LOEWE
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Food, favorite, art motif: New LOEWE focus on the relationship between humans and animals
The new LOEWE priority "Animal - Human - Society. Approaches to interdisciplinary animal research" will initially be funded for three years with around 3.6 million euros. This was announced by the Hessian Ministry of Science and the Arts in Wiesbaden on Thursday. Scientists from the agricultural sciences as well as German studies, history, art history, philosophy and theology are involved.
"With this approval, the state of Hesse is also rewarding our exceptionally broad interdisciplinary approach," said a delighted Prof. Dr. Winfried Speitkamp, Head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary History and coordinator of the project. "We are using a combination of subject expertise that is only concentrated in Kassel. This enables us to carry out basic research, but the project also has direct application relevance in the areas of animal husbandry, animal breeding, animal research, animal presentation, animal law and ethics," continues Speitkamp.
The relationship between humans and animals has been ambivalent since the beginning of civilization: animals are meat suppliers, for example, and are often regarded as enemies (e.g. so-called pests or predators), but sometimes also as best friends. Even in the early days of mankind, animals were among the first motifs in art; at some times they were seen as embodiments of gods, at other times they were used by humans as experimental objects. The new LOEWE focus is based on current debates about the treatment of animals (animal testing, factory farming, animal rights), but deliberately reaches beyond them. One aim is to advance these discussions through systematic fundamental considerations. On the one hand, the Kassel researchers assume that humans and animals must be considered in their mutual relationship with each other. On the other hand, they ask about the historical and social conditions of this relationship. This is because different constellations have produced and continue to produce very different forms of the human-animal relationship. In the process, ideas and realities of humans and animals also change: Forms of the "creation" of animals are therefore examined, whether through animal breeding (selection, premiums), animal husbandry (farm animals, zoo animals), animal research (behavioral research, medical research) or animal representation (narrative, visual). "In view of the multidimensional nature of the topic, the project requires an interdisciplinary exchange on questions, methods and results," explained Speitkamp. "This is why we are building on a Kassel tradition of combining natural and cultural research that goes back to the Enlightenment." The project will start at the beginning of 2014.
The participating departments and their heads in detail: Livestock Ethology and Animal Husbandry (Prof. Dr. Ute Knierim), Animal Husbandry (Prof. Dr. Sven König), Agricultural History (Prof. Dr. Werner Troßbach), Germanic Medieval Studies (Prof. Dr. Claudia Brinker-von der Heyde), Modern and Contemporary History (Prof. Dr. Winfried Speitkamp), Early Modern History (Prof. Dr. Anne-Charlott Trepp), Medieval and Modern Art History (Prof. Dr. Martina Sitt), Modern Art History (Prof. Dr. Alexis Joachimides), Theoretical Philosophy (Prof. Dr. Dr. Kristian Köchy), Catholic Theology/Biblical Theology (Prof. Dr. Ilse Müllner).
The University of Kassel is currently involved in four LOEWE priorities: the projects ELCH (electron dynamics of chiral systems), VENUS (information technology design), Cocoon (cooperative sensor communication) and IPF (integrative mushroom research). The State Offensive for the Development of Scientific and Economic Excellence - LOEWE for short - is a program with which the State of Hesse has been strengthening the research landscape and promoting outstanding scientific collaborative projects since 2008. Find out more about LOEWE and previous Kassel projects at goo.gl/sMhJg and www.proloewe.de.
Picture of Professor Dr. Winfried Speitkamp at
www.uni- kassel.de/uni/fileadmin/datas/uni/presse/anhaenge/2013/Speitkamp_Winfried_7.jpg