Research Activities at the Faculty
Research at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Philosophy is carried out in research projects at the faculty’s chairs and departments, in its Master- and PhD-programmes, and in cooperation with other German and foreign partner institutes. Essentially the Faculty is still organized within the frameworks of its individual disciplines. We are however glad to be able to report an increase in interdisciplinary cooperation within the scope of the existing DFG Research Units, of the Sub-Centres at the Centre for Advanced Studies, of the profile-forming research ranges, of the Research Training Groups and the PHD Programme “Transnationalization and Regionalization from the 18th Century to the Present”. Two results of the principle of unity of teaching and research also further interdisciplinarity at the Faculty: first, due to the relaxed structure of our modularised BA and MA degree programmes, and second, through the development of new research areas.
In the research accounts for 2006, the discussions on the basis of extant “combination projects” (including Controversial Property, Gender Topics, and Borders and Space) concerning a qualitative change of the faculty profile have been continued. In order to acquire new research partners, an attempt is being made to achieve intra-faculty networking of research capacities and an internal opening of the discipline.
The Faculty and its departments will make use of the changed emphases in order to help develop specialised academic expertise at Leipzig University. It had been involved with different levels of intensity in the development of two research profiles (“Contested order” and “Environmental Change and Disease”), and used this framework to extend academic cooperation with other Faculties. This Faculty coordinated “Contest Order”.
Examples of this are two research groups with the themes “tolerance” (with the Faculties of Law and Theology) and “propertization” (with the Faculties of Law, Economics and the Department of Musicology), an international PhD programme (“Transnationalization and Regionalization”) and a graduate school (“Rupturde Zones of Globalisation”) organized with the Faculty of History and representatives from the Departments of African Studies and Arabic Studies.
A further emphasis of supra-institutional research in the year at issue was the re-writing and re-submission of the proposal for a Cluster of Excellence (“After Order?”) and a graduate school („Understanding Space and Territorialization: World History, Geography and Area Studies in an Age of Globalization“).
The efforts towards integration in the continued development of the research profile of the Faculty were expressed by introducing and establishing BA and MA courses at the Faculty. In 2006, the BA course in Social Sciences and Philosophy opened up the hitherto “classic“ subject, and its modular structure led to an orientation to questions that transgressed the bounds of single institutes. The complicated accreditation and introductory processes of the BA and MA programmes have led to many members of the Faculty being so tied down that they were no longer available for research activities.
In a common project with the Centrum für Hochschulentwicklung (CHE – Centre for University development) the Faculty has started to develop criteria and methods to evaluate and optimize these research activities. On this basis, in 2006 a benchmark process was set up with our partner universities Münster and LMU Munich with the goal of establishing a flexible quality management adapted to the needs of the Faculties of Social Sciences that will encompass research as well as teaching.
Finally, the Faculty strives towards a more intensive internationalization. Research contacts exist with universities from a range of countries (including France, Canada, USA, GB, Poland, the Czech Republic, Israel and Netherlands).
In the following, the essential research-projects which go beyond the limits of the faculty will be listed. The main points of interest, as well as the research-projects of the all chairs/institutes will be described in more detail below:
- DFG Research Group: history of programming in GDR television – comparative (Institute for Communication and Media Sciences University Leipzig, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittemberg, Humboldt University Berlin, School of Film and Television Potsdam-Babelsberg
- DFG Research Group: Theoretical linguistic bases of cognitive sciences: linguistic and conceptual knowledge (Logic, Linguistics, Slavistics)
- DFG-Graduate College 1261: Rupture zones of globalisation (cultural sciences, political science, history, African studies…
- DFG Graduate College: Representation of knowledge (logic, IT…
- International PhD programmes “Transnationalization and Regionalization from the 18th century to the present day” (Political Science, Cultural Studies, Sociology, History, Philology, Theology, Centre for European Studies, Educational Theory, university-affiliated Institutes: Simon-Dubnow-Institute,
- International PhD programme (IPP) “From Signal Processing to Behaviour” (Logic, Philosophy, Biology, Sports, Pharmacy, Psychology in the UL)
The following research concentrations are associated with the individual departments:
Institute of Communication and Media Studies
- Basic questions of journalism and communications, including ethical aspects of mass communications
- Historical research into the history of the academic subject
- Research into media reception and mass media programming
- Study of public relations as a profession; theoretical fundamentals of public relations
- Online media, press distribution in Western Europe
Institute of Cultural Studies
- A comparative analysis of the culture of modern societies from the end of the 18th century to the present day
- History of high-brow, popular and mass culture. Comparative cultural studies and social history
- Global history and research into transnationalization
- Europe as a culture zone
- History of education, consumption and property
- Research into religious and philosophical change in East Germany
- The sociology of cultural change, social milieus and life styles
- Comparisons of culture, transnationalization of culture
- Ernst Cassirer and Georg Simmel
Institute of Logic and Theories of Science
- Non-classical logics and their applications
- Multi-dimensional logics and their systematic and historical applications
- History of logic in the former GDR
- Multidimensional representation of language and world knowledge
- Inductive justification of scientific theories
- Theories of scientific explanation/explanatory coherence
Institute of Philosophy
- Theories of intentionality and common action
- Theory of action, theory of communication, and language theory
- Life sciences
- Anthropology and cognitive sciences
- Applied ethics (ethics of allocation, medical and bio-ethics, war and terrorism)
- Transcendental anthropology of religion
Institute of Political Science
- Models of dominion
- Subject, gender and race
- Regionality of legal rules
- Regional processes of development and transformation (Africa, Asia, East and Central Eastern Europe)
- Political strategies of communication
- Political und social movements
- Theory of law and practice of constitution
Institute of Sociology
- Processes of social transformation in the East German new federal states (family, job, subjective attitudes)
- Flexibility on the job market
- Poverty, the poverty trap, social exclusion
- Social movements and political activism in Germany and Europe
- Social networks and economic transactions
- Inequality of education and migration
- Diverting behaviour
- Migration movements and integration
- Regional identification and social behaviour
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