Research Priorities
The University of Hildesheim offers ideal conditions for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research thanks to its close-knit academic community and broad range of disciplines. This is further strengthened by a large number of collaborations with partners from academia, society, culture, and business. Three overarching research themes (“research priorities”) are currently taking shape at the University of Hildesheim. In these areas, researchers with complementary interests work across disciplinary boundaries to address societal challenges:
- Research Priority 1: Education and Participation in Society
- Research Priority 2: Aesthetic practice
- Research Priority 3: AI Everywhere
The research priorities are complemented by interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary areas with strong potential, at various stages of development, as well as by discipline-based research activities.
As the academic landscape continues to evolve, the University of Hildesheim regularly reviews and further develops its research priorities.
The Research Priorities at a glance
Research Priority 1: Education and Participation in Society
Social participation is essential to educational processes—just as education is essential to participation in social life. However, the education system in Germany has not been sufficiently successful in ensuring equal, non-discriminatory participation for all. The persistent close link between educational attainment and social background is particularly problematic. While extensive research describes—and in some cases explains—this situation, educational research at the University of Hildesheim places a particular emphasis on generating knowledge about how education and social background can be disentangled, on intersectional forms of discrimination, and on social participation in educational contexts. In doing so, it specifically aims to promote educational equity and the capacity for democratic participation. This research priority focuses on early childhood education, schooling, political and cultural education, as well as child and youth welfare and social services.
Research Priority 2: Aesthetic Practice
At the University of Hildesheim, aesthetic practice is understood as a framework that transcends and transforms classical aesthetics—and, with it, key positions in European concepts of art—in three ways. First, it involves observing and analysing non-artistic aesthetic phenomena in everyday and consumer culture, the media, and in digital and popular culture. Once the concept of aesthetic practice is no longer tied (exclusively) to the arts and the art world, everyday contexts can be examined in terms of practices such as rehearsing, improvising, moderating, or evaluating. Second, by engaging with non-European aesthetic practices and the theories associated with them, the University opens up a perspective of comparative, transcultural aesthetics. This makes it possible to problematise the neglect of practice in Eurocentric or European-influenced concepts of aesthetics. Third, educational and mediation processes—including their cultural-policy frameworks and philosophical assumptions—are examined as forms of aesthetic practice in order to explore interdisciplinary potential for education studies and the political and social sciences.
Research Priority 3: AI Everywhere
Applications of AI technologies now penetrate all areas of the economy and everyday life, driving transformative processes in society. The Research Priority “AI Everywhere” focuses in particular on three areas. Area 1 addresses the “design and development of AI and AI applications”. This involves the development of AI models and methods as well as the creation of (large-scale) AI systems—covering the entire processes from design through implementation to deployment and use. Area 2 covers the “analysis of transformations in society driven by AI and digitalisation”. As a result of the influence of AI-based information aggregation and evaluation processes in digital public domains, changes occur in both expert and everyday discourses, which require systematic investigation. Area 3 focuses on the “development of interactive (hybrid) methodological combinations”. In this context, hybrid intelligence - as a combination of human and artificial intelligence, in the sense of as human-machine cooperation (rather than mere interaction) - is particularly noteworthy.