Editorial

June 10, 2020

We conclude our series of articles for this year’s Köpfe und Ideen with one on Zhiyi Yang. Sonja Asal gives us a prose portrait of the Sinologist and her research into the complex and controversial literary figure and politician Wang Jingwei, who is experiencing a renaissance in present-day China.

May 6, 2020

Since 2011, constitutional lawyer Zaid Al-Ali has been advising in the peace negotiations and constitutional processes of many Arab countries. In his conversation with Katja Gelinsky, it becomes clear that the Arab Spring does not exist, but rather that the term stands for quite diverse political processes and above all expectations.

April 2, 2020

A layperson might harbor the impression that reproductive medicine is a well financed sphere, and it would indeed seem that in the last few decades there has been an increase in fertility clinics. But research on infertility is still taking its first little baby steps. The endocrinologist Lynae Brayboy is asking important questions pertaining to the implications of female infertility, and the science writer Nicola von Lutterotti picked her mind.

February 24, 2020

In our second installment of Köpfe und Ideen we stay with the social sciences while venturing out into applied informatics. Dirk Helbing helped to found the research field of Computational Social Science, and in an interview with journalist Manuela Lenzen this intellectual pioneer sets out his vision for the humane use of Big Data.

January 29, 2020

This year's series of Köpfe und Ideen-articles begins with a conversation between the lawyer and legal philosopher Marietta Auer and the journalist Max Steinbeis. During her Fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg Marietta Auer works on “Legal Institutions in the Digital Modernity”. In this interview she provides information about her socialization studying the law, her understanding of law as a “spider in the web” and the question: How do individual autonomy and privacy change under the influence of various digital processes?