Research projects

A B C D E F G H I K L M N P R S T U V W

Alms Collectors between Charity, Commerce and Denominationalisation

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
06/2019 - 05/2020 Funding
Gerda Henkel Stiftung:
30 000 €

Vasilios N. Makrides: The immigration of Eastern Orthodox alms collectors from the Ottoman Empire into the Old Empire is the focus of the project. It pursues interwoven questions of migration, knowledge and denominational history. In order to clarify these questions, archives from different territories of the empire will be compared and insights into the history of other types of migrants (traders and students), but also of other charitable groups active in the same field, will be drawn upon.

Between Experience and Memory: Educational Paths of Christian Citizens of the GDR from Socialist Society to the Present Day

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Seiler Duration
01/2019 - 09/2025

Subproject in the research network "Dictatorship Experience and Transformation". The research project is based on the observation that the disadvantages of young Christians in the GDR are mostly remembered in close connection with socialist educational institutions. Therefore, the historical study focuses on narratives, practices and structures of inequalities in the education system and explores the educational paths of Christian citizens of the GDR.

COEVOLVERS: Coevolutionary approach to unlock the transformative potential of nature-based solutions for more inclusive and resilient communities

Project management
Prof. Dr. Carsten Herrmann-Pillath Duration
11/2022 - 10/2026 Funding
HORIZON EUROPE (Europäische Kommission):
607 500 €

Carsten Herrmann-Pillath: Over the next four years, the project will address the question of what contribution so-called "nature-based solutions" (i.e. solutions to problems based on natural processes or examples) can make to socio-ecological transformation. It focuses on precarious and disadvantaged communities, such as border regions.

Church Binding and Liturgical Celebration

Project management
Prof. Dr. Benedikt Kranemann Duration
01/2019 - 12/2022 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
177 000 €

Benedikt Kranemann: In the 19th century, a series of small popular liturgies appeared, which were intended to serve the liturgical education of the faithful. The books are simply structured and written in a way that is easy to understand. They were written in the context of social and ecclesiastical upheavals. Liturgy with its texts and rites is understood as the "face" of the faith of the Catholic Church. The project will bibliographically record these liturgies for the period from the middle…

Clash or Convergence of Capitalisms. Property Conflicts over Chinese Direct Investments in Germany and the European Union

Project management
PD Dr. Stefan Schmalz Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024

Subproject in the SFB TRR294 "Structural Change of Property". This project aims to analyse ownership conflicts arising from Chinese direct investments in Germany and the EU.

Cooperation Project "Local Politicization of Global Norms"

Project management
Several Duration
01/2014 - 12/2017 Funding
Several donors
490 000 €

André Brodocz: The project examines the conditions under which egalitarian norms with a global claim to validity (such as human rights, sustainability, rule of law) actually find acceptance.

Cooperation Project "Ordering Dynamics"

Project management
Several Duration
01/2014 - 12/2017 Funding
Landes-Exzellenzinitiative des Landes Thüringen:
1 009 998 €

Jörg Rüpke: The research programme of the research centre understands "order" and "dynamics" as basic categories of socio-cultural reality. Order and dynamics are not simply thought of as polar opposites. Rather, the starting point is the premise that social and cultural orders in particular are forced to develop themselves 'dynamically' ("dynamic stabilisation").

Damigeron, De Lapidibus

Project management
Prof. Dr. Kai Brodersen Duration
01/2015 - 06/2015 Funding
Margaret Braine Fellowship der University of Western Australia:
25 000 €

More than 70 healing stones with their healing (or damaging) effects are presented by the ancient author Damigeron (2nd century A.D.) in this almost 2000 year old book, which was highly famous for centuries. For the first time, the work is critically edited, translated and indexed.

Denomination - Education - Politics

Project management
Prof. Dr. Michael Gabel Duration
09/2012 - 09/2017 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
500 000 €

Michael Gabel: The BMBF-funded project is a fundamental investigation in the field of cultural education for about 40 locations of student communities (KSG and ESG) in Eastern Germany. On the basis of the research results to be published, this will open up a wide range of scientific projects for universities, colleges, social science institutions and institutions of political education: in the fields of politics, (contemporary) history, education, sociology, philosophy, theology, law, ethics and…

Dictatorship Experience and Transformation

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
01/2019 - 09/2025 Funding
Several donors
1 500 000 €

The starting point of the project is the assumption that not only individual and collective experiences during the GDR (German Democratic Republic - DDR) itself, but also the deep biographical upheavals of the post-reunification period shape the memory of the GDR. In the following decade, the political debates of 1989/90 gave rise to a conflict of memory that continues to have an impact today. This determines the time frame of the project, which takes a look at the last two decades of the GDR…

Digital Portal "Ungarndeutsches Zweisprachigkeits- und Sprachkontaktkorpus" (UZSK)

Project management
Prof. Dr. Dr. Csaba Földes Duration
09/2015 - 03/2019 Funding
Kulturstaatsministerin für Kultur und Medien (BKM):
89 000 €

The subject matter is a multilingual culture with specific structures of expression and patterns of use of German. In terms of content, the project is to be placed within the framework of diatopically oriented variational linguistics (keyword: Regionalsprachen- bzw. Sprachdynamikforschung - regional language or language dynamics research) on the one hand, and within that of bi- or multilingualism research and contact linguistics on the other.

Disinformation Context and the Emergence of Fact-Checking Organisations in Europe and Latin America

Project management
Several Duration
08/2022 - 07/2025

In her research project, Dr Regina Cazzamatta examines different environments in which disinformation arises and how so-called fact-checking organisations in Europe and Latin America deal with it.

Divine Property. Solutions from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Project management
Several Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024

Subproject in SFB TRR294 "Structural Change of Property". The project explores various historical and conceptual foundations underlying the structural change of and through property with a view to religious practices and theories.

Erfahrungen von sozial benachteiligten Menschen im ehrenamtlichen Engagement – Was können Organisationen für die Förderung des Engagements daraus lernen?

Project management
Bettina Hollstein Duration
04/2022 - 03/2023 Funding
Deutsche Stiftung für Engagement und Ehrenamt:
70 000 €

On the basis of qualitative interviews with socially disadvantaged volunteers in different contexts, their approaches to volunteering, their experiences in volunteering, their motives and also their perspectives, wishes and suggestions for shaping volunteering will be illuminated. Within the framework of a Citizen Science approach, the conditions for the success of the commitment of people who are particularly affected by social inequality will be developed.

Expansion of the Gotha Research Library into a Research and Study Centre for the Cultural History of Protestantism in the Early Modern Period

Project management
Dr. Kathrin Paasch Duration
03/2015 - 02/2018 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
534 000 €

The Gotha Research Library preserves an outstanding collection of sources on the cultural history of Protestantism in the early modern period. This is the basis of the six-year infrastructure project funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation), in which the library combines coordinated activities for the cataloguing and preservation of this important and hitherto largely unexplored material with the further development of its digital services and transfers the results of its work to science…

Family memories of everyday life and the reality of rule under the SED dictatorship

Project management
Dr. Agnès Arp Duration
01/2019 - 09/2025

Subproject in the research network "Dictatorship Experience and Transformation". The research project focuses on the generational stratification of family memories and narratives about experiences in the SED dictatorship and transformation phase after 1989/90. The starting point is the results of the Thuringia Monitor, according to which a predominantly positive judgement of everyday life in the GDR, which is essentially based on the traditions in the close circle of family and friends,…

G. W. Leibniz and Eastern Europe

Project management
Prof. Dr. Gábor Gángó Duration
09/2019 - 08/2017

Despite its high relevance for the formation of the early modern consciousness of Europe, the research topic "Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Eastern Europe" proves to be terra incognita in the otherwise already widely explored life and work of the German polymath and calls for fundamental critical discussion. In order to contribute to the revival of an early work that has so far only been marginally treated, I will, during my stay at the Max-Weber-Kolleg, prepare a manuscript for a monograph on…

History of the State Ministries in Baden and Württemberg During the NS Era

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
01/2014 - 12/2018 Funding
Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg:
207 800 €

The project deals with one of the last major gaps in research on the NS regime: the supreme state authorities and their involvement in NS crimes. After decades of research oriented towards political history had marginalized the importance of the "assimilated" state authorities, attention has recently been drawn to this research desideratum in connection with studies of administrative history.

How collective contexts influence creative action on different cultural fields

Duration
09/2016 - 08/2017 :
1 416 000 €

Bjorn Schiermer-Andersen: My project focusses on how collective contexts influence creative action on different cultural fields: 1) It investigates the guidance provided by the 'object' in creative action; 2) It investigates the effect of the collective context upon this relation (to the object); 3) It investigates and compares this interplay on three different cultural fields: music, religion and academia.

Hybrid ownership structures in state capitalism. Ownership-based society, socio-economic differentiation and Governmentality analysed through the example of Shenzhen, China

Project management
Prof. Dr. Carsten Herrmann-Pillath Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024

Subproject in the SFB TRR294 "Structural Change of Property". The project explores the interdependencies at play between the hybrid land ownership rights and the emergence of structures that are characteristic of property-based societies following China’s transformation into a market economy. It further investigates how this process yields new relationships between state and society (Governmentality).

Intercultural German Studies: Impulses for Research and Teaching in Word and Text

Project management
Prof. Dr. Dr. Csaba Földes Duration
01/2014 - 12/2021 Funding
Several donors
225 000 €

The project aims to make innovative contemporary concepts from intercultural German studies productive for the partner universities by considering interculturality as an epistemological principle.

International Graduate School (IGS) "Resonant Self-World Relations in Ancient and Modern Socio-Religious Practices"

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Rüpke Duration
10/2017 - 09/2026 Funding
Several donors
2 200 000 €

The aim of the joint project is to provide an institutional base for studies comparing the self-world relations that are reflected in the polytheistic practices of ancient times, with those that crystalize in practices of the contemporary (late) modern period.

Kierkegaard Research Centre

Project management
Several Duration
01/2005 Funding
Københavns Universitet:
500 000 €

Hermann Deuser: The Kierkegaard Research Centre at the Max-Weber-Kolleg coordinates the work on the “Deutsche Søren Kierkegaard Edition” which has been published by De Gruyter since 2005 and has now published five volumes of Kierkegaard's journals and available lecture notes.

Kolleg-Research Group "Religion and Urbanity"

Project management
Several Duration
10/2018 - 09/2026 Funding
Several donors
10 500 000 €

Susanne Rau & Jörg Rüpke: Cities and religion(s) have had a deep impact on each other. Up to now, research has focused on religion in cities - on the reciprocal changes in religious practices and urban space, at best in "global cities" and in the present. We want to fill the research gap that has arisen in this way by investigating the historical depth of the reciprocal formation within the framework of a collegiate research group.

Kolleg-Research Group "Religious Individualisation in Historical Perspective" (FOR 1013)

Project management
Several Duration
01/2013 - 09/2018 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
8 470 000 €

Jörg Rüpke: The research group investigates cases of individualization within the medium of religion and their consequences for religious change, that is, in terms of their religious historical dynamics.

Lehren und Predigen mit Patristischen auctoritates. Meister Eckhart, Brückenbildner zwischen Frankreich und Deutschland, Vergangenheit und Gegenwart

Project management
Prof. Dr. Markus Vinzent Duration
04/2018 - 03/2021 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
378 000 €

French and German experts explore the patristic foundations of Meister Eckhart.

Lived Ancient Religion – Questioning "Cults" and "Polis Religion"

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Rüpke Duration
06/2013 - 05/2017 Funding
European Research Council (ERC):
2 300 000 €

Jörg Rüpke: This project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), takes a completely new perspective on the religious history of Mediterranean antiquity, starting from the individual and "lived" religion instead of cities or peoples. "Lived ancient religion" suggests a set of experiences, of practices addressed to, and conceptions of the divine, which are appropriated, expressed, and shared by individuals in diverse social spaces.

M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies "Metamorphoses of the Political" (ICAS-MP)

Project management
Several Duration
08/2015 - 06/2027 Funding
Several donors
380 519 €

Martin Fuchs: ICAS-MP combines the benefits of an open, interdisciplinary forum for intellectual exchange with the advantages of a cutting-edge research centre. The centre focuses on key political processes that have emerged in parallel in many parts of the world during the twentieth century through to the present day, processes that are entangled yet heterogeneous.

Making things available. Ownership as an incarnation of our relationship with the world

Project management
Several Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024

Subproject in the SFB TRR294 "Structural Change of Property". The project is based on the insight that ownership plays an important role in the establishment and reproduction of our understanding of things, society and ourselves.

Max Planck Research Prize "Religion and Modernity: Secularization, Social and Religious Plurality"

Project management
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Hans Joas Duration
01/2016 - 12/2022 Funding
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft:
750 000 €

Hans Joas searches for the connecting factors and possibilities of understanding between religion and modernity and has developed a model for this purpose with which religious patterns of experience can be interpreted and described.

Meeting places of the MfS and places of dissidence in Erfurt

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
01/2019 - 09/2025

Subproject in the research network "Dictatorship Experience and Transformation". The project focuses on two concrete spaces of experience and action in the urban landscape of the GDR and the perceptions and memories associated with them.

Neopaganism in Contemporary Greece: Beliefs, Practices, and the Symbolic Struggle over Hellenicity/Greekness

Project management
Several Duration
09/2024 - 08/2027 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
342 000 €

The research project examines Neopaganism in contemporary Greece, focussing on beliefs, ritual practices and the symbolic struggle for the Greek heritage. It analyses the many facets of this movement and its critical engagement with the Greek Orthodox Church and state and academic institutions.

Nutrition, Health and Modern Society: Germany and the United States

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Martschukat Duration
10/2015 - 10/2018 Funding
VolkswagenStiftung:
1 000 000 €

The research project aims to work out the significance of nutrition and health for the order of modern societies from the 19th century to the present. The empirical focus is on the USA and Germany, so that regional differences as well as the dynamics of interdependence in globalizing constellations become apparent.

Protecting Academia At Risk: Towards a New Policy Agenda for a Thriving Culture of higher education in Europe

Project management
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Kleeberg Duration
03/2024 - 02/2026 Funding
Gerda Henkel Stiftung:
183 000 €

The current situation of academia at risk in the European landscape raises three distinct research questions. First, what is the current institutional framework that responds to academic displacement in Europe? Second, what are the normative contours of protecting academic freedom in future democratic societies? Third, how does an improved system of integrating displaced academics connect to broader values such as the protection of a thriving academic culture? This project builds on our seed…

Protestantism and the Debates about the German Welfare State

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
01/2013 - 12/2019 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
428 700 €

Social Protestantism in the Federal Republic of Germany has developed a new profile since the 1960s. At the same time, and in interaction with it, German society has undergone fundamental changes in its living environment, values and culture. In dealing with the economic and social challenges and in view of the increasing scientific character of the relevant debates, Protestantism adopted central dispositions of thought, some of which went back to the Weimar period, and realigned itself in terms…

Religious Communities (RC) and Civil Society (CS) in Europe

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
01/2015 - 12/2018

Vasilios N. Makrides: Religious Communities in European Civil Society is a large-scale exploratory research project aimed at assessing the position of religious communities as potential or active civil society actors in Europe, and at looking into differences in their positioning on legal, historical, cultural, and behavioural grounds. The seemingly vitalizing impact of religion and religiosity on civil society is a research topic that has been extensively looked into, not only in the USA, but…

Religious Diversity and Peace Ethics

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jamal Malik Duration
01/2016 - 12/2017 Funding
Auswärtiges Amt (Berlin):
387 000 €

Jamal Malik: As part of the research and dialogue project funded by the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt), the Professorship for Islamic Studies sought cooperation with Pakistani theological schools, thus building a bridge between traditional Islamic teaching there and local Islamic Studies that is unique in this country.

Religious individualisation and nationalism in modern Europe through the lens of alternative spirituality and Western esotericism (1823–1939)

Duration
09/2016 - 08/2017 :
1 416 000 €

Marco Pasi: My project at the MWK focuses on the complex interplay between religious individualisation, nationalism, and alternative spirituality in modern Europe. I intend to carry out my research by focusing on four case studies, based on four exemplary figures of European history: the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), the Italian political activist Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), the Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), and the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935).

Research Centre Johann Gottfried Herder

Project management
Dr. Dominik Fugger Duration
01/2015 Funding
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung:
195 000 €

The Johann-Gottfried-Herder Research Centre at the Max-Weber-Kolleg was launched in 2015. It sees itself as an interdisciplinary platform for the research and scientific exchange of Herder's work. A special concern for the centre is the grouping together of the different facets of Herder's thinking.

Research Centre for Early-Modern Natural Law

Project management
Prof. Dr. Knud Haakonssen Duration
07/2016 Funding
:
8 000 €

Knud Haakonssen: The research centre was created in 2016 and is from 2019 a joint facility of the Max Weber Centre and the Gotha Research Centre. Its purpose is to foster new work and coordinate current scholarship on natural law in the early-modern period, which we take to stretch from the Reformation to the early nineteenth century. Within this framework the focus is on the flowering of natural law in the period after Hugo Grotius and especially the shaping of the subject as an academic…

Research Centre „Dynamics of Jewish Ritual Practices in Pluralistic Contexts from Antiquity to the Present“

Project management
Prof. Dr. Benedikt Kranemann Duration
01/2015 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
1 000 000 €

Benedikt Kranemann: The Research Centre is intended to provide a place for research into Jewish religious practices and related discourses, which arose in Germany in the 19th century but was largely interrupted by the National Socialist expulsion and extermination of Jews, and which embeds central questions of recent research in an interdisciplinary research context. The aim is to provide new impulses for a comparative as well as intertwined historical approach by consistently asking about…

Research Group "Voluntariness"

Project management
Several Duration
10/2020 - 03/2027 Funding
Several donors
4 120 551 €

Jürgen Martschukat, Christiane Kuller, Sabine Schmolinsky, Iris Schröder: In this project, the researchers will examine voluntariness as a driving force of human practices in the past and present. The central question is how Western pre-modern and modern, but also non-European societies and subjects are governed through the principle of voluntariness. This includes, for example, religiously motivated voluntariness in medieval martyrdom as well as voluntary "participation" in dictatorships. The…

SFB TRR294 "Strukturwandel des Eigentums"

Project management
Prof. Dr. Hartmut Rosa Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
10 000 000 €

The Sonderforschungsbereich aims to (re)gain a comprehensive socio-theoretical perspective on property and to investigate an assumed structural change of property in the present. The aim is to a) re-explore historical and conceptual foundations of the Western property system, b) empirically investigate current conflicts over private property, and c) analyse alternatives to (private) property.

The Eating Self

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Martschukat Duration
10/2012 - 04/2017 Funding
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung:
24 000 €

Obesity is currently described as a problem that is assuming epidemic proportions in modern societies, particularly in the USA. Based on this observation, the present project aims to write a history of eating, being obese, health and its regulation in the USA since the middle of the 19th century.

The Historical Sources of the Reformation and Historiography of the Early 18th Century at Friedenstein Castle Gotha

Project management
Dr. Kathrin Paasch Duration
05/2014 - 04/2017 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
270 000 €

The Gotha Research Library preserves a top-class collection on the cultural history of Protestantism in the early modern period, which was compiled by the Dukes of Saxony-Gotha. An essential component of this unique handwritten tradition, which reaches far beyond the Central German cultural area, is the estate of the theologian and church historian Ernst Salomon Cyprian (1673-1745), which is to be catalogued in the project.

The King as Part of the Network

Project management
Dr. Christian Oertel Duration
05/2018 - 04/2021 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
275 000 €

The ruling practice of the German and Bohemian king Wenceslaus IV, who was nicknamed "der Faule" (the Idle) by older research, will be reconsidered in this project on the basis of documentary tradition. On the one hand, the 'classical' aspects of the practice of rule will be examined (political action in the empire, alliance systems, economic aspects). On the other hand, the investigation will be opened up in the direction of cultural history. Fields such as courtly representation or patronage…

The recovered manuscript Ms Eisenach 1361 of the Wartburg Foundation and its partial parallels: edition and situating in space and time

Project management
Dr. Jana Ilnicka Duration
02/2021 - 01/2024 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
328 400 €

Jana Ilnicka: With this project I would like to offer a critical edition of the texts of the Wartburg manuscript, which will be made accessible to medieval research as a whole, especially to research on gender and women's education issues and also to Eckhart research. Furthermore, in addition to the critical edition of the manuscript, contributions to situating these texts in local and contemporary discourses will be developed, which will serve to prepare a theoretical monograph on issues of…

Theft of Cultural Property

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
01/2015 - 12/2016 Funding
Landeshauptstadt München:
98 600 €

The confiscation of Munich, which initiated one of the largest state art thefts in the area of the Old Empire during the NS era, was carried out by the Secret State Police. However, art experts, art dealers and directors of museums (Bavarian State Painting Collections - Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Bavarian National Museum - Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, the urban gallery - Städtische Galerie, the historical city museum - Historisches Stadtmuseum) as well as state, municipal and NSDAP…

Urban property regimes and citizenship in transition. Changing ownership patterns and systems of relatedness in India

Project management
Several Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024

Subproject in the SFB TRR294 "Structural Change of Property". The study seeks to harness the explicatory power of property for understanding the shifting societal systems and their underlying normative frameworks in post-liberalised India.

Voluntariness and Decolonization. The Regulation of Labor in (Post-)Colonial Ghana

Project management
Prof. Dr. Iris Schröder Duration
10/2020 - 09/2023

Subproject in the research group "Voluntariness". This subproject focuses on voluntariness during an era of decolonization and thus on a political principle of (post-)colonial governance. Drawing on the case of the British Gold Coast/Ghana, we explore how voluntary action shaped the political and social order during the transition from late colonial “indirect rule” to independence, while examining how voluntariness became a political and social norm and resource. Our key focus is on the…

Western Traditionalism/Perennialism and its Influence on Orthodox Christianity

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
05/2017 - 04/2020 Funding
Several donors
211 400 €

Vasilios N. Makrides: The research project aims to undertake a comparative analysis of the reflection on the position of Orthodox Christianity in modernity and with regard to religious pluralism, which is called "Orthodox Perennialism". The latter represents an orthodox reception of certain Western esoteric approaches to an "eternal philosophy" ("philosophia perennis") in various religions and is an attempt to rethink and articulate the spiritual and religious contours of the Orthodox presence…

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