Excellence Strategy
German universities perform top-level research, and selected universities receive support from the German federal and state governments. To further strengthen the international competitiveness of research at German universities, the federal and state governments have established the Excellence Strategy (ExStra) as a permanent funding programme. Researchers and universities enjoy a completely free choice of research fields and profile areas.
Kernprofilbereich | GSSC – Global South Studies Center Cologne
The Key Profile Area “Global South Studies” wants to promote the national and international visibility of cultural, social, and economic changes in the Global South in the context of rapidly accelerating globalization processes.
The research area sees itself as an incubator for coordinated projects, creating the necessary infrastructure for the advancement of early-stage researchers. The Key Profile Area also contributes to comparative and interdisciplinary research on the connections and interrelations within the Global South, as well as between North and South.
In this context, research particularly focuses on material and immaterial exchange processes as well as the connections between continents, regions, and the metropolitan regions and their hinterlands.
Contact:
Professor Dr Michaela Pelican, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Professor Dr Silke Hensel, Department of History
Professor Dr Javier Revilla-Diez, Geographical Institute
Coordinator:
Dr Clemens Greiner, Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology
Website:
http://gssc.uni-koeln.de
Skills and Structures in Language and Cognition
Key Profile Area | Skills and Structures in Language and Cognition
In much of the 20th century, the Language Sciences have been primarily concerned with the search for (exceptionless) rules and universal structural principles with scant consideration for much of the variability observable in linguistic behaviour. In recent years, however, the issue of variability and variation has become a central concern, not only to the Languages Sciences but also to the Cognitive Sciences more generally. There are major differences in how individuals use language and how they learn. Human brains are highly variable and more often than not there are various ways in which they process language, depending on the cognitive skills (working memory, language ability) and styles (empathy, perspective-taking etc.).
The KPA "Skills and Structures in Language and Cognition" places the tension between the behaviour of individuals and the structures resulting from their interaction at the core of its research efforts. The basic hypothesis is that differences in social and cognitive skills and styles are at the root of much of the variability observable in linguistic behaviour and knowledge. The challenge is to develop a framework that accounts for individual behaviour, its crystallisation in diverse linguistic structures across time and space, and the underlying cognitive mechanisms (e.g., attention, categorisation, foregrounding, chunking etc.).
The current focus of the KPA's work is the Cluster Development Programme "Language Challenges".
Contact:
Professor Dr. Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Department of Linguistics
Professor Dr Pamela Perniss, Sign language linguistics and interpreting
Coordinator:
Tobias-Alexander Herrmann, Slavic Department/ Cologne Center of Language Sciences
Lena Wolberg, Department of Linguistics
Website:
sslac.uni-koeln.de