At the Heisenberg Professorship Transformation of Governance in Education and Society, we follow an interdisciplinary and international approach towards governance analyses in modern societies. Building on a relational perspective on regulation and control, the governance approach combines empirical analyses and theoretical-methodological innovation, while also relating back to “classical” questions of sociology.
Currently, our research is primarily concerned with processes of growing datafication and digitalization in education and society. Both present global as well as cross-sectoral trends, while simultaneously manifesting in very context-specific ways (e.g. differently in Germany than in the US, differently in education than in health or social security, etc.). It is these different contexts, for which we try to develop a more nuanced understanding through our various research projects.
An additional goal is to make our research applicable also to people outside the university (teachers, state actors, the wider public, etc.). Examples are our initiatives UNBLACK THE BOX as well as SMASCH, which seek to enable educational institutions and teachers to respond to the growing datafication and digitalization of education with enlightened, critical and conscious decision-making, even without extensive IT knowledge.
Since August 2020, the professorship is funded by the Heisenberg Program of the German Research Foundation (DFG).
