Research fields at KWI are regularly readjusted based on the topics pursued by our researchers and director. Literary scholar Julika Griem has been responsible for KWI’s programme since April 2018, and the institute’s research fields are currently organised as follows: projects related to Constellations of Historical Impact reconstruct how the study of history always renegotiates the meaning of the past; the field of Visual Literacy foregrounds the hermeneutic and heuristic logics inherent in images. Under the heading Aesthetic Practices, we are interested in a cross-section of artefacts and their conditions of perception and contexts of reception. In the field Dialogues Between the Cultural and Social Sciences, we ask how philological and sociological theories and methodologies can be combined more symmetrically. Under Science Studies, we investigate self-descriptions and external descriptions of the sciences, broadly conceived. Finally, the Teaching Lab serves to develop new formats for the humanities and cultural sciences that can be exported as prototypes.
In various ways, reflection on humanities research itself has become a central focus of the institute’s work since 2018: What can it mean today to conduct research in the cultural sciences between formations organized along disciplinary and interdisciplinary lines? In light of dynamic technological changes unfolding with AI, how do we define and reorganize established forms of criticism and commentary, routines of reading and writing, collecting, documenting, and arguing? Under what social and economic conditions does our work take place, and which business models are driving structural transformation in the publishing market and its constitutive fictions of authorship? How do we find and choose our topics in the first place? Which funding logics, systemic constraints, and undesired effects influence research in the cultural sciences? Is it possible to analyse these factors so that they might be changed and improved? With such questions regarding the practical, institutional, and epistemological prerequisites, foundations, and consequences of our work, the institute’s team also highlights a perspective on science and higher education that needs to be continuously sharpened. As part of the ambitiously developed University Alliance Ruhr (UA Ruhr), we recognize the possibility and responsibility of inviting open discussions about our working conditions and their societal dimension.