Founded in 1737, the University of Goettingen is a research university of international renown with strong focuses in research-led teaching. The city of Goettingen is associated with 46 Nobel Prize winners, who all lived and worked here. The University is distinguished by the rich diversity of its subject spectrum, particularly in the humanities, and its excellent facilities for the pursuit of scientific research. At the beginning of 2003, the University of Goettingen became the first German university with a comprehensive range of disciplines to assume the legal status of a foundation under public law. The University has since then enhanced its research profile, created new research entities such as the Courant Research Centres and the Lichtenberg-Kolleg, intensified cooperation on the Goettingen Campus, attracted and retained outstanding academics and supported the recruitment of excellent students and young academics from abroad. The University is the founding member of the Coimbra Group and the U4 Network and is running active agreements with institutions of higher education in 90 countries. From 2007 to 2012, the University of Goettingen was rewarded funding from the Initiative of Excellence of the German Federal and StateGovernments with its institutional strategy for the future, entitled “Goettingen: Tradition – Innovation – Autonomy”. The University has since realized all measures of the concept. In 2015, about 30,000 students(approx. 12 % from abroad) were enrolled at 13 faculties. Teaching encompasses 193 programmes of study (i.e. 86 Bachelor/75 Master/20 PhD and other). The University of Goettingen has a long history of European funding, mainly within the Framework Programmes. It participated in 91 projects within FP7 (25 of those as coordinator) and has been involved in about 30 projects within Horizon2020; six of them from the European Research Council.
Prof. Dr. Sabine Hess | Principal Investigator
Full professor of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology. She specialises in migration and border studies focusing on forms of transnationalism and Europeanisation with a specific interest in the external border region in South-Eastern Europe. She is a founding member of the European interdisciplinary “Network on critical migration and border studies” (kritnet) and directs the interdisciplinary “Laboratory on migration and border regime studies” at the University of Goettingen that provides space for regular discussions on theories and research in the respective fields for 18 PhD students and Postdocs. Hess successfully conducted several third-party funded projects and graduate programs such as “Migrational societies and Border regime constructions”, funded by the state of Lower Saxony.
shess@uni-goettingen.de
Prof. Dr. Alexander-Kenneth Nagel
Full professor of Religious Studies with particular emphasis on the social scientific study of religion at the Institute for Sociology. His research interests include religious migrant communities and their role in accommodating the needs of refugees. Nagel successfully conducted several third-party funded projects, such as a junior research group on the civic potentials of religious migrant communities, funded by the state of North Rhine Westphalia.
alexander-kenneth.nagel@sowi.uni-goettingen.de
Dr. J. Eduardo Chemin
sociologist and senior researcher who conducts interdisciplinary multi-methodological research on religion and forced migration, in particular on the Syrian diaspora in Turkey and Europe. His broader interests are in the areas of mobilities (religion and heritage tourism and forced migration) and the Sociology and Anthropology of religion (pilgrimage sites and traditions, contested religious spaces, secular/religious dynamics, religious heritage, religion and politics in Latin America and Europe, consumer culture and religious belief and belonging).
eduardo.chemin@uni-goettingen.de
Bernd Kasparek
Bernd Kasparek is a cultural anthropologist and mathematician, currently
completing his PhD thesis at the University of Göttingen. His interests
are border and migration regime research and Europeanisation. He is a
member of the Network for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies
and on the editorial board of the journal movements.
bernd.kasparek@uni-goettingen.de
Recent Blog Entries
by Jasmin Lilian Diab, Fouad M. Fouad | Global Health Institute, American University of Beirut
The Syrian civil war has displaced more than half of Syria’s population; within Syria for safety or to the neighboring countries to seek refuge. In the first two years of the Syria crisis, these countries; Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, have opened their borders with no restrictions. The international humanitarian organizations and the international community have supported these states with the heavy burdens on their infrastructure.