Professor:innen im Spannungsfeld zwischen Wissenschaft, Politik und Gesellschaft (ProWisPol)

Contact:

Please contact Dr. Nadin Fromm for information about the project.

Project Team/Cooperation:

• Prof. Dr. Sylvia Veit (University of Kassel)
• Prof. Dr. Markus Seyfried (University of Police and Public Administration NRW)
• Dr. Nadin Fromm (University of Kassel)
• Jonas Schmitt (Student Assistant)

Duration:

November 2021 - November 2023

Summary:

In the management of crises, it becomes apparent how central scientific expertise can be for political decision-making processes and how much influence individual scientist:s can unfold. The increasing importance of evidence-based decision-making and the accompanying institutionalized and non-institutionalized policy advisory arrangements offer opportunities for understanding and further development on the one hand. On the other hand, however, they also open up a surface for attack. This is because science and politics follow different logics of action and time horizons. If politics and science interact too closely, then scientific expertise can come under suspicion as a potentially tendentious source of legitimacy, and the quality and credibility of scientific knowledge can be called into question. This not only puts pressure on policy makers, but also has implications for actors in the science/university system.

The research project examines political attitudes and the views of professors on the tense relationship between politics, science and society. In doing so, several research gaps are addressed at once: First, little is known about the political attitudes of professors at German universities. Second, there is little research on how professors view the tensions between science, politics, and society in different disciplinary contexts. Third, there is little systematic knowledge about the concrete knowledge transfer and consulting activities of professors and about their motives, recruitment patterns, and role perceptions in this regard.

In order to close these research gaps, two empirical sub-studies will be conducted. In a first step, professors of selected disciplines (Islamic Studies, Law, Medicine, Philosophy, Political Science, Physics) will be interviewed with the help of an online survey regarding their views on the field of tension between science, politics and society. After completion of the quantitative sub-study, a qualitative interview study with selected university professors will follow in a second step. The aim of the interviews is to gain in-depth knowledge about the self-perception of these university professors in the context of science-based transfer and policy advisory activities.

You would like to know more about the project? Then please feel free to contact us.