New outlook

Moving trucks have been plying between the University’s baroque Main Building and the new temporary base on Rabinstraße since January. Besides the Faculty of Arts, the move also involves the two Faculties of Theology as well as several thousand students, who are having to learn the new routes to their classes. However, the palace will still be able to be used for teaching in the coming years.

Fancy popping to Venice to look round the crypt underneath St. Mark’s Basilica? Students and researchers will soon be able to do just that—with a click of their mouse.

More and more hospitals are having to rely on nurses from abroad, but cultural and language barriers can soon lead to misunderstandings. Together with the senior nursing team at the University Hospital Bonn, researchers from the Section for Intercultural Communication and Multilingualism Research (IKM) at the University are devising a training course for nursing trainers on the wards. This is designed to raise their awareness of linguistic and communication challenges and enable them to try out methods for inducting and integrating specialist nurses from other countries even more effectively.  

In the new teaching building of the Faculty of Medicine, students demonstrate their professional skills and their interaction with patients.

It has always been the case that “the clothes make the man.” But what kind of clothes did people wear in the Early Middle Ages? What style and what kind of colors were “in” at the time? These are tough questions to answer, with written records hard to come by and finds of original clothes thin on the ground. Dr. Petra Linscheid and Dr. Katarzyna Lubos from the Department of Christian Archaeology at the University of Bonn study fragments of fabric from different eras and, in so doing, attempt to piece together what everyday life was like for people in the past.

What role do power and the powerful play when the fate of the world is at stake? How does charisma influence all of this? And is it only political leaders who have power? Or, put another way, how powerful is Greta Thunberg really? An edited volume entitled Macht und Machtverschiebung* (Power and Power Shifts) that explores these issues has recently been published. We discuss it in an interview with Dr. Hendrik Ohnesorge from the Center for Global Studies. 

One of the most extensive hunts for clues in the country is currently under way at the Bonn University and State Library (USL) under the watchful eyes of Veronica Albrink and Dr. Michael Herkenhoff. They are leafing through tens of thousands of books, sifting through just as many index cards in old catalogues, scrutinizing acquisition lists line by line—all to find books that the Nazis stole from people and that have ended up in Bonn. This is the first project of its kind at the USL.

The University of Bonn is a place for students to earn a degree and early-career researchers to gain an academic foothold. But in addition, the University currently has 70 young people doing apprenticeships in 18 different professions, including precision mechanic, for example. In the summer, two young people will be starting an apprenticeship in the precision mechanical engineering workshop of the Helmholtz Institute for Radiation and Nuclear Physics. We asked the workshop staff what the two can expect, and look forward to.  

Plastic waste is everywhere on Earth: on land, in the air and in the oceans. Plastic is broken down by wind, sunlight and mechanical influences and is even found in our blood as tiny particles known as microplastics. How can this tide of plastic be stemmed? Where do microplastics build up? Can they do any permanent damage? Scientists at the University of Bonn are investigating research questions like these. Here are four examples.

Hannah Weisheit felt the damp heat of Ghana hit her face the moment she exited the Air France Airbus. The thermometer showed 28 degrees—back in Bonn it was still wintry. Weisheit was there on an eight-day conference trip to Kumasi and Accra organized by the ijgd, as part of a voluntary social service year she was doing at the University of Bonn, in the field of politics (FSJ-P). Moments of culture shock awaited on this fascinating and emotional adventure!

At German universities and colleges, significantly fewer women teach than men. According to the Federal Statistical Office, in 2022, only slightly over one-fourth of full-time professorships were occupied by women. From 2020 until now, the University of Bonn has sponsored 90 female scientists through the STEP program. We would like to introduce three of them.

Quickly read to the end of your chapter, summarize the slides from your lecture, then pop to the shops, cook some dinner and put together a learning plan for your next written examination. The daily life of a student can often be highly stressful and demanding. But what happens when things get too much? When stress and strain boil over into anxiety? Many students are afflicted by a fear of failure, exam anxiety and self-doubt or even depressive moods. The Central Study Advisory and Counseling Service is there to show students that they are not alone.

Few people will forget 2022 in a hurry. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the disruption it caused to the supply of raw materials sparked real fears of a severe energy shortage. Like many, the University was also forced to take action. It drew up an energy strategy that identified areas where savings could be made. Now the first figures have been released, showing how successful this has been. 

Rowing like the Romans: when Sören Wader, Amadé Sirokay and Jakob Hetfleisch took up their invitation from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg to be part of the EU’s “Living Danube Limes” Interreg program, the three trainers from University Sports at the University of Bonn did not know much about their upcoming adventure down the Danube. In an interview, Amadé Sirokay talks about their two-week trip in a specially made oak boat that took them 120 kilometers from Budapest to Baja.

Down the ages, power and domination have shaped how human beings have coexisted. “Power and Domination—the Bonn Center for Premodern Orders and their Forms of Communication” at the University of Bonn is studying the characteristics of regimes and how they communicated in premodern times, focusing particularly on rulers and the ruling elites. The researchers are incorporating angles taken from Egyptology, English studies, archaeology, German medieval studies, history, art history, Oriental and Asian studies and Romance studies and are covering a span from antiquity to the early modern period and from Central Europe to Egypt. In an interview, Prof. Dr. Matthias Becher, the Center’s Director and Spokesperson for the Present Pasts Transdisciplinary Research Area, discusses the research work that has been done to date and is lined up for the future.

As a senior physician at a rehabilitation clinic at the Nordseeklinik Borkum hospital, Dr. Holger Aulepp looked after patients with chronic skin conditions and allergies. Following his retirement, he finally found time to devote his attention to Protestant theology—and also began funding archaeological trips for students out of his own pocket. This engagement was made permanent last year with the establishment of a foundation trust under the umbrella of the University of Bonn Foundation.