Focus Groups
The criteria for Fellow selection are the quality of the researcher and the attractiveness of his or her research project. The Wissenschaftskolleg appoints Fellows from all fields and disciplines. Every year these include researchers from the humanities, the social sciences, and the life sciences, along with individual artists in the fields of music, visual art, and/or literature.
Each year there are two or three focus groups. Especially in the natural sciences and with younger researchers, it has proven useful to jointly invite small groups of three to five Fellows whose individual research plans relate to each other from the beginning. To preserve enough flexibility to accommodate the unexpected, the Wissenschaftskolleg has made it a rule that less than half of a year's Fellows are invited within the framework of focus groups.
2018/2019
( Michael Wade )
( Jacobus J. (Koos) Boomsma )
2017/2018
( Carola Lentz )
2016/2017
( Peter M. Kappeler, Tamás Székely )
2015/2016
( Luc Steels )
( Tim Caro )
( Victoria A. Braithwaite )
( Tatiana Borisova, Jane Burbank )
2014/2015
( Steven A. Frank )
( Guntram Hazod )
2013/2014
( Michael Hochberg )
( Gerald S. Wilkinson )
( Wendy Espeland )
2012/2013
( Atac Imamoglu, K. Birgitta Whaley )
2011/2012
( Mark E. Viney )
( Monique Borgerhoff Mulder )
( Israel J. Yuval )
2010/2011
( Janis Antonovics )
( Steven Feierman, Julie Livingston )
2009/2010
Classical Simulation of Quantum Systems: Classical Information vs. Quantum Information
( Ulrich Schollwöck )
Complexity and Flexibility in Animal Communication
( Vincent M. Janik, Klaus Zuberbühler )
Functional and Structural Constraints in the Evolution of Sensorimotor Networks
( Harald Wolf )
Social Insects as a Model System for Evolutionary Developmental Biology
( Manfred D. Laubichler, Robert E. Page, Jr. )
2008/2009
Auditory and Visual Scene Analysis
( Cynthia F. Moss )
Sympatric Speciation: Theoretical and Empirical Considerations
( Axel Meyer )
Understanding the Brain - An Attempt to Unify Language Production, Reasoning and Motor Control
( Holk Cruse )
2007/2008
Constitution Beyond the Nation State
Evolutionary Medicine
( Randolph M. Nesse )
2006/2007
Evolutionary Immunology
( Joachim Kurtz, Paul Schmid-Hempel )
ImageScience - Media and Politics
Phylogenetic Biology
( Wayne Paul Maddison )
Religious Transformation Processes in the Present
( Friedrich Wilhelm Graf )
2005/2006
Inner Model Theory
( John Steel )
Religion and Contingency
( Hans Joas )
2004/2005
Bildwissenschaft/ImageScience
( Horst Bredekamp )
Conflict Resolution in Biological Systems
( Francis L. W. Ratnieks )
Infectious Diseases Epidemiology
( Hajo Grundmann )
2003/2004
Cultural Mobility
( Stephen J. Greenblatt )
Development of Spatial Cognition
Islamic and Jewish Hermeneutics as Cultural Critique
Science and the Public
2002/2003
Brain Evolution
( Georg Striedter )
Nutrition
( David Raubenheimer, Stephen J. Simpson )
The Sciences of Risk
( Alex Kacelnik )
2001/2002
Neural Control and Locomotion
( Ansgar Büschges )
Social History of Muslim Societies - Social History of Western Societies
( Beshara Doumani, David Warren Sabean )
Social Norms and Economic Behaviour
( Ernst Fehr )
The Sciences of Risk
( Alex Kacelnik )
2000/2001
Demography and the Evolution of Eusociality
( Raghavendra Gadagkar )
South Asian Historiography
( David Shulman )
Spatial Cognition
( Hans-Ulrich Schnitzler )
1999/2000
AGORA Work - Knowledge Cohesion
Neurolinguistics
( Angela Friederici )
1998/1999
Biomimetics
( Daniel Robert )
Cultural Foundations of Economic Reality
( Hansjörg Siegenthaler )
The Meaning of Time in Quantum Theory
( John Stuart Briggs )
1997/1998
Parallel Processing and the Binding Problem
( Andreas K. Engel, Rainer Goebel )
Visual Ecology and Evolution
( Eric J. Warrant )
1996/1997
Active Vision
( Mandyam V. Srinivasan )
Sex and Evolutionary Conflicts
( Andrew Pomiankowski )
1995/1996
Evolution of Global Biogeochemical Cycles and Environmental Change
( Kenneth J. Hsü )
Models as mediators: The Role of Models in Physics and Economics
( Brigitte Falkenburg )
Spatio-Temporal Processes in Ecolocial Communities
( Andreas Diekmann, Richard Law )
1993/1994
Biodiversity
( Richard I. Vane-Wright )
Collective Intelligence: Self-Organizing Superorganism Systems
( Scott Camazine )
1992/1993
Physics of Disordered Systems
( Hans A. Weidenmüller )