Exploration Funds – Projects

Cultural and social science approaches in dialogue. Social advancement through education not only commands respect for individual effort, it is also considered a hallmark of a fair education system. However, research shows that educational advancement is often experienced as highly ambivalent. In order to explore educational advancement in all its contradictions, the project takes a new approach: it focuses on auto-sociobiographies and related types of texts as its research subject and organizes cooperation between education, literature, history, and sociology. In the form of an interdisciplinary graduate college, an innovative research network is to be established that would be unique beyond the German-speaking world.

The study of East Polynesian history through an archaeogenomic time transect. The Polynesian triangle, a group of more than one thousand islands spread over two million km2 in the Pacific Ocean was the easternmost frontier for one of the greatest human expansions into the open ocean. This expansion along with later human movements and interactions have shaped the present-day cultural, linguistic, and genetic diversity of Polynesian communities. We study the genomes of ancient East Polynesians to gain insights on settlement history, health, and diversification of social practices through time. A fundamental objective is establishing a strong network of East Polynesian communities along with local archaeologists and linguists that will serve as a foundation for ongoing engagement and bidirectional exchange throughout the research process.

An interdisciplinary perspective based on governance networks and future climate scenarios. Many regions in Germany will be affected by the increasing effects of climate change if effective climate protection measures are not taken immediately. Water scarcity and drought threaten the livelihoods of humans and nature. With an interdisciplinary research project that brings together findings from political and environmental sciences, we are contributing to research on the governance of water resources. Using cross-impact balance (CIB) analysis, governance networks and complex political decision-making processes are analyzed in conjunction with scenarios for future climate conditions in order to find efficient strategies for water resource resilience, building adaptation capacities, and reducing carbon emissions, and to support informed decision-making. The aim is to further deepen this research through a DFG research group application.

Link to the Website

The research project aims to conceptualize and systematically break down right-wing immersion. By this, we mean the process in which subjects encounter right-wing worldviews or lifestyles and consciously or unconsciously become involved (or allow themselves to become involved). We investigate how right-wing immersion works in various (media) infrastructures and what resources and strategies are used in the process. Specifically, we ask how right-wing patterns of knowledge are taken up in everyday and scientific interpretations, politically reshape them, and thereby generate resonance in different social milieus.

Following the conceptualization of ‘right-wing immersion,’ best practice projects in which ‘right-wing immersion’ is successfully counteracted will be examined. The aim here is to systematize the experiences from the projects and develop a ‘response framework’ for promoting democratic resilience.

In addition, the project is an interdisciplinary working context that will culminate in an application to establish a DFG research group on “Right-wing Immersion and Democratic Resilience.” Participants include the Institute for Research on Far Right Extremism (IRex), the application group for the establishment of IRex, and experts from other universities. 

Link to the website

Generative Artificial Intelligence and the Transformation of Academic Assemblages in the Qualitative Social Sciences and Humanities. This project explores the transformative impact of generative artificial intelligence, such as OpenAI's GPT models, within the qualitative social sciences and humanities at the University of Tübingen. From an ethnographic perspective, it seeks to understand how students and academic staff are becoming early adopters of generative AI, how this technology is being integrated into hybrid epistemic practices, and its broader impact in academic assemblages. The ultimate goal is to lay a foundation for the development of critical AI literacy in order to help students, researchers, and academic stakeholders make more informed decisions in the context of generative AI.

Link to the website

An Interdisciplinary Study of Adaptation, Resilience, and Sustainability. Islands are among the last places on Earth to have been settled by humans and the most impacted by the current environmental crisis. With over 20% of UNESCO world heritage sites, islands represent some of the planet’s most diverse natural and cultural spots. Islands thus represent outstanding showcases for exploring cultural, climatic, and environmental transformations. Their spatial characteristics and variability make them highly suitable for the study of human adaptation, resilience, and sustainability, and to explore what broader lessons can be learnt from the study of islands. The dynamics of environment-society interactions in island communities will be investigated for the first time on a global level within an interdisciplinary and diachronic comparative framework. We study how island societies have adapted to environmental change, and the resulting challenges. Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Pacific islands are analysed from the first human settlements to the beginning of industrialisation.

In the Context of Democratic and Authoritarian States: A Case Study of China and Taiwan. The project aims to address the complexities of the intimacy-mobility-state nexus that have not received appropriate academic and public attention, especially in East Asia. By examining contentious issues in contemporary societies of China and Taiwan, such as digital relationships, accessing reproductive rights, relying on migrants for the care of elders or children, informal networks of migrant workers, moving for children’s education or adopting alternative education practices as a consequence of migration, this project aims to show how intimacy and mobility shape and reshape each other in two unique socio-political contexts, i.e., authoritarian neoliberalism (China) and developmental state (Taiwan) respectively.

The transformation of infrastructures affects global relations and the prospects for sustainable development. Current global events have underlined the importance of infrastructures for a functioning international system. Yet they are vulnerable and highly contested. The way infrastructures are produced, operated and used are significant for global relations – and vice versa. In this project, we take an interdisciplinary approach to assess the influence of infrastructures on global order and the sustainable development of societies. A particular emphasis in this endeavor is on the realization of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The project establishes a research network on infrastructures in Tübingen and lays the groundwork for a Collaborative Research Centre (CRC). 

Link to the Elie Wiesel Research Center website

Link to the website Certificate Education against anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim racism

Elie Wiesel's work as a contribution to religious memory and renewal culture in the context of combating anti-Semitism. The project is based on work on the critical annotated complete edition of Elie Wiesel's works (autobiographical, literary, biblical, and essayistic writings) in German. As an international cooperation project (Germany, France, Israel, USA) with interdisciplinary (history, literary studies, philosophy, theology, cognitive science, pedagogy), multi-denominational, and self-reflective research groups, it addresses the questions of 1) how Wiesel's literary work advances the search for God and humanity after Auschwitz, 2) religion is re-inscribed into society as a meaningful, humanizing relational event, and 3) it contributes to a transformative culture of remembrance against anti-Semitism. Start-up funding enables overall scientific coordination in cooperation with the Luxembourg School of Religion & Society (which is providing the same amount) and interdisciplinary anchoring at the University of Tübingen.

Concepts, dynamics, interactions in history and the present. The research project will take up the urgent need for scientific dialogue between Jews and Muslims from a theological and religious studies perspective in the context of the theology campus, from a social and political, but above all academic point of view. During the funding phase, the primary task is to establish a Jewish-Muslim Research Center at the University of Tübingen. The decisive objective is to establish the structural prerequisites for joint research by Jewish and Muslim theologians and scholars. In addition, there is an initial focus on researching the dimensions of meaning of worldliness and law/religion in their mutual relationship in the traditions of Judaism and Islam. Correspondences, oppositions, and possible models of coexistence between Judaism and Islam, as well as other religions in liberal democracies, are to be reflected upon independently of the Christian characterization of the areas of meaning of religiosity and secularity.