The Wittbülten research centre on Spiekeroog offers seminar rooms, laboratories and flats for university members. The offer is aimed at all disciplines. Bookings are still possible for 2026.

Summer school for students, long-term experiments in the coastal area, taking water samples from an underground measuring field on the north beach, exchanging ideas in a seminar on environmental education - there are numerous opportunities to research, learn and meet as university members on the North Sea island of Spiekeroog. The central point of contact for this is the interdisciplinary research centre Wittbülten, which is nestled between seagrass and dunes. The University of Oldenburg and in particular the Institute of Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM) have been cooperating with the centre since 2013.

The special thing about it: Research, exchange and living are possible in Wittbülten in one place and therefore in a very pleasant way. Three flats with communal kitchens for 12 to 14 people are available on the site. There are course rooms with 30 workstations and standard scientific equipment for seminars and presentations. The research centre also has laboratories: a preparation room for wet-chemical investigations and stationary long-term experiments, a chemistry laboratory, a microscopy room and even a mobile laboratory for field investigations.

Wittbülten: An offer for all university members

All academic and scientific institutions, working groups, researchers, students and project groups at the University of Oldenburg can book into the Wittbülten research centre on a daily or weekly basis. "University environmental research can be carried out very well there between the beach, dune, salt marsh and mudflats," advertises Managing Director Swaantje Fock. "However, Wittbülten is also very well suited to organising non-specialist retreats or seminars for small to large working groups far away from everyday life and independent of subject areas."

For example, the "DynaDeep" research group uses Wittbülten's infrastructure as a base for field studies and water samples. The biology didactics department regularly books student teachers onto Wittbülten. Participants in the seminar trips can try out environmental didactic concepts directly with school classes on the island. The specialist group "Pedagogy and Didactics for Learning Impairments" also comes to Spiekeroog, for example, for team and writing retreats. "Getting away from the desk at home helps to gain a new perspective on the end of projects," says project leader Prof Dr Clemens Hillenbrand. In addition, many find it easier to get into writing on the premises of Wittbülten. "Peace, nature, water - it's simply good for you."