  • Ernst, Christoph/Schröter, Jens/Warnke, Martin (2020): »Der Quantencomputer – Ein zukünftiger Gegenstand der Medienwissenschaft?«, in: MEDIENwissenschaft. Rezensionen 02 (Rubrik »Perspektiven«), S. 130-150.
  • Schröter, Jens/Ernst, Christoph/Warnke, Martin (2021): »Quantum Computing and the Analog/Digital Distinction«, forthcoming in Grey Room (in print). Classical Digital Machines, New Analog Computers, or Future Post-Digital Media? Quantum Computing and the History of the Analog/Digital Distinction, Vortrag an der Univ. Luxemburg (Februar 2022)
Project leader
Prof. Dr. Caja Thimm
Jun.- Prof. Dr. Maximilian Mayer
Prof. Dr. Gabriele Gramelsberger (RWTH Aachen)

Prof. Dr. Frank T. Piller (RWTH Aachen)

Staff
Phillip Engelhardt (WHK)
Stefan Gronsfeld (SHK)
Former employee

Vincent Rastfeld (SHK)

Information about the project
In times of digitisation, datafication and the increasing use of artificial intelligence in many areas of society, the idea of autonomy has gained new attention. The researcher are investigating the possibilities of extending, simulating and replacing human agency through technology and promotes interdisciplinary cooperation at the project level. In particular, they explore the attribution of autonomy to technical artefacts such as robots, voice assistants, drones or vehicles. The common research goal is to answer ethical, regulatory, political and cultural questions that autonomous technologies pose for the digital society.

Events
Teaching Events
Publications
  • Maximilian Mayer (2022). Autonomous Technologies, edited by Tim Rühling, Berlin DGAP, pp.74-90.
  • Maximilian Mayer, “Autonomie und Polarisierung. Machttheoretische Perspektiven auf globale digitale Plattformen”, in: Hendrik W. Ohnesorge, ed. Macht und Machtverschiebung Schlüsselphänomene internationaler Politik – Festschrift für Xuewu Gu zum 65. Geburtstag. De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2022, pp. 127–145.
  • Ying Huang and Maximilian Mayer (2022). “Power in the Age of Datafication: Exploring China’s Global Data Power”, Chinese Journal of Political Science.
  • Ying Huang and Maximilian Mayer (2022). “Digital Currencies, Monetary Sovereignty, and U.S.-China Power Competition", Policy & Internet vol 14, no 2 (2022) pp. 324-347.
  • Thimm, C. (2023b). Herausforderungen digitaler Bildung. Technologiesouveränität in Zeiten von ChatGPT. In Bröckling, G., Fries, R. & Narr, K. (eds.), Mit Medienbildung die Welt retten?! Medienpädagogik in einer Kultur der Digitalität. (pp. 3-14) Kopaed.
  • Thimm, C. (2023). Digitale Souveränität und personale Autonomie: Herausforderungen für eine Digitalpädagogik. Mediendiskurs, 104(2), 84-87.
  • Thimm, C. & Thimm-Braun, L. (2023). Künstliche Intelligenz und personale Autonomie: Diskriminierende Algorithmen als ethische und rechtliche Herausforderung für die Polizeiarbeit. In Susanne Gössl (Hrsg), Diskriminierungsfreie Algorithmen. Neue juristische Wochenschrift (S . 37-50). C. H. Beck.
  • Thimm, C. (2024). Technology Sovereignty in Times of ChatGPT: New Challenges for Digital Literacy, in Bonacho, F. (ed.) "Atas do VI Congresso Literacia, Media e Cidadania. Transição Digital e Políticas Públlicas”. GILM, Coleção Estudos e Reflexões do Politécnico de Lisboa (e-book in print).
  • Thimm, C. & Thimm-Braun, L. (2024/i.pr.). Policies, regulation and legal perspectives on social robots. In Autumn Edwards & Leopoldina Fortunati (Hrsg.), DE Gruyter Handbook of Robots in Society and Culture. De Gruyter.
Further activities

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Adrian Hermann
Petra Tillessen

Staff
Yasmina Burezah (WMA)
Leonie Geiger (WHK)

Information about the project
Collaboration in research and teaching in the humanities consists primarily in creating sustained moments of intellectual intensity in the interaction between participants. In exploring the media constellations and the intellectual potential of collaborative online cultures, the project reflects on digital and analog tools for creating such intensity in the context of building a "Collaborative Humanities Research and Teaching Lab”.

Teaching events
Publications
Further activities

Project leader
Dr. Ying Huang
Prof. Dr. Maximilian Mayer

Nicolas Huppenbauer

Information about the project
The initiative addresses the interactions and implications of the idea of digital sovereignty on the one hand, and the increasing fragmentation of cyberspace and Internet governance on the other (further Information).

Events
Teaching events
Publications
  • Maximilian Mayer, “Autonomie und Polarisierung. Machttheoretische Perspektiven auf globale digitale Plattformen”, in: Hendrik W. Ohnesorge, ed. Macht und Machtverschiebung Schlüsselphänomene internationaler Politik – Festschrift für Xuewu Gu zum 65. Geburtstag. De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2022, 127–145.
  • Ying Huang and Maximilian Mayer, “Digital Currencies, Monetary Sovereignty, and U.S.-China Power Competition”, Policy & Internet, Vol.14, Issue 2, 2022, pp.324-347.
  • Ying Huang, Nicolas Huppenbauer and Maximilian Mayer, “Infrastructuring Cyberspace. Exploring China’s Imaginary and Practices of Selective Connectivity”, International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Vol.53, No.3, 2022, pp.413-439.
  • Ying Huang, Cyberspace Fragmentation from the Perspective of Technology Trends), The Journal of International Studies),2022, 95-119.
  • Nicolas Huppenbauer mit J.-F. Vögele, "Vulnerabilities Disclosure mit chinesischer Prägung: Nutzen und Gefahren", Inside IT, 01.02.2022.
  • Ying Huang and Maximilian Mayer,“Power in the Age of Datafication: Exploring China’s Global Data Power”, Journal of Chinese Political Science, Vol.28, Issue 1, 2023, pp.25-49.
  • Nicolas Huppenbauer, “Connectivity, centrality, and adaptation: The coproduction of political space in China’s standardization of autonomous driving technologies”, Global Media and China, 8(3), 2023, S. 414-430.
Further information

Project leader
Prof. Dr. iur. Louisa Specht-Riemenschneider
Prof. Dr. iur. Daniel Zimmer

Information about the project

The transdisciplinary Research Grouping  analyzes legal and regulatory issues in the area of digitalization. These include the regulation of the use of algorithms by public institutions and companies, legal standard setting in the field of artificial intelligence, building ethical foundations for programming, e.g. in the field of autonomous driving, limits set by the need for sufficient competition etc.

Events
Teaching events
Publications
  • Zimmer, Daniel (Hg.), Regulierung für Algorithmen und Künstliche Intelligenz. Tagung an der Universität Bonn am 7. und 8. September 2020, Baden-Baden 2021 (Schriften der Wissenschaftlichen Vereinigung für das gesamte Regulierungsrecht; 5).
Project leader
PD Dr. Felix Selgert

Dr. Moritz Wolter

Information about the project
Handwritten and printed tables contain a rich treasure trove of data for economic and social history. Using neural networks, we recognize the layout of handwritten and printed sources, extract en masse the data contained in the tables, and make them useful for economic history. From the computer science side, segmentation problems and their solution by means of so-called neural networks are an important field of research. So-called U-nets dominate in this respect, and we are continuing to research and improve their application in historical science in this project.

Events
Further Information will come soon.

Teaching events 
Project leader

Prof. Dr. Markus Gabriel
Prof. Dr. Zed Adams, NSSR
Prof. Dr. Paul Kottman, NSSR

Staff
Alex Englander (WMA)

Jan Voosholz (WMA)

Information about the project
The Institute for Philosophy and the New Humanities convenes graduate students and distinguished scholars from The New School and the University of Bonn for intensive five-day seminars on pressing questions in contemporary philosophy and the humanities.

Events
Further information

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Markus Gabriel
Jan Voosholz
Prof. Dr. Huw Price (Cambridge, Dist. Em. Prof. Universität Bonn)
Dr. Stephen Cave (Cambridge)
Kanta Dihal (Cambridge)

Information about the project
The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge and the Center for Science and Thought at the University of Bonn currently employ various postdocs, who spend half of their time in Bonn and the other half in Cambridge, and who are working on joint research projects. The focus here lies mainly on programmes such as 'Kinds of Intelligence' (researching the concept of intelligence from a multidisciplinary perspective) and 'Philosophy and Ethics of AI' (connecting ethics of AI with meta-etchics, ontology and philosophy of science).

Events
Teaching events
Publications
Further information

Project leader
Dr. Sergio Genovesi
Dr. Scott Robbins

ehem.: Dr. Katharina Kaesling

Staff
Marie Bente John (SHK)
Luis Nussbauer (SHK)

Information about the project
The project attempts to define ethical and legal foundations for the development and regulation of so called Recommender Systems. Recommender Systems, e.g. Facebook News Feed Algorithm or Youtube Video Recommendation Algorithm, are software systems that quantify the interests of users for a given content in order to recommend precisely those items to the user that she is most likely to be interested in.

Events
Teaching events
Publications
Further information
Project leader

Prof. Dr. Markus Gabriel

Information about the project
In the framework of the competence platform KI.NRW, the CST is developing a certificate for artificial intelligence together with the Fraunhofer  IAIS, the BSI, the University of Cologne, RWTH Aachen University,  DIN e.V. as well as numerous DAX-30 and other companies from different industries. The project is one of the KI.NRW flagships financed by the state ministry MWIDE.

The aim of the project is to develop procedures to examine generally accepted standards for AI systems and their verification, as well as to explore business models for an AI certification. To this end, we will write interlinked catalogs of requirements with technical, legal and ethical-philosophical criteria. Our research investigates the certification of ethical aspects. The theoretical basis for this is provided by a social ontology of AI, which is also being developed in the project. In accordance with the research interest of the CST, both the double autonomy of AI and the applied concept of intelligence constitute a special research focus.

In order to make this philosophical basis operationalizable in the certification's context, use cases of AI applications are  -  in close exchange with our partners from law - analyzed and categorized according to ethically relevant parameters. Ethical minimal requirements for a certification will be defined.

Events
Teaching Events
Publications
Further information
You can find more information here.

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Markus Gabriel
Prof. Dr. Zed Adams, NSSR
Prof. Dr. Paul Kottman, NSSR

Staff
Alex Englander (WMA)
Jan Voosholz (WMA)

Information about the project
The Institute for Philosophy and the New Humanities convenes graduate students and distinguished scholars from The New School and the University of Bonn for intensive five-day seminars on pressing questions in contemporary philosophy and the humanities.

Events


Further information


Reconciliation

More information to follow.

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This profile area is strengthened with another Distinguished Emeritus Professorship: Moshe Zimmermann, Professor of Modern History at Hebrew University and Director of the Richard Kobener Center for German History, is closely associated with German historical scholarship and was recruited to support the profile area 'Reconciliation' in April 2022.

The TRA is additionally supported by Prof. Dr. Hans-Georg Soeffner as a Senior Professor, who sustainably advances this profile area, e.g. supporting the ‘Forum for Reconciliation Research’, which will summaries all activities around the topic.

Projects of the profile area 'Reconciliation'

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Sabine Mainberger
Prof. Dr. Christian Moser

Information about the project
Currently, the highly political question of social cohesion is being raised time and again: What ties us together beyond economic and legal relations? For attempts to think of sociality without utilitarian or normativist reductions, the French sociologist and ethnologist Marcel Mauss’s theorem of the gift is - so our hypothesis - still productive. For in the gift, economic, political, religious, moral and aesthetic dimensions come together. It thus stands at odds with the currently predominating view of society as a complex composed of fully differentiated and autonomous systems. With recourse to the gift it is possible 1) to make visible hidden crossconnections between the autonomous realms, 2) to conceptualize alliances as well as agonisms, to condcut 3) historical studies and 4) analyses of contemporary issues. Charis, Gift and Grace form a dynamic, historically versatile constellation of terms. 

Events
Teaching events
Publications

Project leader
Dr. Matthew Ryan Robinson

Staff
Miriam Dorlaß (SHK)

Julia Wesser (SHK)

Information about the project
Religious communities can affect social cohesion in powerful ways, but this influence is highly ambivalent. The project explores the concepts of the Enemy, Stranger, Neighbor, and Friend in religious peacemaking to observe how how the semantics of otherness are deployed and reinterpretated.

Events
Publications

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Christoph Zuschlag
Prof. Dr. Matthias Weller, Mag. rer. publ.
 
Für Tel Aviv: Prof. Dr. Leora Bilsky, Tel Aviv University

Staff
Antonetta Stephany (WMA)
Joëlle Corinne Warmbrunn (SHK)Arthur Abs (SHK)

Information about the project
The restitution of Nazi looted art constitutes an unaccomplished desideratum of reconciliation occupying our as well as Israeli society. Meanwhile, this also affects Israeli museums, which increasingly aim at facing these challenges. To achieve this, research on the object histories (provenance research) is as vital as reaching agreements on just and fair solutions for the individual case at hand. For this purpose, certain rules have been developed. The process of formulating these rules, their application as well as their critical reception are supposed to be developed in dialogue form by Israeli and German students within a joint online lecture to be held by the faculties of law of the Hebrew University of Tel Aviv and the University of Bonn during the winter term 2021/22 as part of the respective general curricula. Corresponding formats of provenance research are expected to be devised subsequently.

Events
Teaching events
Other activities

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Clemens Albrecht

Staff
Christoph Nienhaus (WHK)

Information about the project
The aim of the project is to develop a theoretical concept of reconciliation that is suitable as a basis for empirical research. The starting point of the consideration is the understanding that practices of reconciliation are an indispensable component of define the concept of reconciliation and to outline it in an interdisciplinary way. To realise this, the project draws on sociological, theological, philosophical, legal, political and educational approaches.

Events
Teaching events
Publications
  • Straßenberger, Grit: Menschenbilder in Politischen Theorien, in: Handbuch Menschenbilder, hg. von Michael Zichy. 2022, S. 1-24 (zus. mit Malte Miram)
  • Straßenberger, Grit: Konfliktaustragung und Konfliktbegrenzung. Zum Verhältnis von Demokratie und Recht in agonalen Politiktheorien, in: Politik im Rechtsstaat, hg. von Benno Zabel und Christian Schmidt, Baden-Baden: Nomos 2021, 43-59.
  • Gardei, Esther/ Soeffner, Hans-Georg/ Schulz, Michael (Hrsg.): Versöhnung. Theorie und Empirie, V&R, Göttingen 2023.
  • Gardei, Esther/ Soeffner, Hans-Georg/ Zabel, Benno (Hrsg.): Vergangenheitskonstruktionen. Erinnerungspolitiken im Zeichen von Ambiguitätstoleranz, Wallstein 2023
Other activities
  • Click here for the project's podcast.

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schlie

Staff
Philip Pauen (WHK)
Neele Windelen (SHK)

Information about the project

Further information will follow.

Teaching events

Special grant program for research questions with a focus on social sciences, law, culture or the humanities related to the pandemic (COVID-Call 2021) 

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The coronavirus pandemic has posed tremendous challenges extending beyond impact on health and our healthcare system to affect the law and political life in questions of freedom and democracy, but also culture, the media, the economy, education, family policy and employment – throwing open a trove of questions to be addressed through research.

A special program has been allocated to drive forward research into societal/social, legal and cultural impacts around the Covid-19 pandemic and related liberal arts research.

Further information on the special funding line.

The application form for the special funding line .

Projects of the special grant program 'Covid Call'

Project leader
Jun.- Prof Carmen Brandt

Staff
Eshita Binte Shirin Nazrul (WHK)

Information about the projectIn
This study investigated the situation of undocumented Bangladeshis during the Corona pandemic in different German cities. Besides contextualising the legal and socio-economic status of this group, the main objective of the study was to elicit their access to health care and, in particular, COVID-19 vaccination, as well as their individual attitudes towards the latter and institutions that provide it. In addition, it was determined which networks exist for undocumented Bangladeshis and what role these played in their lives in Germany during the Corona pandemic. The results of the study thus not only provide insights into a group that has so far been ignored in German research, but also a basis for the development of guidelines for action in the field of (preventive) medical care for people who have so far been excluded from it. 

Events

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Hans-Martin v. Gaudecker

Staff

Moritz Mendel

Information about the project
Experiences and memories shape macroeconomic expectations, which have a measurable impact on economic growth. We combine individual expectation data from the years 2020 and 2022, the latter of which were collected in this project. The two periods exhibit completely different patterns - there was hardly a reaction of inflation expectations in 2020, whereas there were large jumps in expectations regarding unemployment and GDP growth. The pattern is reversed in 2022. An analysis of individual patterns allows us to gain a deeper understanding of expectations formation and how it can be influenced.

Publications

Project leader
Dr. Thomas Grosse-Wilde
Dr. Laurence O`Hara

Staff
Ellen Hofmann (SHK)

Gregor-Rafael Görgen (WHF)

Information about the project

From bank insolvency to viral infection to climate change - everywhere today one can ask: Why didn't the state prevent the disaster? For which adverse consequences should the state be responsible and which must it actively prevent?

Events
  • Conference (10./11.11.2022): ‚Zurechnung bei staatlichem Unterlassen‘

Project leader
Dr. Johanna Hartung

Information about the project

At the end of the pandemic, work concepts have become more diverse. This project investigates whether workers' well-being differs between home-office and office days while considering a number of potential factors (e.g., social interaction, commuting, type of tasks, age). The results can inform employers as well as employees about an optimal configuration of home-office regulations.

Events
  • Lecture with discussion (07.12.2022): 'Wohlbefinden zwischen Arbeitsplatz und Home-Office' (Dies Academicus)
Publications
  • Hartung, J. & Hülür, G. (2022, September). Well-being in the third year of the pandemic: a daily diary study of home and office days among working people in Germany. In: Hartung, J. & Hülür, G. (Chair), Evidence from diverse German speaking samples on experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Symposium at the 52nd Congress of the German Psychological Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie, DGPs), Hildesheim, Germany.
  • Stahlhofen, L., Hartung, J., Schilling, O., Wahl, H. W., & Hülür, G. (2022). The relevance of perceived work environment and work activities for personality trajectories in midlife. Journal of Personality.
  • Hartung, J., Stahlhofen, L., Zacher, H., & Hülür, G. (2023). The role of work and retirement in adult development and aging. Acta Psychologica, 104076-104076.

Project leader
Prof. Dr. David Kaldewey
Prof. Dr. Adrian Hermann

Staff
Caitlin Blome (SHK)
Daria Denkov (WHF)
Milena Fuchs (WHF)
Paula Kuhn (WHK)
Nicole Meck (SHK)
Lea Weigel (SHK)
 
Information about the project
The project is dedicated to the debates about school closures during the Corona pandemic from the discplinary perspectives of sociology of science and media studies. These debates are understood as expressions of a politics of knowledge that does not simply clarify scientific consensus, but navigates the tensions between multiple facts and plural social values.

Events
Teaching events

Project leader
Dr. Julia Maria Mönig

Staff
Luis Nussbauer (WHF)
Evangelia Siopi (WHF)

Information about the project
The ways societies handled the COVID-19 pandemic from early 2020 on has shed light onto a topic that concerns us all: privacy. Having to use online meeting, learning and teaching software to be able to take part in social, school and work life, gave the providers of these services and products an even greater market power alongside with increased spying and surveillance opportunities into peoples’ daily lives. Opting-out of using these tools became impossible. Using smartphones that are ubiquitous listening devices anyhow for governmental Corona tracing did raise many data protection concerns, leading in several countries to trying to build “privacy by design”- applications and take ethical issues into consideration. The project undertakes an interdisciplinary reconsideration of privacy, asking how we do want our society to look like based on what we saw, experienced and hopefully learned from the current present and recent past.

Events
Further information

Project leader
Dr. Matthew R. Robinson

Staff
Elorm Nick Ahialey-Mawusi (WHK)
Lani Mireya Jiménez (WHK)

Information about the project
Digital communication settings have become one of the most important sources of information for the public, and for semantic and symbolic expressions of actual and expected, societal developments. On the basis of this observation, it seems likely that digital communication is a significant factor for social resilience. The project focused this hypothesis on religious communities and their “digital religious communications“ during the pandemic, in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the significance of those communications for the resilience of religious communities during the pandemic.

Teaching events 
Publications

Project leader
Yvonne Scheit

Staff
Marcel Heinecke (WHF)
Lena Sevina Krzeminski (WHF)

Information about the project
Which digital technologies/media/formats do students at the University of Bonn use, how is this use perceived, and what difficulties are experienced? This involves taking a closer, systematic sociological look at what actually makes digital interaction so different, which makes it perceived as awkward by many students. In addition, what are the students' perspectives on the increasing digitization of the University of Bonn and, most importantly, how has all this changed as a result of Corona? The research project is a mixed methods study with panel design, based on three quantitative online surveys of students at the University of Bonn, interviews with students and expert interviews.

Events
Further information will follow.

Project leader
Dr. Lisa Schlielicke

Staff
May Meret Bohan (WHF)
Philipp Ertz (WHF)
 
Information about the project

How does the Corona pandemic affect the locations of social gatherings and does the weather influence the decisions where to meet. Results of the project can be used to add guidances to weather forecasts with respect to meetings and activities. This can help to counter social self-isolation in case of crisis situations such as a pandemic without violating restrictions.

Publications

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Jens Schröter
PD Christoph Ernst

Staff
Lea Klingberg (WHF)

Information about the project
The project describes and analyzes how information and data visualizations of the Corona pandemic work. The outcome of the project will be a better understanding of the modes by which information and data visualizations of the Corona pandemic are interpreted by the public. The goal is to produce a compact brochure that will inform interested members of the public about how such information and data visualizations work.

Project leader
Dominik Suri

Staff
Gremary Antonieta Aza Mengoa (WHF)
Karen Yessenia López García (WHF)

Information about the project
It is proposed that the COVID-19 pandemic has had and still has a negative impact on biodiversity conservation in the Global South. However, the idea is that community-based natural resource management approaches are key in mitigating this negative impact due to an inherent endowment of principles, such as the existence of and adherence to social norms, which increases the resilience of such approaches to cope with external shocks.

Events
Further information will follow.

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Caja Thimm
Yannik Peters
Patrick Nehls

Staff
Kathrin Simone Dupps (WHF)
Vimbai Cathrine Hühner (WHF)
Niklas Kärmer (SHK)
Lisa Melcher-Metzger (SHK)
Mariya Molodsha (SHK)
Joschua-Merlin Sachau (SHK)
Nicolas Wehner (SHK)

Information about the project
Further information will follow.

Events
  • Workshop (19.07.2022): 'Forschen mit Instagram-Daten: Werkstattbericht zu Möglichkeiten & Schwierigkeiten von Ansätzen der Computational Social Sciences' (durchgeführt von Dr. Lisa Merten, Hanna Immler M.A. und Philipp Kessling M.A., Hans-Bredow-Institut)
Teaching events
Publications

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