Research projects

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

Black and Deaf Western Missionaries and Deaf Education in Ghana and Nigeria: The Story of Berta and Andrew Foster - A Case Study in Global History

Project management
PD Dr. Anja Werner Duration
07/2022 - 06/2025 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
356 650 €

Anja Werner: I examine deaf missionaries Andrew and Berta Foster, who starting in 1957 founded more than 30 schools and churches for the deaf in thirteen African countries.

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.

COSMO – COVID-19 Snapshot Monitoring

Project management
Prof. Dr. Cornelia Betsch Duration
03/2020 - 04/2022 Funding
Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung (BZgA):
431 002 €

The aim of the project is to repeatedly gain insight into how the population perceives the Corona pandemic, how the "psychological situation" is emerging. This should make it easier to orient communication measures and reporting in such a way as to offer the population correct, helpful knowledge and prevent misinformation and actionism. For example, an attempt should also be made to classify behaviour that is strongly discussed in the media.

Charts - Oceans

Project management
Several Duration
07/2018 - 04/2022 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
1 100 000 €

Iris Schröder & Felix Schürmann: Maps have hitherto led a marginal existence in the history of globalization. Sea and ocean charts receive even less attention, despite their unique visualization of maritime spaces and their inherent global connections. The aim of the joint project is to use sea and ocean charts to tell a little-known story in the period of transformation dating from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century.

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.

Cultural Techniques. Operationality and Spatialization

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Dünne Duration
01/2015 - 12/2017 Funding
Several donors
299 000 €

Subject of the project "Cultural Techniques. Operationality and Spatialization" (Kulturtechniken. Operationalität und Verräumlichung) deals with the reciprocal constitutional processes of knowledge and action from the perspective of a theory and history of cultural techniques. The specific focus in relation to previous approaches in cultural technology research is on the question of spatialization.

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.

Edition of the Correspondence of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

Project management
Prof. Dr. Martin Mulsow Duration
04/2010 - 10/2015 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
336 998 €

The project was dedicated to the indexing of the correspondence of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840), a central figure in the biological and geological science of the late 18th century, which is of great importance in the history of science.

Educational Landscape and Knowledge Culture

Project management
Several Duration
07/2014 - 05/2017 Funding
Several donors
290 000 €

Gotha was one of the most important centres of innovation in early modern European educational history. In the project, collections-based research will be carried out using the educational history sources collected in the 17th and early 18th centuries with the aim of making the hitherto almost unknown holdings accessible to science and the public and demonstrating their potential for international research in educational history.

Establishment of an oral history research centre

Duration
09/2021 - 09/2025

The research centre focuses on the "East German experience". The research centre takes up the specifics of the GDR and transformation period and discusses the methodology of oral history in this context. As a central institution of this kind in the East German Länder, the research centre is to be expanded into a supra-regional centre and, in terms of its design, be a building block of the nationwide network of oral history institutions that is currently being established.

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…

FBDGVisual – Development and Evaluation of Visualisations of Food-related Nutritional Recommendations

Project management
Dr. Sabine Best Duration
04/2024 - 03/2026 Funding
Bundesministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft (BMEL):
400 000 €

The aim of the research work is to examine existing visualisations for food-related dietary recommendations (food based dietary guidelines, FBDG) based on specific reception criteria for different target groups. Based on qualitative studies, Sabine Best's team wants to use creative techniques to identify the challenges for the target groups (e.g. children, adults, senior citizens) and develop ideas for suitable forms of visualisation. Quantitative studies will then be used to review these…

German Media Language Abroad

Project management
Prof. Dr. Dr. Csaba Földes Duration
04/2019 - 03/2022 Funding
Kulturstaatsministerin für Kultur und Medien (BKM):
122 000 €

The main objective of the proposed project is the scientific research and documentation of the current German media language abroad using the example of the German minority press in Central and Eastern Europe.

Globalisation and Local Knowledge

Project management
Prof. Dr. Susanne Rau Duration
09/2012 - 02/2016 Funding
Several donors
300 000 €

The research project is to be understood as a pilot project, which is intended to comprehensively demonstrate the research potential of the cartographic-geographical "The Gotha Perthes Collection" acquired by the Free State of Thuringia in 2003 for the first time. In addition, it is intended to contribute to the further development of the collection and to establish a virtual map laboratory, the "GlobMapLaboratory".

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).

Institutionalising the law of nature and nations: The universities of Kiel, Greifswald and Rostock 1648–1806

Project management
Dr. Mikkel Munthe Jensen Duration
07/2022 - 06/2026 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
350 000 €

The project is about the history of the teaching of natural law at the three north German universities in Kiel, Greifswald and Rostock during the period 1648–1806. It is concerned with why, how and to what extent this academic discipline developed in three different political settings along the Baltic coast. The project is based on the general presumption that natural law was of great significance for the period’s intellectual development and state building endeavours. The general aim of the…

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.

Journalists and their audience in the digital age

Project management
PD Dr. Nicole Podschuweit Duration
05/2021 - 04/2024 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
460 000 €

Nicole Podschuweit: The project uses qualitative and quantitative surveys to investigate how reciprocal expectations and their fulfilment or violation influence journalism-audience relations and social developments. Within this framework, the Erfurt sub-project illuminates the perspective of the audience.

KarAfAs – Cartographies of Africa and Asia

Project management
Several Duration
02/2021 - 01/2023 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
370 000 €

The subject of this indexing are the maps of Africa and Asia published until 1945 - a total of 35,349 map sheets - as a central core holdings of the Perthes Collection preserved by the Gotha Research Library of the University of Erfurt. The online presentation and permanent storage of the digital copies will take place in the Digital Historical Library Erfurt/Gotha, which is maintained and hosted by the Thuringian University and State Library Jena (ThULB). In this way, the maps will be made…

Kulturtechniken des Sammelns (Cooperation project Cultural Techniques of Collecting)

Project management
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Struck Duration
01/2023 - 12/2025 Funding
Several donors
335 000 €

The project serves to establish a sustainable research infrastructure that connects the research group "Kulturtechniken des Sammelns" (Cultural Techniques of Collecting) at the University of Erfurt and other researchers at the Universities of Weimar and Jena with the various collection institutions in Gotha.

LINKED - Music Learning in Postdigital Communities

Project management
Several Duration
12/2017 - 03/2021 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
359 000 €

The collaborative project MuBiTec addresses the special educational potential that results from the mediamorphosis of artistic-musical practice in the context of digital mobile technologies.

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.

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.

Martyrdom and Voluntariness. Discourse and Practice in the European High and Late Middle Ages

Project management
Prof. Dr. Sabine Schmolinsky Duration
10/2020 - 09/2023

Subproject of the research group "Voluntariness". The subproject analyzes martyrdom as a discourse and as a practice of men and women in high and late medieval centuries.

Moving Networks

Project management
Prof. Dr. Dr. Patrick Rössler Duration
01/2013 - 02/2016 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
450 000 €

Patrick Rössler: Although the institutional framework of the leading art and design school of its time disintegrated with the closure of the Bauhaus in April 1933, it continued to exist as a virtual structure of various networks of its members, which were to be examined empirically and whose formation often went back far into the history of the school. From this perspective, the history of the Bauhaus during the politically explosive period of the 1930s and 1940s can be continued in a…

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.

On the Narrative Trail of Refugees: Refugee Stories in German Literature and Culture in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Project management
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Struck Duration
10/2015 - 03/2017 Funding
Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD):
140 000 €

Charlton Payne: The study closely inspects the speciﬁc narratives that have formed around the ﬁgure of the refugee over the course of the twentieth century.

Orthodox Christianity and Human Rights

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
01/2019 - 12/2022 Funding
Henry T. Luce Foundation / Leadership 100:
5 000 €

Vasilios N. Makrides: This project brings together scholars of Orthodox Christianity to provide comprehensive analyses of the contemporary relationship between Orthodox Christianity and human rights in all of its variation and complexity. Participants will investigate Orthodox Christian approaches to human rights in Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and the Middle East from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

Paths and Works of Michael Kosmeli (1773-1844). A forgotten key figure in the trans-Ottoman corridor and context

Project management
Dr. Dirk Sangmeister Duration
03/2021 - 02/2024 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
300 000 €

The versatile writer, polyglot translator and virtuoso Jew's harp player Kosmeli, who travelled restlessly for decades in the space between Germany and Eastern Europe on the one hand and the Ottoman Empire together with Persia on the other, was acquainted with prominent contemporaries such as Adelbert von Chamisso, Jean Paul and the Orientalist Joseph (von) Hammer(-Purgstall), also told Goethe "much about Constantinople and the Orient" in Jena in 1809, but is today a completely forgotten figure.…

Politics and the Future of Work in Middle-Income Countries (PolDigWork). How Hopes and Fears about Digitalization Shape Opinions on Social and Labour Policies

Project management
Prof. Dr. Achim Kemmerling Duration
10/2022 - 10/2025 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
716 027 €

The project looks at the social and political impact of digitalization and automation for labour markets in selected middle-income countries. For three years, a team will employ a mixed methods approach with an original survey component combined with social network analysis as well as case studies from Mexico, South Africa and Indonesia.

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…

Reaching for Atlantis

Project management
Dr. Bernhard Schirg Duration
03/2018 - 02/2023 Funding
VolkswagenStiftung:
1 000 000 €

In his project, the historian wants to investigate the history of objects that were the subject of a fundamental reinterpretation of material culture at the time of the Swedish Empire (1650-1720).

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.

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.

Science and Orthodox Christianity around the World (SOW)

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
01/2016 - 12/2019

Vasilios N. Makrides: The Project SOW - Science & Orthodoxy around the World focuses on the dialogue between science and religion in the Orthodox Christian world. More than 50 specialists from 15 countries participate from various academic fields such as Science, Philosophy, History, Theology and Education.

Spaces and Objects

Project management
Prof. Dr. Susanne Rau Duration
07/2013 - 12/2016 Funding
Stiftung Mercator:
145 000 €

The research project serves as a preparation for teaching and research in the field of collections-based history of knowledge and culture. The funding will benefit the initiation and further development of the new M.A. programme in "Collections-Based History of Knowledge and Culture", which the university has been offering since the winter semester 2014/15.

The Catastrophic Féerie. Discontinuity, Spectacularity and French Modernism

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Dünne Duration
04/2012 - 03/2015 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
189 000 €

The project is dedicated to the rehabilitation of the unjustly forgotten genre of the féerie, which was particularly popular in France in the 19th century. Beyond the classification as a pure entertainment genre, which has been dominant in research up to now, the aim is to grasp the féerie as a paradigm for a specific experience of modern temporality that is characterized by the aesthetic form of a spectacular discontinuity.

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.

Vaccination 60+ (Impfen 60+)

Project management
Several Duration
10/2016 - 09/2019 Funding
:
2 136 000 €

Vaccination 60+ (Impfen 60+) is a pharma-independent, scientific cooperative project of the research initiative InfectControl 2020 within the framework of the funding measure "Zwanzig20 - Partnerschaft für Innovation" (2020 Partnership for Innovation) of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Together, psychologists and communication scientists from the University of Erfurt, designers from the Lindgrün GmbH agency and medical doctors and health economists from the University…

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…

Voluntariness and Repatriation. Transnational Processes of Remigration and Repatriation (1960–2000)

Project management
Dr. Florian Wagner Duration
10/2020 - 09/2023

Subproject of the research group "Voluntariness". This subproject investigates the interactions between principles and practices of voluntariness in transnational migration processes between the 1960s and 2000. These interactions are analyzed in light of the remigration and repatriation of labor migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, chiefly from the Global North to the Global South. I argue that from the 1960s on, a repatriation regime emerged that sought to legitimize its practices by…

What is Western about the West?

Project management
Prof. Dr. Holt Meyer Duration
02/2018 - 01/2021 Funding
Several donors
420 000 €

The project focuses on spatio-temporal practices regarding the production and representation of westernness. With the question of what is Western about the West, it takes up a highly political and socially relevant question.

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