Institutes and Departments

 

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities was established in 1965 with eleven professors as the first non-technical faculty at RWTH Aachen University. Today, with more than 50 professors, it is one of the largest faculties of humanities and social sciences at a German university of technology.The Faculty of Humanities is organized in institutes and departments. The departments combine the disciplinary expertise of the various institutes.

 

In contrast to the humanities and social sciences at some other technical universities, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at RWTH Aachen University does not provide a “studium generale” for the natural, life and technical sciences, but decides autonomously on its focuses in research and teaching as well as its development as a faculty. It offers teach education programs and discipline-specific bachelor's and master's degree programs.

Institutes of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities

  • Institute of Educational Science (EZW) with the professorships:
    • Educational Science With a Focus on School Dedagogy and Empirical Educational Research
    • General Didactics With a Focus on Technology and Media Education
    • Educational Science With a Focus on Vocational Education
    • Educational Science With a Focus on Heterogeneity.
  • Institute for German and General Literary Studies (GAL) with the professorships:
    • German and General Literary Studies With a Focus on Forms of Knowledge
    • German Studies/Media Studies
    • Modern German Literary History
    • European-Jewish Literary and Cultural History
    • Didactics of German (Didactics of Literature)
  • Department of History with the professorships:
    • Ancient History
    • Medieval History
    • History of the Modern Era with its Cultures of Knowledge and Technology
    • History of the Early Modern Era
    • Discourses of Knowledge in the Middle Ages (Heisenberg Professorship)
  • Institute for English and American Studies with the professorships
    • English Linguistics
    • English Literature
    • English Literature and Cultural Studies with a Focus on Cognition
    • Linguistics and Cognitive Semiotics
    • Didactics of Foreign Languages
  • Institute for Catholic Theology with the professorships:
    • Systematic Theology
    • Biblical Theology, Religious Education
    • Border Issues of Theology, Natural Science and Technology
  • Department of Society, Technology and Human Factors and Institute of Philosophy with the professorships:
    • Technology and Society
    • Technology and the Individual
    • Methodology and Theory of Computer-Based Humanities and Social Sciences
    • Applied Computational Social Sciences
    • Applied Ethics
    • Philosophy of Science and Technology
    • Philosophy of the Cultural World
  • Institute for Political Science (de) with the professorships:
    • Political Theory and History of Ideas
    • International Relations
    • Political Systems
    • Didactics of Social Sciences
  • Institute of Psychology (IfP) with the professorships:
    • Cognitive and Experimental Psychology
    • Personnel and Organizational Psychology
    • Work and Engineering Psychology
    • Health Psychology
  • Institute of Sociology (IfS) with the professorships:
    • Sociology
    • Sociology with a Focus on the Sociology of Technology and Organization
    • Sociology with a Focus on Methods of Empirical Social Research
    • Technology and Diversity
  • Institute of Linguistics and Communication Studies (ISK) with the professorships:
    • Contemporary German Language,
    • Communication Studies
    • German Linguistics
    • Text Linguistics and Technical Communication
 

The Departments of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities

The institutes of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities have formed four departments.

They cover teaching and research in the following areas:

Literary Studies, Linguistics, Philosophy (Department 7.1)

Social Sciences (Department 7.2)

Empirical Humanities (Department 7.3)

Society, Technology and Human Factors (Department 7.4)