Modern societies are characterised by migration, multilingualism and cultural transformation processes. As a global phenomenon, multilingualism has a lasting impact on social structures, values and cultural identities as well as economic and political systems and educational institutions. This calls for increased sensitivity in humanities research and teaching towards the polyphony of languages and cultures, which is increasingly developing from an exception to a social norm.
Multilingualism and cultural transformations are not only a mirror of society and a resource for linguistic communication, but also the primary tool for knowledge discourse, the acquisition of education, the construction of identities and the negotiation processes of social coexistence.
The aim of the core research area is to enable new perspectives on social, institutional and individual manifestations of multilingualism, migration and the resulting cultural transformations through interdisciplinary research in the humanities. Synergies are to be created through collaborative research and research activities are to be sustainably networked at faculty and university level.
The research projects in the core research area will be organised along the three perspectives of space - time - actors. In social, cultural, political or imagined spaces of multilingualism and language contact, actors and artefacts are at the centre of the examination of linguistic and cultural transformation processes. In the core research area, the focus is also placed on language acquisition, language mediation, translation and mediation activities. In areas of multilingualism, such as in the education or health sector, in economic or cultural institutions, multilingual actors with their diverse linguistic practices, attributions of meaning or constructions of meaning will increasingly take centre stage. Multilingualism, migration and cultural transformation will also be examined from a historical perspective along the dimension of time. With its interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary potential, humanities research plays a central role in reflecting on linguistic inequalities in their temporal dimension and critically scrutinising political discourses in this regard.
In the spirit of rethinking the humanities in view of the multiple challenges facing contemporary societies and the high social relevance of multilingualism, migration and cultural transformation, the focus area will combine critical thinking with fieldwork and enable research at the interface of theoretical foundations and applied perspectives. A key objective and task here is to emphasise the transfer of scientific findings into teaching and society. This close link expresses the commitment of the future-oriented humanities to help shape pluralistic societies and to find joint inter- and transdisciplinary solutions to the multiple crises and challenges of the present and the future.