Knowledge Systems

Bildinfo

Foto: Pixabay

The projects in this research area analyze how knowledge systems structure different spheres of human activity, in which they are simultaneously (re)produced. In particular, they analyze the change as well as the impact of different forms of knowledge in politics and the economy. Examining contemporary history as a whole, they place specigif emphasis on the importance of scientific knowledge for the transformation of worldviews and modes of action. In addition, they reflect upon the effects of past knowledge systems on historical scholarship and historiography.

Projekte

Jary Koch

The digital transformation of the chemical-pharmaceutical industry since the 1970s

PhD project

The project deals with the fundamental changes in industrial labour and in the wake of the rise of digital technologies. It analyses the influence of digital change for corporate strategies and work processes in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry since the 1970s.

Florian Schmaltz

Aeronautical Research and Occupation Policy in the Second World War: Satelites and Outposts of the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt unter Nazi rule in Europe

Associated research project
The project on the history of aeronautical research during the Second World War, focusing on the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt (AVA) Göttingen, intends to open up new perspectives. 

Désirée Schauz

A history of ‘head work’. Critical perspectives on knowledge society

Associated research project
The project explores the question of how influential the debates on the knowledge society were for the reconfiguration of labour in the late 20th and early 21st century. 

Simon Specht

The concept of ‘progress’ in the twentieth century: decline, resilience, and conceptual change

PhD project
The project examines the history of the semantics of ‘progress’ (‘Fortschritt’) in twentieth century german political language. The project is part of an investigation of political-social concepts of time and process and is funded within the framework of the collaborative project "The 20th Century in Basic Concepts. A Dictionary of Historical Semantics in Germany".

Agnes Bauer

Comprehending the human psyche and grasping motor skills: the history of technical psychological testing and the relationship of manual and intellectual work

Asociated PhD project
This project is situated in between the history of science, technology and media. The focus of the research will be the relationship between thinking and (manual) labour and how it was measured, stabilised, scrutinised or formed in the first place by psychological performance tests in Germany (and partly Austria and Switzerland) during the 20th century.

Stefan Jehne

A socialist variant of eugenics? Sterilization discourses and practices in the SBZ and GDR 1945 to 1990 between the poles of the national socialist past, planning and biopolitics

Associated PhD project
The project analyses why there had not been a comprehensive prosecution despite the abolition of the sterilization law and why most of these few investigations and criminal procedures remained without conviction. 

Christopher Neumaier

Efficiency and Its Limits: (digital) Product Design and Shifting Job Requirements in the High-Tech Industry since the 1970s

Research project
The project analyzes how job requirements in three high-tech industries – automobiles, pharmaceutics, and information and communication technology – shifted in the Federal Republic of Germany since the 1970s. 

Rüdiger Graf

Predict and Control. Behavioral Knowledge and Policy since the mid-Twentieth Century

Research project
The project analyzes the transdisciplinary emergence of a specific body of behavioral knowledge in the second half of the twentieth century, asking how regulatory approaches to human beings changed in the paradigm of behavior.