Research Clusters
Energy, Environment & Sustainability
Photo: FernUniversität
This research cluster bundles the FernUniversität’s wide variety of research activities on the topics of energy, environment and sustainability with the goal of building transdisciplinary bridges between research, industry, politics, and society.
digital_culture
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The term “digital culture” is associated with the observation that technology-driven innovations have far-reaching consequences. These consequences impact their subjects even when they are not (directly) interacting with technical artifacts, because they represent a change to the culture itself. At the same time, the extent of the upheaval, as well as how dramatic and wide-ranging its effects are, is not yet clear. This research cluster contributes to the effort to make legible and accessible that which is only just becoming apparent.
Work – Education – Digitalization
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The interdisciplinary research cluster Work – Education – Digitalization (German: Arbeit – Bildung – Digitalisierung, ABD) is dedicated to the effects and requirements of digital working environments. It focuses on questions of work design, competence development and lifelong learning. In exchange with external partners, the application-oriented research focus aims to develop a high transfer potential into the working world.
Cross-Faculty Research Institutes
Dimitris Tsatsos Institute of European Constitutional Sciences
The Dimitris Tsatsos Institute of European Constitutional Sciences is an interdisciplinary institute which is engaged primarily in the fields of law, political science and history. Its aim is to track the integrative development of a European Constitution using an interdisciplinary approach. The institute conducts academic research in the area of constitutional studies. It investigates the historical and current development of national and European constitutional law, analyzes and compares approaches to constitutional policy in theory and practice, and develops practical solutions for constitutional problems. In the process, it establishes contact between research and politics. The research results are also incorporated into teaching.
Institute for History and Biography
The Institute for History and Biography at the FernUniversität in Hagen carries out biographical research projects, produces scholarly films, maintains the German Memory (“Deutsches Gedächtnis”) archive for subjective eyewitness memory and organizes the Lüdenscheid Conversations (“Lüdenscheider Gespräche”) event series. The Institute is also home to the editorial department of the journal BIOS which focuses on biographical research, oral history, and analysis of life courses, as well as the administration of the International Oral History Association.
Interdisciplinary Research Groups and Centers
Center for East Asia Macro-economic Studies (CEAMeS)
The Chairs of Macroeconomics and International Economics at the FernUniversität in Hagen founded the Center for East Asia Macroeconomic Studies with the aim of developing an international network of researchers with a focus on China and other East Asian countries and related macroeconomic methods.
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Figurations of Uncertainty
Every society and every time period has its own figurations of uncertainty. On the basis of this background, the research group investigates the historically variable strategies, mechanisms and cultural techniques with which societies address and process uncertainty and insecurity.
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Gender Politics
Current global changes are reflected in rapid shifts and structural changes which have political significance - with effects for the categories of gender, class, disability, age, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. The Gender Politics research group examines these new processes and relationships in all their complexity.
Photo: Photo: FernUniversität
Cooperative Assistance Systems
The My Store 55 Plus - Assistance with Shopping for Seniors with Limited Mobility research project develops new types of support and assistance with shopping with and for seniors.
Photo: Veit Mette
CoVio – Collective Violence Joint Research Project
Political crises, exclusion, discrimination, antisemitism, racism, wars – one feature of the challenges of our present time is that they take violent forms, which once again affect us very directly. A team of researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the FernUniversität in Hagen will meet these challenges head-on.
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“Qualitative Family Research” Network
The goal of the “Qualitative Family Research” network is to bring together the relatively isolated research community and to provide a forum for subject-specific discussions of specific issues in sociology, history, educational science, health science, political science, and law.
To the research network's website (German)
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Groups and Networks for Early-Career Researchers
FILORED - German-Latin American Research and Doctoral Network in Philosophy
FILORED initiates, supports, and bundles exchange activities between Germany and Latin America in the area of philosophical research on classical German philosophy between Kant and Hegel.
To the FILORED Website (German/Spanish/Portuguese)
EDELNet - European Distance Education in Law Network
EDELNET is a cooperation between the FernUniversität in Hagen, the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) and the Open Universiteit Nederland (OUNl). The project’s activities include a graduate school which will be further developed into an international doctoral program.
To the graduate school's website
Early-Career Research Group “Higher Education and Diversity”
In their dissertation projects, the early-career research group is investigating topics related to the relationship between “higher education and diversity.”
Family in Transformation: Discontinuity, Tradition, and Structure Formation Doctoral Program
The Family in Transformation: Discontinuity, Tradition, and Structure Formation doctoral program investigates diagnoses of familial change within the framework of empirical studies which connect their analysis to the paradigm of qualititative social research.
