Strategic Research Areas
Space for cutting-edge research
The four profiling, thematic research worlds focus on major topics of our time and offer points of contact for business and society.
Connected by the Bielefeld principle of Transcending Boundaries, all research worlds involve different faculties and scientific departments and realize interdisciplinary top-level research on an international level in joint research projects as well as through third-party funding.
Inequality, Uncertainty and Individualisation in a Changing World
Complex processes and effects of individual and social dynamics
Structures and Complexity in a Material World
Structures and processes at the interfaces of physics, chemistry, biology and bioinformatics
Collaborative Synergies in a Mathematical World
Basic concepts and theories in mathematics for application in economics and natural sciences
Intelligent Systems and Inclusive AI in a Socio-Technical World
Intelligent systems and inclusive AI at the interfaces of technology, medicine and society
Transcending Boundaries
Transcending Boundaries stands for Bielefeld's principle of lived and comprehensive interdisciplinarity. Crossing boundaries between disciplines and scientific cultures, between research and teaching, and between science and society is the guiding principle and impetus for our researchers to conduct cutting-edge basic research at an international level. The understanding of interdisciplinary exchange as a central driver of scientific progress and knowledge gain has been firmly anchored at Bielefeld University since its founding. With the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Bielefeld University has a place that embodies this understanding in a special way and opens up new interdisciplinary approvals. In this way, the ZiF aims to do justice to the "great interdisciplinarity" between the natural sciences and the humanities as well as to the increasing differentiation within the disciplines.
[...] systematic and regular discussions and colloquia, criticism and approval by a group of scholars interested in the same subject areas, though perhaps from different scientific and professional points of view, is one of the most sponsoring things that can happen to one's own research activity
Helmut Schelsky, founding father of the ZiF (1964)