Transcending Boundaries
stands for the Bielefeld 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)