The Politics of Limits: Sustainability and Democracy in Times of Changing Climates
08/12/2025 - 09/12/2025, Essen
Could freedom and equality in democratic societies be at odds with restricting economic growth for the sake of sustainability? This interdisciplinary conference explores the relationship between republican restrictions of individual freedom and possible economic limitations, and the relationship between democratic justice and economic growth (at the level of both ideas and practices).
Ordinary Men. Perpetrator Memory in Spanish Culture
04/12/2025 - 05/12/2025
How do Spanish literature, film, and culture represent perpetrators in the context of the Civil War and Franco Dictatorship? Building on the ‘Ordinary Men’ thesis, the conference explores the concepts of complicity, bystanding, and perpetration in Spanish cultural memory.
Ceremonial Opening | College for Social Sciences and Humanities
01/12/2025, Essen
Closed event – invited guests only
Founded in 2021 as part of the Research Alliance Ruhr, the College for Social Sciences and Humanities has taken shape as an Institute for Advanced Study, with a design that is unique in Germany: it brings together outstanding international visiting scholars, permanent research professors, and mid-career researchers ‘under one roof’. By the end of 2025, most of…
Deep Dive into ICCS 2022 – Advanced Data Analysis of Large-Scale Assessment Data in R
28/11/2025, Essen
This workshop offers (early-career) researchers the opportunity to enhance their understanding of the methodological foundations and the analysis of large-scale assessment data (in particular ICCS). It is organised by the Civic Education Research Lab, a PostdocLab working group.
Social Memories and Collective Identities in the Context of Genocide
25/11/2025 - 26/11/2025, Essen
This transdisciplinary workshop challenges different approaches to social memories and collective identities in the context of genocidal social practices. It seeks to develop a nuanced understanding of memory and identity that goes beyond essentialised conceptions of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders.
Sweat has varying, partly contradictory cultural connotations. This workshop explores sweating in the context of cooling technologies, the media, and feminist infrastructures. The focus is on methodological, material and political questions: about skin, climate, affect, technology and textiles.
Global Sustainability Governance Workshop 2025: Growth (In)Dependencies
03/11/2025 - 04/11/2025, Essen
The concept of 'growth (in)dependence' asks how institutions should be designed to work with less or even without growth. This workshop addresses multi-level dimensions of growth (in)dependencies on the local, the national and the global level. It is organised by the research group 'Global Sustainability Governance'.
Was heißt Schwarze Archivpraxis? Von Leben und Lebendigkeit in Archiven
21/10/2025 - 22/10/2025, Essen
Based on the archival traces of the life and work of the Afro-German musician and peace activist Fasia Jansen, the event explores questions of archival authority, intimate attachments and institutional politics in the context of caring for Black histories. The evening event on 21 October encompasses insights from the archival process and a screening of a short film by Ali*ne B*enecke, calling to…
'House of Memory' – Raum für Forschung und Praxis im Kontext postmigrantischer und postkolonialer Erinnerungsarbeit
10/10/2025, Essen
The workshop explores different forms of archiving and documentation, aiming to connect initiatives and stories of transnational post-migrant and postcolonial cultural memory. The working group seeks to build structures in which new, digital perspectives on collecting, remembering and curatorial work can emerge.
Editing Journal Literature: Possible Approaches and Aporias | Journalliteratur edieren
23/09/2025 - 24/09/2025, Essen
Literary texts published in journals are embedded in a medial continuum. They are often serialised and participate in a pluralistic form of authorship characteristic of journalistic practices. This workshop initiates a discussion between journal literature research and editorial philology – with a focus on 19th-century literature, for which first publication in newspapers or magazines was almost…
Methodological Complexities in Cross-Cultural Life-Course Research
14/07/2025, Essen | online
How do temporality, gender, class, and familial interdependencies shape life trajectories in Germany and Pakistan? In this workshop, scholars and students will discuss theoretical and empirical challenges in research on youth transitions, delayed adulthood, and evolving family forms from a cross-cultural perspective.
Ageing Materialities: Perspectives, Praxis and Possibilities
04/07/2025, Essen | hybrid
This workshop explores ageing as an interactional process and discusses the material and discursive practices that shape mid-to-later life. How do new technologies and digitalisation affect cultural conceptions of life course, later life and agency? This and related questions will be illuminated from different perspectives at the intersection of ageing studies and science and technology studies.
New Perspectives in Economics, Education and Social Sciences
03/07/2025, Essen | partly hybrid
This workshop will bring together renowned scholars to explore transformative ideas across economics, education, and interdisciplinary social sciences. Topics include the history of economic thought, socio-economic disparities in childcare enrolment, legal institutionalism, institutional reforms and gender, and the role of neoclassical economics in education.
Therapeutic Encounters with Chatbots: The Social and Ethical Implications of Artificial Therapeutic Agents
01/07/2025, Essen | hybrid
This symposium will focus on chatbots in talk therapy. Developers, sociologists and philosophers will discuss the sociotechnical imaginaries, design assumptions and challenges that guide the creation of these chatbots. How can communication between humans and chatbots be designed to promote mental health and well-being?
The EU-Central-Asia Relations: Dynamics and Perspectives
25/06/2025, Essen | hybrid
This workshop will critically and comparatively examine the European Union’s and Central Asia’s bilateral and multilateral relations. Contributors will discuss regional and cross-regional challenges, interregional interdependence and connectivity, as well as soft and smart power issues.
Queer AΦ Europe | Queer Analytic Philosophy: Social Concepts and Categories
16/06/2025, Essen | hybrid
Analytic philosophy is able, at its best, to untangle large and seemingly ineffable questions. Social ontology and conceptual engineering aim to analyse ordinary concepts and categories, such as gender, race, sexual orientation, identity, as well as social emotions. This conference presents work in analytic philosophy that focuses on the nature and properties of the social world.
This workshop aims to compare US and German approaches to bilingual education and heritage language teaching. It explores similarities and differences in order to identify common research areas and potential solutions for future generations’ language maintenance within the context of schooling and policies.
Multisensory Approaches to Egyptian, Near Eastern and Aegean Bronze and Iron Age Palaces
02/06/2025 - 03/06/2025, Essen | hybrid
Multisensory archaeology focuses on sensory dimensions of archaeological sites, artifacts, and landscapes to reconstruct past human experiences. This workshop explores the potential of this approach for the study of palaces from the Bronze and Iron Age.
Cultures of Memory, Amnesia and Misprision: Germany, the US and Beyond
08/05/2025 - 09/05/2025, Essen
Does "memory culture" promote a healthy democracy? Can the USA – and other countries – learn from Germany’s decades-long experience of "working off" the Nazi past? This conference takes a comparative perspective on the practices of commemorating historical injustice in Germany, the USA and beyond.
Artificial Intelligence and Educational Policies: Reconstructing Academic Frameworks
06/05/2025, Essen | hybrid
This lecture gives insights into the influence of emerging new technologies such as artificial intelligence on educational policies, learning processes and teaching settings. The speaker Muzaffer Özdemir, Professor of Computer Education and Instructional Technology at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University (Turkey), argues that a human-centered approach to integrating AI is needed, where technology…
How can artists’ lives, including their political engagement, be preserved through archiving? This workshop in cooperation with the queer-feminist archive LIESELLE brings together artists, archivists, curators, digital information networkers and others to share their practices and experiences.
Civic Education Forum: Perspectives and Challenges in a Changing World
09/04/2025, Essen
How do individual dispositions, educational institutions, and social environments shape civic learning, participation, and attitudes? Two keynote lectures present findings on civic education from psychological and sociological research.
Discourse-Pragmatic Variation in Postcolonial English Contexts (DVPEC)
06/02/2025 - 07/02/2025
English varieties spoken in African, Asian, and Caribbean multilingual societies are influenced by ethnic languages and cultures of the respective regions, leading to variation in the use of discourse-pragmatic features. This workshop brings together international linguistics scholars to discuss different theoretical approaches and methodologies in the field.
This workshop explores the plurality of Black queer sexualities and desires from different perspectives – particularly through examining their political, social and cultural manifestation within structures of systemic racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and transphobia.
Making Sense of German-African International Research Collaborations
15/01/2025, Essen
How do European and African researchers understand science and academic knowledge production? This series of dialogue events focuses on the role of culture and interculturality in international research collaborations between the Global North and Global South.
Albert the Great on Health, Disease, and Disability
13/01/2025 - 14/01/2025, Essen | hybrid
Albert the Great’s (Albertus Magnus) natural philosophy and observations of nature in the thirteenth century paved the way for modern science. This mini-conference focuses on Albert’s understanding of health, disease, and disability.
