With its 80 professors and 240 academic teachers the Faculty of the Humanities is one of the largest at the University of Duisburg-Essen, as well as being among the most diversified Faculties of Humanities in Germany. The excellence of its research at UDE is mainly based, in keeping with the general research culture of the humanities, on individual projects. In addition to this, however, there are an increasing number of national and international research groups that transcend the confines of individual disciplines, faculties and universities in which researchers from UDE participate.

The members of our faculty are nationally and internationally renowned scholars, who, in their respective disciplines, are making highly relevant contributions to the current level of debate. This is reflected by the numerous publications, scholarly journals and publications series emanating from this as well as several online portals, international conferences plus a large number of projects with third party funding.

The following six topics of current research – without any claim to completeness – afford a sample of the works-in-progress among the 15 departments of the Faculty of the Humanities. The complete list of all the research activities going on outside these focal points can be found under the following links:

Ever since the humanities have existed as a separate category of disciplines from the natural sciences, understanding and coping with the problems of our own present has been one of central concern. Among the phenomena of the age of Modernity that are bring intensively researched at UDE is that of Urbanism. Besides participating in the university-wide main focus on “Urban Systems” there are numerous projects on the topic of the city and of metropolitan areas – form “visual multi-lingualism in the metropolitan Ruhr area” via “A literary and cultural history of London” to a manual entitled “The City” or the research on “Forms representing the city in texts, maps and images”. Numerous other projects deal with the phenomenon of urbanism from the perspective of history, linguistics as well as communication studies.

The research on Migration and Multilingualism, which forms another main point of study in the Faculty of Humanities, is closely related with the preceding topic. This involves questions of historical relevance like the German or Yiddish speaking refugees in London 1848-1945, and other questions that fall within the purview of education studies (like the factors determining educational success among migrants in the German education system, but also  comprises linguistic, literary or cultural studies projects (like an examination of “Multilingualism at international conferences” or the research into “The construction of identity in multilingual literature”).

Another focal point is on Identity, inter-culturalism and gender. Besides a project in art history on “Africa as a concept of Modernity” or “Diary structures in photographic  self-representations” and an inquiry conducted by communications studies into “Identity formation under pressure” concerning people heavily in debt, other projects deserve mention; such as the research into questions of identity and inter-culturalism, e.g. on the German/Dutch border, the relationship between the western world and Japan, or – as an example of identity constructs in a colonial context – of Puerto Rico. The research into the problem of gender can also be subsumed under the problem of identity construction. Accordingly, there are projects on “Gender and Sexuality in Neo-orientalism and Occidentalism” as well as on the relationship between gender and power in the Middle Ages or – in a theological perspective – between gender and religion.

The topic of Language, Interaction and Media is a pivotal aspect in a variety of projects and activities. Especially the research done in communication studies and linguistics is focused on the relationship between human interaction and media, such as analyzing “Video conferences between isolated children suffering from cancer and their friends and relations”, or “Interactive practices in computer-based communication” or “Social practices in the hybrid zone of long distance media communication”. In many of these communication processes digitalized media are playing an increasingly important role as research instruments, especially in corpus-based linguistic research. The projects corresponding with this aim at establishing specific databases, e.g. establishing the “Rostock Newspaper Corpus at UDE for the corpus-based research into news discourses”, or the completion of a “Construction Glossary” (KoGloss) in order to gain insights into the construction templates of specialized languages or to improve the didactics of foreign language acquisition.

Another focus that is of central relevance concerns Questions of Cultural Studies. The spectrum of research that can be subsumed under this category is extremely wide and extends from monographs on anger and rage, via the discourse of shame or the relationship between religion and violence, or on the cultural paradigm of energy (Prometheus) all the way to the history of intellectual property or to orientalism in 18^th century England. Further areas of research are, among others, the relationship between world constructs and the perception of time in the early Middle Ages, the communicative forms of rulership in the early Modern Age from an international perspective as well as salvation and redemption as basic narratives right up to the Modern Age. But also questions of a more contemporary concern are playing an important part, such as in the project entitled “Process of fascination – the attractiveness of Islamic sermons for adolescents”.

In the DFG-sponsored graduate college project entitled "Prevention, anticipation and prediction: Coming to terms with contingency by planning for the future", the timelessly relevant problem of how to cope with contingency is researched by placing it in an historical perspective. In a comparative overview spanning several epochs, various concepts of the future are to be examined not only in terms of their discursive manifestations, but also on the level of concrete planning for the future. Additionally, there are projects on the concepts of abroad and home, on “trans-cultural identity constructs” and the construct of the Other in a colonial context – all of which are interconnected with the focus on “Identity and Inter-culturalism”.

The final emphasis in research is on Didactics, which is traditionally of high relevance at UDE due to its having been formed through the merger of two former comprehensive universities of Duisburg and Essen. Areas of interest are, among numerous others, drama and theater in the classroom; there are, additionally, numerous projects on facilitating language learning, on the educational efficacy of hypertexts and various other projects. As part of this new reading materials are being developed in Essen, such as a web portal within the project manual ProDaz, which aims to provide comprehensive information on topics like multilingualism, language development, the diagnostics of linguistic competence and language improvement. This can take the form of a fundamental critique of teaching material (Lehrwerke 2.0) or empirical research into E-learning.