The Research Unit on "Voluntariness" explores voluntariness as political practices in the past and present. Our key premise is that voluntariness is a driving force of social and political practice in contemporary societies and in their modes of governing. Since October 2020 our group is funded by the
German Research Foundation (DFG).
Over the last four decades or so, voluntariness has manifestly taken root as a key mode of political and social action in our present. Yet, the topic has received little attention in historical research so far. Our research, however, benefits from social and political debates that currently revolve around the relationship between voluntariness and coercion in neoliberal societies. Our approach builds on these discourses and at the same time broadens the analytical perspective, focusing on the different forms and meanings of voluntariness across epochal and spatial boundaries: from the Middle Ages to the present, from the German dictatorships of the 20th century to postcolonial societies. We are particularly interested in the relationship between socio-political order on the one hand and the perceptions and actions of specific actors in the past and present on the other.
We are a group of historians, sociologists, and philosophers at the Universities of Erfurt, Jena, and Oldenburg. Together, we form the interdisciplinary Research Unit on Voluntariness that consists of seven subprojects of our first funding phase from 2020 to 2024 and seven subprojects recently entering our second funding phase from 2024 to 2027.
Subproject funding phase one (2020-2024): Antinomies of Voluntariness. Investigating the Foundations of Political Participation from a Socio-Philosophical Perspective
To project outline
Subproject funding phase two (2024-2027): Voluntariness, Democracy, and Climate Policy. A Socio-philosophical Reconstruction To project outline
Principal Investigators:
Prof. Dr. Tilo Wesche
Dr. Philipp Schink
Subproject funding phase one (2020-2024): Martyrdom and Voluntariness in the European High and Late Middle Ages
To project outline
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Sabine Schmolinsky
Co-Investigator:
Markus Dolinsky, M.A.
Subproject funding phase one (2020-2024): Voluntariness as Political Practice. The Emerging United States and American Citizenship To project outline
Subproject funding phase one (2024-2027): Voluntariness, Self-Care, and Health in the United States around 1865 To project outline
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Martschukat(spokesperson of the research unit)
Co-Investigator funding phase one:
Pia Herzan, M.A.
Co-Investigator funding phase two:
Pauline Fischer, M.A.
Subproject funding phase one (2020-2024): Voluntariness and Decolonization. The Regulation of Labor in (Post-)Colonial Ghana To project outline
Subproject funding phase two (2024-2027): Voluntariness, Decolonization, and Gender. The Women’s Movement and Citizenship in (Post)Colonial Ghana To project outline
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Iris Schröder
Co-Investigator funding phase one:
Dr. Carolyn Taratko
Co-Investigator funding phase two:
Gifty Nyame Tabiri, M.P.P.
Subproject funding phase two (2024-2027): Voluntariness and the Repatriation of Human Remains from Colonial Contexts (1970-2021) To project ouline
Principal Investigator:
PD Dr. Silvan Niedermeier
Subproject funding phase one (2020-2024): Voluntariness and Dictatorship. Voluntary participation in the ‘Neuererwesen’ of the German Democratic Republic To project outline
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller
Co-Investigator:
Elena M. E. Kiesel, M.A.
Subproject funding phase one (2020-2024): Voluntariness and Repatriation. Transnational Processes of Remigration and Repatriation (1960–2000) To project outline
Subproject funding phase two (2024-2027): oluntariness and Repatriation. Transnational Processes of Remigration and Repatriation (1960–2000)
Principal Investigator:
Dr. Florian Wagner
Subproject funding phase two (2024-2027): Voluntariness and Solidarity in the GDR and the Post-socialist Transition (1970-2000) To project outline
Principal Investigator:
Dr. Carsta Langner
Subproject funding phase one (2020-2024): Voluntariness and Capitalism. Work, Consumption and Civic Engagement in Times of Digitiziation To project outline
Subproject funding phase two (2024-2027): Voluntariness Behind the Scences. Work and Social Reproduction at the Fraught Interstices of Necessity and Privilege To project outline
Principal Investigators:
Prof. Dr. Silke van Dyk
Prof. Dr. Alexandra Oeser (Université Paris-Nanterre) - Mercator-Fellow 2022
Prof. Dr. Mitchell Dean (Copenhagen Business School) - Mercator-Fellow 2023
Academic Coordinator
general project coordination, events, research data management, public relations, website
Contact:
For all abstracts of our subprojects, information on our project teams as well as many interesting posts inspired by our research on voluntariness in German and English visit our blog "Voluntariness: History | Society | Theory".
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University of Erfurt (Campus)
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99089 Erfurt
