Violence and Security

The “Violence and Security” profile initiative is an interdisciplinary research focus with expertise from five faculties, including sociology, political science, history, cultural studies and computer science. The aim is to investigate the perception, understanding and reactions to global crises and threats such as environmental issues or nuclear power. It will analyze how anti-democratic developments, historical injustices and power structures shape the relationship between democracy and security, particularly in the context of the Anthropocene. The role of information technologies and artificial intelligence in new insecurities will also be explored. From a historical perspective, there is a particular focus on the temporality of violence, i.e. the role of time as a resource for actions in wars, pogroms, occupations and aggressions across different eras. The transformations of violence are traced in analyses of genocides in the 20th and 21st centuries, colonialism and its legacies as well as National Socialism and Communism.

Since questions of violence and security research play an essential role in the Faculty of Humanities, it is strengthening and expanding the previous diverse activities within the framework of the profile initiative. The research on phenomena of violence anchored at the Faculty presents a wide range of different objects of investigation, diverse approaches, topographical and temporal spaces. Individual disciplines form the basis, whose respective boundaries are also crossed, not only in collaborative research projects. The reflections of the participating scientists can be assigned to three research fields:

1. Cultures of Memory,
2. Resources and Violence,
3. Transformations of violence.