(from the left) Bertram Schefold (professor emeritus of economic theory), Christian Wiese (professor of Jewish religious philosophy), Birgitta Wolff (president of Goethe University), Iwo Amelung (professor of sinology), Daniela Grunow (professor of sociology), Iris Helene Koban (managing director of the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften), Matthias Lutz-Bachmann (director of the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften) (Photo: Stefanie Wetzel)

The reception on Wednesday, May 3, 2017 that launched the summer semester at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften revolved primarily around the Goethe Fellowship Programme that begins in 2017 with the appointment of the first Goethe Fellows. The president of Goethe University, Professor Birgitta Wolff, introduced the program as an important instrument for fostering university research. The program was developed by the director of the Forschungskolleg, Prof. Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, the board of directors of the Forschungskolleg and the president’s office of the university. The goal of the program is to support the university’s professors in their quest to develop innovative research questions in the humanities and social sciences.

The following scholars were appointed early in 2017: Sociology Professor Daniela Grunow will carry out an interdisciplinary analysis of the relationship of changing social structures and political orientation in her project with the working title »Contested Social Structures«. Christian Wiese, professor of the philosophy of religion, will investigate how the representatives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam perceive each other and how cultural interactions, religious political conflicts and dialogical rapprochements can be described. Sinology Professor Iwo Amelung is planning a project about »Chinese Economic Thought« that is interesting from theoretical and historical perspectives and is also currently relevant in light of China’s reintegration into global economic relationships. He will work on this project with Professor Bertram Schefold, who as a senior fellow is also a member of the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften. Over the space of four years, the Goethe Fellowship Programme will provide the professors who are appointed to the institute as Goethe Fellows with the time, the space and the means to develop and work on new research ideas so that these ideas can then be the starting points to apply for larger externally funded projects. For example, the fellows can organize conferences at the institute with international guests or invite research partners from abroad to work with them on site. For this they will receive both financial support and the necessary time as they will be able to take advantage of a small reduction in their teaching obligations at the university. Very importantly, the program will also provide funding for guest professors to take over these teaching duties.

About the Goethe Fellows (2017-2020)

Daniela Grunow
Professor of sociology at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main
Research project at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:
»Contested Social Structures«
Daniela Grunow, who received her doctorate from Bamberg University in 2006, has been a professor of sociology at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main since 2013, specializing in the quantitative analysis of social change. Her research and teaching concentrate thematically on the interactions of employment markets, domestic work and gender relations in various social welfare states from the perspective of the course of life. Between 2011 and 2016 she led the »APPARENT – transition to parenthood« program, which was funded by the European Research Council (ERC). This program examined changes in the division of work between men and women in the transition into parenthood on an international scale. Some important publications for the planned research project: Couples' Transitions to Parenthood: Analysing Gender and Work in Europe, ed. with Marie Evertsson, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing 2016. »Familienpolitik, Bildung und Berufskarrieren von Müttern in Deutschland, USA und Schweden« (with Silke Aisenbrey & Marie Evertsson), in: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Bd. 63, H. 3 (2011).

Christian Wiese
Professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main
Research project at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:
»Wechselseitige Wahrnehmung von Judentum, Christentum und Islam: Kulturelle Interaktionen, religiös-politische Konflikte und dialogische Annäherungen« (»Mutual Perceptions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Cultural Interactions, Religious-Political Conflicts and Dialogical Rapprochements«)
Christian Wiese received his doctorate from Goethe University in 1997 and completed his habilitation in 2006 in the Faculty of Religious Studies/Jewish Studies at the University of Erfurt. He has held the Martin Buber Chair for Jewish Religious Philosophy at Goethe University in Frankfurt since 2010. His research interests include the Jewish religious philosophy of the modern age, German-Jewish and European-Jewish intellectual and cultural history as well as the history of Jewish-Christian relations. As of 2017 he is the director of the LOEWE Research Initiative funded by the state of Hessen entitled »Religiöse Positionierung. Modalitäten und Konstellationen in jüdischen, islamischen und christlichen Kontexten« (Religious Positioning: Modalities and Constellations in Jewish, Islamic and Christian Contexts) which has a fellow program at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften. Publications (monographs): Wissenschaft des Judentums und Protestantische Theologie im Wilhelminischen Deutschland. Ein »Schrei ins Leere«?, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 1999. The Life and Thought of Hans Jonas: Jewish Dimensions, Hanover, N.H. and London: Brandeis University Press 2007. Hoffnungen und Unheilsspuren. Jüdische Erfahrungen mit Martin Luther, Berlin 2017 (in preparation).

Iwo Amelung
Professor of sinology at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main
Research project at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften (with Bertram Schefold):
»Chinese Economic Thought«
Iwo Amelung received his doctorate in sinology in 1999 at the Freie Universität Berlin and completed his habilitation at the sinology department of the University of Erlangen in 2005. He has been professor of sinology at Goethe University in Frankfurt since 2005. His research interests include the administrative history of 19th century China as well as the history of science and knowledge in late Imperial China and the Republic of China. He has been speaker of the Frankfurt Collaborative Research Center »Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes« since January 2017. He is also the deputy executive director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for East Asian Studies (IZO) at Goethe University. Publications (a selection): Kritische Verhältnisse: Die Rezeption der Frankfurter Schule in China, ed. with A. Dippner, Frankfurt/Main, Campus 2009. Der Gelbe Fluß in Shandong (1851–1911). Überschwemmungskatastrophen und ihre Bewältigung im China der späten Qing-Zeit, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2000.

Bertram Schefold
Professor emeritus of economic theory in the Faculty of Economics
Research project at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften (with Iwo Amelung):
»Chinese Economic Thought«
Bertram Schefold completed his doctorate in economics at the University of Basel in 1971 and received an appointment in economic theory to the Department of Economics at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main in 1974. He has been a senior professor at the university since 2012. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Tübingen and the University of Macerata. In 2010, Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel awarded him the Thomas Guggenheim Prize in the History of Economics for his life’s work. Publications (selection): Wirtschaftsstile. Vol. 1: Studien zum Verhältnis von Ökonomie und Kultur. Vol. 2: Studien zur ökonomischen Theorie und zur Zukunft der Technik, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag 1994 and 1995. Great Economic Thinkers from Antiquity to the Historical School, London/New York: Routledge 2016. On the planned research project: Vademecum zu dem Klassiker der chinesischen Wirtschaftsdebatten. Kommentarband zum Faksimile des 1501 erschienenen Drucks (Hongzhi 14) von Huan Kuan: Yantie Lun, Düsseldorf Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen 2002.