The Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg was founded in 1973, making it one of Germany's young universities. Its goal is to find answers to society's significant challenges in the 21st century – through interdisciplinary, cutting-edge research.
The Oldenburg campus pathways are short: the University's academic staff and administrative staff work closely together, using an interdisciplinary approach. Many are integrated into particular research areas, research groups, and European clusters of excellence.
The University cooperates closely with more than 200 other universities worldwide and is affiliated with non-university institutes in research, education, culture, and business.
The University of Oldenburg is preparing over 13,700 students for professional life. It offers a broad range of disciplines, from language studies, cultural studies, and the humanities to educational sciences, art and musicology, the economic and social sciences, mathematics, computer science, the natural sciences, and the new medicine and health science programs established in 2012.
In recent years, the University of Oldenburg has developed a targeted strategy for expanding existing research strengths to fully exploit and open up further research potential, leading to an increased national and international visibility of the University of Oldenburg.
Based on criteria that evolved as a national and international assessment standard, the University has agreed on the following key topics for research and teaching:
The guiding theme Environment and Sustainability combines questions and methods of natural and social sciences and sociology with the declared aim to develop forward-looking solutions for a reflected, responsible and efficient use of our planet's resources. It brings together the priorities of biodiversity and marine sciences, sustainability, and energies of the future.
The research focus on biodiversity and marine science originated from combining the expert knowledge at the Institute of Biology and Environmental Sciences (IBU) and the Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM). The IBU's strength relates to its research on functional, physiological, sensory, and genetic adaptations to variations in environmental conditions. The ICBM is renowned for its interdisciplinary marine environmental focus on biogeochemistry, fluxes of matter and energy, and biodiversity's functional role in ecosystems. Biodiversity research deals with the adaptive capacity of organisms, including the basic genetic processes, the analysis of interactions and coexistence mechanisms among organisms, and changes in biodiversity and resulting implications for ecosystem functions. Using empirical and theoretical approaches, we study the evolutionary and ecological processes governing terrestrial and marine biodiversity patterns and their dynamics in times of rapid global change. The synthesis of terrestrial and marine biodiversity research is a unique feature at our University, which is also reflected in the collaborative research project BEFmate of the universities Oldenburg (IBU, ICBM) and Göttingen.
A pronounced interdisciplinary approach characterizes the marine sciences in Oldenburg, combining biological, geochemical, physical, and modeling studies. The Wadden Sea systems analysis, a model region for other coastal areas, has provided a unique baseline for coastal research in Oldenburg. Also, researchers of the ICBM study deep sea and ocean ecology with the newly constructed research vessel "Sonne" based in Wilhelmshaven. Particularly noteworthy is the Transregio SFB51, focusing on the functional role of the marine Roseobacter bacteria and other projects that address the consequences of global environmental change.
Marine research is conducted at the university locations Oldenburg and Wilhelmshaven, the latter with 5 ICBM research groups. Several boats, a unique data logging facility in the Wadden Sea, and an outstanding infrastructure for chemical analytics, molecular biology, and experimental environmental studies, offer a unique research environment. We aim at a higher integration with extra-faculty research institutions; currently, there are four joint professorships. In the future, cooperation with social-ecological research groups should be encouraged. In the long run, we aim at establishing a common regional research area in the Northwest, including the universities Bremen and Groningen (NL).
This research area, which is framed by a Cultural Studies-oriented perspective, examines forms of diversity (cultural, social, religious, gender, etc.) in various contemporary and historical contexts. It analyzes establishing historically and culturally specific orders of belonging and difference through cultural practices and forms of expression in pluralized societies. Apart from analyzing the culturally and historically different aesthetics of these practices and forms of expression, the research area also sheds light on the modes of their distribution as well as on their potential functions in processes of individual and collective identity formation within (and as a transgression of) these orders of belonging and difference. Moreover, in close connection to this perspective on diversity, the research area also focuses on the preconditions, media, and technologies of societal participation, particularly addressing both the normative dimension and the historicity of the concept of participation.
A range of third party-funded projects is situated in this research area (e.g., the Ph.D. Program "Cultures of Participation "two Helene-Lange Ph.D. Programs, i.e., "Identity Constructions of Adolescents in a Post-Socialist Society of Transformation: The Case of Belarus "and "Queer Studies and Intermediality "research projects, e.g., on "Gender Knowledge in and between the Disciplines, "on "Freiheitsraum Reformation, "on the history of ideas, and on editing the works of Karl Jaspers). Moreover, the research area is characterized by a dense international network of partners, e.g., through the cooperation with the Federal Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe (BKGE) or through the activities of the DIVERSITAS network (with India and South Africa). These networking activities and joint research initiatives within the research area should be further encouraged and extended in the future.
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