Research projects

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

A "Democratic State of Exception": The corona virus controversy in Germany

Project management
Several Duration
05/2021 - 10/2022 Funding
VolkswagenStiftung:
120 000 €

André Brodocz: The project aims at answering the question, in which way the 'state of exception' is rolled out and is overcome in a democratic public debate.

A Change of Mind. West-Eastern Church Experiences

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Seiler Duration
05/2015 - 12/2016 Funding
Bonifatiuswerk:
6 000 €

Jörg Seiler: Ever since they moved to the East as a result of unification, people have been talking about a completely new experience of church and community and the relationship of these East German communities to the public. These experiences are to be examined exemplarily and empirically in the form of targeted interviews. The interviews will be presented in excerpts on listening stations (Katholikentag in Leipzig) and then scientifically evaluated.

A Physio Centric Foundation of Law - With Latin American Buen Vivir on the Way to a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature?

Project management
Dr. Stefan Knauß Duration
07/2017 - 04/2021 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
267 228 €

The project explores the provocative claim that we do not only have the obligation to protect nature but to consider nature as a subject of rights on its own.

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.

Annexations and Secessions in the Age of the Global Cold War

Project management
Dr. Christian Methfessel Duration
10/2018 - 09/2021 Funding
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung:
236 000 €

Christian Methfessel: International borders were surprisingly stable during the Cold War. The project seeks to analyze the reasons for that stability by examining selected territorial conflicts in Africa and South Asia.

Armed Self-Defense in Recent America: Intersectional Perspectives

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Martschukat Duration
10/2018 - 09/2021 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
182 000 €

The project attempts to understand historically the recent escalation of armed violence in everyday US-American life. It focuses primarily on analyzing the frequent justification of the use of firearms as self-defense.

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.

Bio-economic Power in Global Supply Chains: Approaches, Impacts and Perspectives on Certification and Due Diligence for Biogenic Mass Raw Materials (Bio-Power)

Project management
(apl.) Prof. Dr. Lena Partzsch Duration
01/2017 - 12/2020 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
890 000 €

Lena Partzsch: The overall objective of the project is to formulate recommendations for action regarding the possibilities and limits of corporate due diligence and certification systems in the global value chains of biogenic mass raw materials.

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.

Catholic Women Writers as Products and Producers of "Catholic Femininity"?

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Seiler Duration
09/2016 - 09/2023 Funding
Several donors
300 000 €

Jörg Seiler: The anti-modernist phase of Catholicism was characterized by normative Catholic ascriptions of femininity, which mostly obscured the pluralization dynamics of these decades. Persistence, change and (un)simultaneous emancipative ideas about a Catholic gender order should therefore be reconstructed in church history on the basis of biographical sources and literary works of Catholic women writers. As representatives of a liberal profession, they represented an unbound heterogeneous…

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.

Contested Democracy. Gender, race and sex in US American history

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Martschukat Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024 Funding
Gerda Henkel Stiftung:
161 000 €

The project investigates struggles for hegemony and democracy along the lines of gender, race and sex in the form of a conflict history of the USA in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century.

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…

Digitisation and In-depth Indexing of Manuscripts of the Bibliotheca Amploniana in the University Library of Erfurt

Project management
Gabor Kuhles Duration
10/2019 - 09/2025 Funding
Several donors
943 130 €

By making the world's largest scientific library of a late medieval scholar, the Bibliotheca Amploniana, should be made available for international research through digital provision and its scientific indexing.

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.

Eastern Christians and the Republic of Letters between the 16th and 18th centuries

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
01/2019 - 12/2021 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
45 000 €

Vasilios N. Makrides: The Republic of Letters, a wide network of intellectuals, also has an Eastern side with numerous actors communicating in Greek, Latin, Arabic or Slavic languages (especially on religious issues). Despite the existence of extensive sources, this topic has rarely been studied interdisciplinary and from an "entangled history" perspective. In order to enable a more complete cartography of this East-West exchange (16th-18th century), this project will bring together scholars of…

Ecological Conflicts

Project management
Prof. Dr. André Brodocz Duration
05/2023 - 04/2026

The Gerda Henkel Foundation is funding a new research group at Humboldt University Berlin and the University of Erfurt with around 240,000 euros until 2026, which will focus on the topic of "Ecological Conflicts".

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.

Establishment of a cross-university "Scientific Coordination Unit for Dealing with the Colonial Heritage in Thuringia".

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
09/2021 - 08/2024 Funding
Several donors
300 000 €

The coordination unit builds on the existing expertise on the topic of "colonial heritage" at the Universities of Erfurt and Jena and aims to network and strengthen activities in the future with regard to research, teaching and social dialogue.

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.

European Interuniversity Graduate School on Theology in Processes of religious and societal Transformation

Project management
Several Duration
10/2021 - 09/2024 Funding
Stifterverband:
1 200 000 €

The European Interuniversity Graduate School on Theology in Processes of religious and societal Transformation thematically and structurally brings together theological research and the promotion of early-stage researchers from three European universities.

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,…

Fighting the monstrous ‘many-headed multitude’

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

Cesare Cuttica: A historiographical consensus simply accepts that in the early modern period democracy was reputed to be the worst form of government. However, this scholarly trend leaves a few major questions unanswered: why was this so? How was criticism of democracy articulated? In what ways did different authors and genres depict popular government? Which political concerns and social prejudices informed this anti-democratic paradigm? What is the legacy of such a mindset? In order to address…

Funeral and Commemoration Ceremonies after Major Catastrophes in Secular Society with Church Participation

Project management
Prof. Dr. Benedikt Kranemann Duration
01/2014 - 12/2017 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
145 350 €

The study aims to examine this type of disaster ritual using the example of the commemoration ceremony after the rampage in Erfurt and the annual commemoration ceremonies practiced since then.

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…

Hidden Histories: Frauen in ländlichen Entwicklungsprogrammen in Indien, c. 1920–1966

Project management
Dr. Maria Framke Duration
08/2021 - 07/2024 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
335 000 €

The project is dedicated to contributions of Indian women to rural development programmes from about 1920 to 1966, following the call to include gender as a category of analysis in the history of development. The aim of the project is to examine the role of women in the design and implementation of governmental and non-governmental rural development projects in India in the key areas of health, education and livelihoods, and in this way to re-capture the processes of development and citizenship.…

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).

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…

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.

KLIMA-Netzwerk für mehr Nachhaltigkeit in Thüringen. Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung (BNE)

Project management
Bettina Hollstein Duration
10/2022 - 09/2025 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
300 000 €

The sub-project of the University of Erfurt deals with exemplary transformative teaching-learning arrangements (LLA), which are to be evaluated with regard to their sustainability and transformational relevance. On this basis, conditions for success for transformative CLIMA-LLA and quality development measures are to be developed.

KNOWPRO: Knowledge Production in German Peace and Security Policy

Duration
04/2022 - 03/2026

Using Afghanistan and Somalia as case studies, the project examines the peace and security policy knowledge production in Germany and East Africa on participation in interventions in internal wars with military or financial means.

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.

NFDI4memory

Project management
Several Duration
03/2023 - 02/2028

The research institutions located on the Gotha Research Campus of the University of Erfurt - Gotha Research Library and Gotha Research Centre as well as the Centre for Transcultural Studies / Perthes Collection - are participating together with other partners in the so-called NFDI-4Memory consortium led by the Leibniz Institute for European History (IEG) in Mainz. 4Memory is one of several consortia in Germany that are working together to build a long-term and sustainable National Research Data…

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.

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.

Pattern-Based Expectations in Macroeconomics

Project management
Prof. Dr. Tobias Rötheli Duration
11/2012 - 11/2015

Tobias Rötheli: This project deals with the collection and modelling of expectations with regard to macroeconomic studies.

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.

Politics of Plunder

Duration
09/2016 - 08/2017 :
1 415 998 €

Kornelia Kończal: Around the end of the Second World War two processes dramatically changed the socio-economic landscape of East Central Europe: the expulsion of up to twelve million Germans and the establishment of a new social order inspired by the Soviet model. This project is an inquiry into the interconnectedness between these apparently distinct histories.

Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict

Project management
Several Duration
04/2022 - 03/2026 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
4 000 000 €

The Network investigates how historically formed postcolonial hierarchies manifest themselves in contemporary conflict dynamics and what implications this has for sustainable conflict transformation in the future. To do so, the Network brings together historical perspectives on the contexts of conflict formation (in particular those shaped by colonialism) with postcolonial research perspectives as well as with methodologies and theories of peace and conflict research.These perspectives are…

Property and habit. On the political anthropology of ownership in Western modernity

Project management
Several Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024

Subproject in the SFB TRR294 "Structural Change of Property". The project is dedicated to the political anthropology of ownership between the eighteenth and early twentieth century. It investigates an assumption that is widespread in the humanities: that ownership structures bring about the formation of specific habits.

Property in one’s own body and in the bodies of others in the United States between the eighteenth and twentieth century

Project management
Several Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024

Subproject in the SFB TRR294 "Structural Change of Property". The subproject explores the ownership of others’ bodies based on the history of slavery in the USA.

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…

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’s Reception among Key Thinkers of the 20th Century Orthodox World (Vl. Lossky, Fr. Sophrony, Chr. Yannaras, J. Zizioulas)

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
02/2022 - 01/2025 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
301 000 €

The research project will examine the multifaceted reception of the 6th century scriptural corpus attributed to Dionysius Areopagita by four pioneering Orthodox theologians in the 20th century: on the Russian side (but active in Western Europe), Vladimir Lossky and Old Father Sofronij (Sakharov); and on the Greek side, Christos Yannaras and Metropolitan John Zizioulas.

Reception of the Works of Nicholas of Cusa in the Manuscripts from the Erfurt Charterhouse at the End of the 15th Century

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

Mikhail Khorkov: My project attempts to clarify the extraordinary reception of the Works of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) in the manuscripts from the Erfurt Charterhouse at the end of the 15th century. The main object of study in my project is collected manuscript Weimar, Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, Q 51 (previously: Erfurt, Kartause Salvatorberg, D 51). It originated in the Erfurt Charterhouse at the end of 15th century, perhaps under the influence of mystical theology of the famous Erfurt…

Religion and Politics in Protestant Sermons of the 16th and 17th Century in the Thuringian-Saxon Region

Project management
Dr. Kathrin Paasch Duration
10/2008 - 03/2015 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
101 000 €

Due to its denominational anchoring, the Gotha Research Library has a reference collection for the history of Central German Protestantism in the 16th and 17th centuries. An extremely extensive collection of sermons is part of this outstanding tradition. The aim of the project is to make the collection of political sermons accessible to the interested public online.

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 Contemporary Church History

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Seiler Duration
01/1970

Jörg Seiler: The Research Centre for Contemporary Church History investigates the specific form of Catholicism in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ)/ German Democratic Republic (DDR). It deals with the "double diaspora situation" of Central and East German Catholics.

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 Network External Democracy Promotion (EDP)

Project management
Prof. Dr. Solveig Richter Duration
07/2015 - 06/2018 Funding
Leibniz-Gemeinschaft:
24 000 €

Solveig Richter: The research network 'External Democracy Promotion' (EDP) brings together political scientists from Germany who work at the interface between international relations and comparative political science. Our common interest lies in the area of cross-border activities of states, non-state actors and international organisations working to establish, improve or defend democracy in third countries. The EDP Network is a collaborative project of six partner institutions: the two Leibniz…

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.

Social Justice under the Condition of Scarcity- social-ethical research on the future of social security in Germany on the condition of controlled and uncontrolled migration

Project management
Prof. Dr. Elke Mack Duration
01/2016 - 12/2019 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
344 000 €

Elke Mack: With reference to the newer philosophical and Christian-ethical debate on immigration, a set of ethical criteria will be developed, which spell out when, to what extent and in which form the admission of immigrants in western welfare states like Germany is a universal obligation, normatively just and ethical, while at the same time considering the limited capacities of national social institutions.

The Challenge of Worldliness to Contemporary Christianity: Orthodox Christian Perspectives in Dialogue with Western Christianity

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
03/2021 - 02/2023

The main aim of the project is to examine the relationships with the world that have been articulated in the major Christian traditions (Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism), both historically and in the present, through selected case studies.

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 Mission of the English Philadelphians in Germany, Building Networks and the Spoken Transmission of their Ideology

Project management
Dr. Lucinda Martin Duration
07/2014 - 07/2017 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
261 998 €

In the Gotha Research Library, there is a geographically arranged 'Catalogus amicorum in Germania', which served the Philadelphians as a starting point for their German mission, together with a volume of letters from this group. In addition, there are important holdings in other archives which have also received little attention from scientists. Based on these sources, the project will reconstruct the early network of the Philadelphians between England and Germany as well as the social and…

The birth of rights universalism from reformed international law. The natural law of Heinrich and Samuel Cocceji and its controversial reception in the European Enlightenment

Project management
Dr. Stefanie Ertz Duration
02/2024 - 01/2027 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
317 000 €

The aim of the project, which at the same time further strengthens the focus on natural law at the Gotha Research Centre, is to explore the natural law teachings of Heinrich Cocceji (1644–1719) and his son and editor Samuel Cocceji (1679–1755). In a monograph, Cocceji's natural law, which centres on a theocratic-voluntarist concept of inalienable liberties, will be presented in its political and ideological-historical contexts and in its controversial reception in the European…

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…

Theological Research Centre at the University of Erfurt

Project management
Several Duration
01/2009 Funding
Stifterverband:
735 000 €

Benedikt Kranemann: The Theological Research Centre at the University of Erfurt is concerned with faith and church, the religious individual and church community in diaspora and minority situations. The history and present of the social and religious changes that have taken place in the background are dealt with and the future perspectives of faith and church in particular are examined.

Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism in East Central Europe: Historical Analysis in Comparative and Transnational Perspectives

Project management
Dr. Ned Richardson-Little Duration
10/2021 - 09/2025 Funding
VolkswagenStiftung:
376 360 €

Sub-project of Dr. Ned Richardson-Little within the international project "Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism in East Central Europe: Historical Analysis in Comparative and Transnational Perspectives", based at the University of Jena and funded by the Volkswagen Foundation within the framework of the funding programme "Challenges for Europe".

Trust and Mistrust in Early Eighteenth Century International Political Thought, 1713–1763

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

Peter Schröder: My project builds on my previous work Trust in Early Modern International Political Thought, 1598–1713 (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in spring 2017) to explore the role of trust and mistrust between European states in the emergence of international political thought through the first half of the 18th century, from the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 to the Peace of Paris in 1763.

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…

Voluntariness and Dictatorship. Voluntary participation in the ‘Neuererwesen’ of the GDR

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
10/2020 - 09/2023

Subproject in the research group "Voluntariness". Taking a subject-focused analytical approach, our study foregrounds voluntary participation among “Neuerer” – members of the GDR’s workplace inventor and suggestion scheme known as the “Neuerer- und Rationalisatorenbewegung” (Innovator and Rationalizer Movement). Our analysis focuses on individuals’ interpretations of their own actions, while also exploring the relationship between self-regulation and external guidance with respect to involvement…

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…

Voluntariness as Political Practice. The Emerging United States and American Citizenship

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Martschukat Duration
10/2020 - 09/2023

Subproject in the research group "Voluntariness". The emerging United States is widely regarded as the cradle of liberalism. This “new form of political life,” to quote philosopher Anthony Appiah, took off in the American republic and spawned the “American citizen” as the ideal of the liberal subject. This subproject examines the significance of voluntariness in this process and shows how liberty took on concrete form in the new republic, pointing up the voluntary forms of thinking and acting…

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…

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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