Dear FRIAS Community,
we hope all of you had a great start to the new year! FRIAS is happy to welcome its new fellows who arrived in Freiburg in the last days. Not only judging from the lively community of fellows, the interesting conversations and the research ideas circling around at the Institute, 2017 promises to be an exciting year.
As always, please feel free to forward the Express to friends and colleagues.
 TOP NEWS
On May 2nd, 2016, the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) and the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft organized a public conference in Berlin. The conference was attended by more than 150 representatives of science organisations, ministries and foundations. It was the very first conference in Germany focusing on the role of Institutes for Advanced Studies (IAS) and closely related international research colleges in the German research landscape. FRIAS has now published comprehensive documentation of the conference (in German), including the talks given by the main speakers, statements by participants of the panel discussions and an essay on the genesis of research colleges.
The main speakers of the conference were Prof. Dr. Peter Strohschneider (President of the German Research Foundation (DFG)), Dr. Enno Aufderheide (General Secretary of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation) and Dr. Wilhelm Krull (General Secretary of the Volkswagen Foundation). In their talks, which are included in full in the booklet, the speakers address the history of Institutes for Advanced Studies and research colleges, their role in internationalisation strategies at German universities, and their position in the broader context of research funding in Germany.
Taken together, the contributions to this booklet provide a multifaceted overview of the diversity of research colleges in Germany. It becomes clear that research colleges / IAS have established themselves as important drivers of innovation within the German research landscape.
You can read the booklet online. The pdf can be downloaded here.
We are happy to send you a print version of the booklet. Simply send us an email at info@frias.uni-freiburg.de or give us a call at 076120397404
Other recent news
» For the Academic Year 2018/19 FRIAS is once again calling for applications for up to two research foci. Funding is directed at research fields in which the University of Freiburg excels, with the objective of enhancing these selected areas further and increasing international exposure. The programme targets teams of researchers from Freiburg that are characterised by outstanding academic performance and have ideally already achieved international visibility. More information
» FRIAS Director Bernd Kortmann has been appointed head of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) Policy Group for the Social Sciences and Humanities. LERU is a consortium of 23 European research universities that advocates the promotion of basic research at European universities. It has established itself as a major stakeholder in the EU and a well-respected voice in discussions about the future of Europe's research policy. LERU Communities and Policy Groups bring together representatives from all member universities to work on LERU policy or collaborative issues in certain areas.
LOOKING BACK
FRIAS has just released its own YouTube channel. Along with the media centre on our website, the channel will make selected events and lectures at FRIAS available to a larger audience. Beginning with the Lunch Lectures, videos will be uploaded successively. Together with our Twitter account, the channel makes the Institute's broad range of events and activities accessible for everyone interested. Furthermore, it allows fellows to increase the visibility of their research. In order to stay tuned about interesting lectures, please subscribe to our channel.
Others:
» For those interested in the FRIAS-USIAS Joint Research Group "Soldiers out of control? An entangled history of accidents in the French and German military, 1920-1970": A detailed report of their workshop on "Accidents and the state", which took place at FRIAS in June 2016, has just been published at HSozKult, a popular German information and communication platform for historians: http://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-6898
Furthermore, Peter Itzen, who is a member of this very group, recently gave our local newspaper Badische Zeitung an interview on the history of speed cameras in Germany. Read the full interview (in German) here.
LOOKING AHEAD
 FRIAS has just selected five new junior researcher conferences for the Academic Year 2017/18. The sheer number and quality of applications has once again demonstrated the wealth of innovative research ideas by junior researchers at the University of Freiburg. Every year, FRIAS funds conferences held by junior academics at the University of Freiburg, who apply with a concept for a conference or workshop. FRIAS offers organisational support and funding of up to 8,000 euros. In 2017/18, FRIAS will fund research conferences in mathematics, biology, environmental policy, physics and philosophy, with topics ranging from "Geometric analysis of metric spaces" to "The question of first principles in German idealism and today" to "Polycentric climate governance after Paris".
Upcoming Events
» The FRIAS Lunch Lectures on the topic of "Ignorance - what we don't know" will conclude with two final lectures. On January 26, 12:15 pm, Prof. Diego Vazquez will talk about "Ecological Ignorance": using the field of ecology as an example, Diego Vazquez will show that from the dynamics of populations to the nature of ecological niches and the influence of biodiversity on the functioning of ecosystems, ecology is a fascinating case in point for the interplay between research, knowledge and ignorance in science.
On February 9, 12:15 pm, JunProf. Bernhard Spielberg will talk about the final "unknown", namely "God": in his lecture, Bernhard Spielberg will explain why the fact that “No one has ever seen God…” (1 John 4:12a) does not mean the end for academic theology but rather marks its starting point.
The next Lunch Lecture series in the summer term 2017 will focus on the topic of "Fear" (lecture dates will be announced soon).
Furthermore, the lecture series by the Project Group "Language Dynamics Across the Life Span" will conclude on February 6, 2017 with a lecture by Dr. Falk Hüttig (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen) about "How literary acquisition changes mind and brain".
PEOPLE AT FRIAS
 Every month, FRIAS introduces one of the "people in the background", who contribute to the continuous development of the Institute, either as member of the Steering Committee or the Scientific Advisory Board.
This month: Dr. Ulrike Zimmermann
Dr. Ulrike Zimmermann is an internal member of FRIAS Steering Committee, which supervises the work of the Institute. She serves as the coordinator of the Research Training Group in the Collaborative Research Center 948 “Heroes-Heroisations-Heroisms”. The SBF 948 is funded by the German Research Foundation and consists of 45 scholars working in the fields of history, archaeology, literary and cultural studies, art history, theology, and the social sciences. Its objective is to understand heroic figures within their specific cultural, social, and political contexts.
Ulrike Zimmermann studied English and German in Freiburg and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She completed her PhD in Freiburg. Her monograph Comic Elements in Women's Novels of Development from the 1960s to the 1980s was published in 2013.
Her postdoctoral project (Habilitationsprojekt) focuses on popularizations of the eighteenth century. Further research interests include intersections of literature and science, the heroic in the long eighteenth century, the literary supernatural, and contemporary British fiction.
Ulrike Zimmermann is a member of SciNet, the Freiburg network for postdocs.
DIRECTOR'S CORNER
What is on the agenda for FRIAS in 2017?
Just before Christmas we received an official letter from the State Ministry with the wonderful and reassuring piece of news that the funding of FRIAS will be secured until October 2019. This was, little wonder, a Christmas present of a special kind for the entire FRIAS team, and a much deserved one at that! It will allow the Institute to steadily continue its mission, and to strongly support the University of Freiburg in its preparations for the third round of the German Excellence Initiative, both on the level of excellence clusters and the university as a whole. The new funding prospects allow us to immediately enter into the next university-internal competition for research foci in the Academic Year 2018/19 -- besides beginning to plan a few activities in the context of FRIAS's 10 year anniversary in 2018.
|
