IUB Professors “map the World”: Who are we, where do we come from and where are we heading?

Pieces of this big puzzle are given by thirteen professors from different disciplines of IUB’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Published just in April, this hardback features their inaugural lectures. The book traces back the beginning of transdisciplinary teaching and research at IUB’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

[ Apr 14, 2004]  IUB is dedicated to the principle of transdisciplinarity, a specific form of scholarly cooperation between the traditional disciplines. In the first academic year of IUB a public lectures series was initiated by the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Addressing an audience from other disciplines as well as the general public, the speakers presented their individual field of research. Thus the lectures laid the foundation for current transdisciplinary cooperations in teaching and research at IUB.

Looking at human social and cultural developments from many different angles the lectures provided their audiences with new tools for mapping the world, i.e. for locating the individual in his or her social and cultural context.

Experts of different disciplines like Art and Art History, History, Literature, Mass Communication, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology and Statistics shared their findings and took up the dialog with their colleagues.

Freia Hardt (ed.) (2004): “Mapping the World” - New Perspectives in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Tübingen: A. Francke Verlag.

Inaugural Lectures Inaugural Lectures have been an essential feature of University life for centuries. When a pupil was admitted to the rank of Master in the Middle Ages and was received into his (and her nowadays) guild or 'universitas', the new Master was invested with the symbols of office and had to deliver an inaugural lecture. Incidentally, he was also expected to entertain the whole guild of Masters to dinner and preside over disputations for forty days continuously. Today, new Professors are still invited to deliver their Inaugural Lectures but, luckily for them, they are no longer expected to treat the 'Masters' for dinner or preside over disputations. Nevertheless, the IUB Professors of the lectures series entertained their colleagues and audiences with champagne receptions…