Study Groups

The Study Groups at the Bielefeld Department of History provide a completely new kind of academic teaching. All groups are working on key thematic and methodological issues within the Bielefeld research profile. In every group, graduate students have the opportunity to work with researchers of all qualification levels (doctoral students, doctors, professors) and benefit from flat hierarchies that allow new levels of academic interaction.

Study Groups aim at concerted, early support for young academics in core research areas. They take talented students beyond seminars and introduce them to specifically "Bielefeld" topics, thereby forming groups of young academics with similar standards of knowledge at an early stage of their careers.

Study Groups are long-time projects. Through their flexible schedules, they help to compensate for the disadvantages of a broadly modularized study programme. By creating a space for very flexible work styles, they offer great intellectual potential. Students have numerous opportunities to develop the work style that suits them best: for example, they can work in self-organized groups, merge different seminars together for sessions on theory, or organize an all-day workshop on a specific topic. Some groups are also interdisciplinary and profit greatly from analysing a topic from different disciplinary perspectives.