The humanities student laboratory Villa GeistReich at School IV is research-oriented. The establishment of the laboratory was part of the university's ^FLIF+ (Research-based Teaching plus) project and was funded by the BMBF between 2011 and 2021.

Since the founding of the student laboratory, regular events have taken place in and around the Villa GeistReich that are dedicated to research, science communication and the transfer of knowledge with the aim of making research and research-oriented teaching fruitful for school learning fields in the humanities and social sciences. Villa GeistReich is decidedly not understood as an element of didactics in teacher training, but rather focuses on the transfer of specialised research into the teaching-learning context of schools. Teachers and students at the University of Oldenburg develop materials based on current research projects, which pupils, guided by researchers, use to conduct independent research in various formats of knowledge transfer.