Workshop im Landhaus Rothenberge

History of the workshop

The aim of the annual Applied Classification Analysis workshop is to combine further developments and newer methods of classification with applications in the social sciences. The idea of the workshop goes back to the international symposium Application of Latent Trait and Latent Class Models , which was organised in Sankelmark in 1994 by Jürgen Rost and Rolf Langeheine (Institute for Science Education, Kiel). The basic ideas of this symposium have been continued since 1995 in the form of a workshop organised by Jost Reinecke and Christian Tarnai (then both from the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster), whereby the name Applied Classification Analysis (AKA) has evolved over the years as a result of the contributions. The Landhaus Rothenberge, a former manufacturer's villa maintained by the Fördergesellschaft der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster, provided a suitable conference venue.

After Landhaus Rothenberge had to be closed in 2012 for fire safety reasons, the workshop was held at other locations from 2013 to 2017, including the conference centre at Irsee Monastery.

Following extensive renovations, Landhaus Rothenberge was reopened to the general public for the first time on Sunday, 9 September 2018. Further impressions of the opening can be found here.

In 2018, the Applied Classification Analysis workshop was once again held at Landhaus Rothenberge, where the 25th anniversary was celebrated in 2019. The contributions to this workshop were published in a volume edited by the organisers in 2021 under the title Classification Analyses in the Social Sciences by Waxmann Verlag. Selected contributions from the workshops were also previously published by the workshop organisers in 2000 and 2008 by Waxmann Verlag.

As the reservation procedure for external users of the Landhaus Rothenberge has changed, it was decided in 2019 to hold the workshop at other conference venues in future; initially at the conference centre of the Irsee Monastery. Mark Stemmler (Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg) has taken over the conference organisation from 2020, initially in cooperation with the previous organisers Jost Reinecke (Bielefeld University) and Christian Tarnai (Bundeswehr University Munich).