Humanities

The Faculty of Humanities with its total of 15 departments is one of the largest faculties at the UDE and one of the most diversified faculties of humanities in Germany. What all of our research units have in common is the endeavour to research and understand all aspects of human culture and the products of the human mind. This is done by investigating the theories and uses of language in all their diversity and various forms of human interaction including literature and culture, not only from a synchronic but also a historical or geographical perspective, as well as by focusing on the aesthetic, theological and philosophical aspects of all these phenomena.

By reason of the sheer size and diversity of our faculty it would be impossible to even list all projects, cooperations and research results that have been realized over the last two years, let alone to give these an adequate representation. Therefore, beginning with this research report, we would like to take the opportunity to highlight one of the central research areas covered by our various institutes. This will enable us successively to represent each research unit of our faculty in adequate detail. For a start, we will report on research of urbanity and metropolitan areas and – closely linked with this – research of the metropolitan area of the Ruhr.
A detailed survey of all the further research activities our faculty is engaged in under the headings of Migration and Multilingualism, Identity, Interculturality and Gender; Language, Interaction and Media; Cultural Studies and Didactics has recently been established with a data base created by PD Dr. Johannes Lehmann (www.uni-due.de/geisteswissenschaften/forschung).