All Events

Die Wissenschaftsfreiheit ist essenziell für eine funktionierende Demokratie und in Deutschland im Grundgesetz verankert. Allerdings ist sie auch ein soziales Konzept, das vor dem Hintergrund gesellschaftlichen Wandels fortlaufend neu politisch und juristisch ausgehandelt wird. Die Idee der Wissenschaftsfreiheit ist daher stets umkämpft – insbesondere in Zeiten gesellschaftlicher Polarisierung. [more]

The main cause of the climate crisis is the burning of fossil fuels. This talk will turn the question around and aim at identifying the social problems that were meant to be solved by burning fossil fuels, looking in particular at critical junctures in human history. [more]

The talk will give an overview of Germany’s transformation to a “world export champion” (Exportweltmeister), a concept that first appeared in 1986. The talk will mark the most important turning points and highlight in particular the institutions and instruments that have been created over more than a century by an elite network of politicians and businesspeople in promotion of the German export drive. [more]

We live in a postneoliberal age, or so we often hear. The state again has transformative ambitions, guided by national security, SDG development, or clean industrialization priorities. Yet it faces one critical question: how to pay for transformation? [more]

In light of debates about the “return of the state,” the conference explores the idea that fragmentation has transformed and on the whole weakened public capacities for coherent and consequential responses to the social, economic, ecological, and political problems of our time. [more]

The European Union’s approach to market competition is undergoing significant changes. Originally enshrined in the treaties that built the Single European Market, the EU’s model emphasized neoliberal competition policies. Competition, now being “securitized” in the EU, is reshaped by geopolitical concerns rather than purely economic ones. As the EU was initially established as a peace project, how will the intertwining of market and security logics shape the EU going forward? [more]