At RUB, diversity is an important factor in research and teaching. Many academics deal with diversity or the social structures associated with it from different perspectives.
Diversity can be studied and researched from different academic perspectives. Current research and teaching projects that focus on diversity help to better understand societies, minorities, cultures and specific groups of people.
At RUB, the issue of gender is addressed in research and teaching. In addition, there is a research centre, study programmes and a fellowship programme.
The Marie Jahoda Center for International Gender Studies fosters interdisciplinary collaboration between dedicated researchers.
In order to assess inequality structures in all their complexity, interactions with other categories such as class, disability, age, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity are examined and taught in two interdisciplinary gender studies programmes.
Students develop a cross-disciplinary and intersectional understanding of the workings of power and inequality and the resulting consequences for individuals and society as part of the degree programmes International Gender Studies (1-subject Master’s degree) and Gender Studies – Culture, Communication, Society (2-subject Master’s degree).
With these qualifications, they get to initiate new processes in research and practice, develop instruments for creating equal opportunities and inclusion, and implement diversity measures.
At the Faculty of History, RUB additionally offers the Master’s degree programme MATILDA – European Master in Women’s and Gender History.
The Marie Jahoda Fellowship Programme at Ruhr-Universität continues the tradition of the Marie Jahoda Visiting Professorship, which was established in 1994 and is considered a beacon of gender research at RUB.
The aim of the fellowship programme is to promote international exchange on research and teaching in the field of gender studies and to establish sustainable international collaborations – all this closely linked to the research fields at the Marie Jahoda Center for International Gender Studies.
RUB has been part of the EU-funded project RESET “Redesigning Equality and Scientific Excellence Together” since 2021. The project aims to promote equality in higher education policy strategies and, above all, to structurally anchor equality at higher education institutions that have not yet developed institutionalised equal opportunity strategies. The project will run until 2024.
Professor Maren Lorenz’s project combines the dimension of gender and body history with the praxeological approach of recent administrative and state history.
The significance of the relational category of gender is examined for the constitution and stabilisation of domination and statehood in the sense of Foucaultian governmentality and biopolitics.
For one day, students slip into the role of cultural researchers who deal with the subject of “sexual and gender diversity”.
Current research projects at RUB explore racism and cultural diversity from different perspectives.
The project aims, among other things, to explore what ideas, perceptions and experiences of and with democracy and participation refugee and non-refugee students have in classes preparing for vocational training at vocational schools.
The Mercator Foundation funded the project until February 2022.
The “Zuwanderung aus Südosteuropa - Teilhabe und Zusammenhalt auf kommunaler Ebene ermöglichen” (“Immigration from South Eastern Europe – Enabling Participation and Solidarity at the Municipal Level”) project records the complex migration movements between Bulgaria, Romania and six selected municipalities in the Ruhr region, the participation processes that take place and the mechanisms of exclusion and stigmatisation. The study also examines the social conditions that promote or limit opportunities for participation.
The project will run until March 2024.
Current projects focus on religious diversity.
Researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum, University of Osnabrück, LMU Munich and Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg cooperate with the Muslim Avicenna-Studienwerk and the Jewish Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Studienwerk: Together they launch the Research Training Group “Jüdische und muslimische Religionsgemeinschaften aus sozialwissenschaftlicher Perspektive” (“Jewish and Muslim Religious Communities from a Sociological Perspective”).
Funded by Avicenna-Studienwerk and Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Studienwerk. The project will run until June 2024.
The project will conduct a lesson observation study in schools on the critique of antisemitism in the subjects of economics/politics, social sciences, history, Catholic/Protestant religious education and Islamic studies.
In addition, teaching materials will be developed and teachers will receive further training.
Funded by the NRW Ministry of Education and the NRW Anti-Semitism Commissioner. The project will run until August 2023.
CERES has been conducting quantitative as well as qualitative studies to survey the religious landscape of the Ruhr region since 2005, for example in the project Religious Diversity – locally – regionally – globally.
This RUB Academy course offers a space and opportunity for interested people from church, the diaconate and society to reflect on intercultural experiences academically, empirically and in exchange, and to deepen intercultural encounters.
Current projects researching into ableism and inclusion.
Prof. Dr. Ennuschat published a legal opinion on the accommodation of students with disabilities and disadvantages in academic examinations on 29.10.2019 on behalf of the German Student Union (Deutsches Studentenwerk)
Some of the teaching and research projects are interdisciplinary and address intersectionality, among other topics.
RUB is part of the international university consortium UNIC – European University of Post-Industrial Cities.
It is an association of eight universities dedicated to promoting student mobility, social integration and diversity. By creating a European university, the aim is to increase exchange and cooperation in teaching, research and transfer. Students, researchers, teachers and administrative staff are to benefit from the opportunities offered by a European campus.
Through its “UNIC4ER – Engaged Research” unit, the consortium also focuses specifically on impact-oriented, systematic co-production of knowledge for and with society. In addition to RUB, UNIC includes universities from Bilbao, Cork, Istanbul, Liège, Oulu, Rotterdam and Zagreb.
The Intersect project explores discrimination in mental health care.
People with mental health problems are at high risk of experiencing discrimination. Experiences of discrimination differ depending on which other social categories (e.g. gender, class, race/ethnicity, sexuality) are attributed to a person, i.e. whether they are subject to so-called multiple discrimination. Multiple discrimination affects the form and frequency of coercion in psychiatry.
Funded by the Faculty of Medicine at Ruhr-Universität Bochum as part of the FoRUM programme. The project will run until 2023.
The ongoing work of the newly founded Diversity Think Tank has revealed that little meaningful data is available on experiences of discrimination at Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
Professor Hans Alves (Social Cognition, Faculty of Psychology) is currently conducting a study among students, in collaboration with Junior Professor Karim Fereidooni (Didactics of Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Science) and Professor Katja Sabisch (Gender Studies, Faculty of Social Science).
The study systematically surveys the prevalence of experiences of discrimination on campus and provides a basis for the development of interventions.
