Research
Research
Individual research is an essential component of research in the humanities and social sciences and characterises the research landscape of School IV through numerous doctoral and habilitation projects as well as diverse publications in specialist journals, edited volumes and monographs. The Institutes belonging to School IV have developed different research profiles, which can be found together with the individual research projects on the respective Institute pages.
The individual research is supplemented by research focuses. School IV - School of Humanities and Social Sciences is committed to the tradition of the university's namesake, Carl von Ossietzky, and combines research and teaching with the ability to critically and reflexively analyse and interpret past, present and future social contexts, developments and discourses. Against this background, the School currently has the following research focuses, which coincide in their interest in the diverse processes of social change. They are also reflected in the research-oriented teaching.
1 Reflective digital transformation
School IV - School of Humanities and Social Sciences has established a faculty research focus on the topic of "Reflexive Digital Transformation" in coordination with the four Institutes and with the approval of the Faculty Council. A working group of the same name was set up under the leadership of the two digitalisation professorships Ethics of Digitalisation and Digital Media and Knowledge Processes to develop this focus. This research focus combines projects from a humanities and social science, ethical-philosophical and media theory perspective. They deal with the challenges, opportunities and limits of digital transformations and reorganisations in research, teaching and society and reflect on the social impact of future scenarios of digitalisation. The projects are integrated into multi-perspective research networks that are both epistemologically and application-oriented. In addition, questions about the social impact of future scenarios of digitalisation are explored at the end of projects at the Genealogy of the Present research centre, which are also incorporated into this faculty research focus. The current focus areas are Cultural Heritage Research Digital, Ethics of Digitalisation and Future Scenarios of Digitalisation.
Cultural Heritage Research Digital / Critical Cultural Heritage
Cultural Heritage Research Digital is dedicated to sustainable research, comprehensive accessibility and the sustainable and long-term preservation of material cultural heritage. The research focus is characterised by the fact that the projects and research groups gathered here are networked with each other in terms of subject matter, structure and personnel and are in constant exchange about research results and methods (as well as their reflection).
Future scenarios of digitalisation
From an interdisciplinary perspective, this research focus in co-operation with the WiZeGG deals with the challenges, opportunities, limits and effects of digital restructuring and reorganisation in research, teaching and society. This research focus is currently being developed and will soon link to other projects.
Ethics of digitalisation
Digital structural change is having a profound impact on social coexistence. It therefore raises not only technical but also a multitude of ethical questions: What normative controls are required by AI systems such as autonomous vehicles? How and with what consequences can norms of justice be modelled in algorithms? What understanding of the digital public sphere does justice to the balance between privacy and security? What about data ownership in the digital age? What opportunities and risks does digitalisation hold for democracy and the autonomy of the individual? The focus area "Ethics of digitalisation" addresses such ethical questions and thus covers an area that will continue to gain social relevance. It also strengthens the University of Oldenburg's profile in the field of digitalisation, for example in the university-wide research focus "Human-Cyber-Physical Systems", in which Computing Science, Social and Health Sciences, Psychology and Law work closely together.
2 Globalisation, diversity and social change from a historical perspective
Globalisation, diversity and social change are explored as mutually dependent processes in this research focus. The self-description and external description of societies, the effectiveness of attributions for social coherence, distortions and change as well as the effects of power relations play a central role. The research networks and projects brought together in this faculty research focus deal with questions of religious difference, migration, social practices, discourses and the consequences of early forms of globalisation since antiquity, colonialism and European expansion from a historical perspective. It examines the discursive and practical production of individual presences and their historical becoming. The research focus is characterised by the fact that the projects and research groups gathered here are networked with each other in terms of subject matter, structure and personnel and are in constant exchange about research results and methods (as well as their reflection).
3. diagnoses of the present and social change
This focus area, represented in particular by the research centre "Genealogy of the Present", examines the significance of social self-thematisation in science, mass media, art and popular culture for social change. At the centre of historical and current analyses are diagnoses of the present as a characteristic form of problematising and shaping the self in modern societies. According to the guiding research assumption, diagnoses of the present develop their power to shape society by identifying phenomena such as climate change, social and health inequality or digitalisation as existential social reference problems in order to be able to make future-oriented decisions. The overarching aim of the focus area is to enable critical reflection on the power of present-agnostic anticipated futures on current political and everyday behaviour and thus make alternative courses of action conceivable.
