Universität KonstanzExzellenzcluster „Kulturelle Grundlagen von Integration“

Center of Excellence meets with academic advisory board

15. January 2008

The academic advisory board of the Center of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Integration” held its inaugural meeting on 14 January 2008. As the center’s spokesperson Rudolf Schlögl noted, the board is not only responsible for representing the research center, it is also tasked with advising the center and “actively intervening” in its affairs. The meeting was attended by Vice Rector Rüdiger, who welcomed the assembled academics in the name of the university.

Konstanz, 15 January 2008: In his welcome address Rudolf Schlögl spoke on the progress made at the Center of Excellence since “zero hour” on 19 October 2006, when the German Research Foundation (DFG) accepted the application made by 16 professors to create the center at the University of Konstanz.

As Schlögl explained, the research partnership pursues four specific goals. The center was conceived with the intention of providing relief from the flood of applications by releasing academics from certain duties and enabling them to concentrate on their research activities. It was also hoped that the creation of the center would have a dynamic effect on academic practice at the university and relieve the infrastructure of various faculties. And last but not least, the center provides an optimal interface between teaching and research at the university.

The Center of Excellence in figures

What has the Center of Excellence achieved in its first 15 months? Just under 100 applications were made in the initial round of research applications at the Center of Excellence and approximately two thirds of the applications were approved. A further 60 applications were made in the second round. Three of the four professorships at the Center of Excellence have been filled and the appointment procedure for the fourth professorship is now almost complete.

A total of 130 individuals work and research at the Center of Excellence in a variety of projects, Ph.D. programs, research groups and at the Institute for Advanced Study. The institute provides its staff with an optimal degree of academic freedom in a highly focused atmosphere.

Following the welcome address, the academic advisory board of the Center of Excellence was officially convened. The advisory board is composed of eight renowned figures from academic and public life: Eva Geulen, Dieter Grimm, Salomon Korn, Gudrun Krämer, Dieter Langewiesche, Ulrich Raulff, Peter Wagner and Bo Stråth. A number of the board members were unable to attend the meeting and the election of a chairperson was postponed until the next meeting of the board in early 2009, at which the Center of Excellence will also present a comprehensive progress report.

At the conclusionof the meeting the center’s three new professors - Ethel Matala de Mazza, Dorothea Weltecke and Bernhard Kleeberg – were introduced together with the Director of the “Idioms of Social Analysis” research group, Andreas Langenohl.

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