Past projects

01.03.2025

Cluster project “ConTrust – Trust in conflict”

Cluster project
Project duration: 2021 to March 2025

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15.11.2024

Heisenberg Fellowship “Space, Agency and Practices in the Postnational Constellation”

PD Dr. Daniel Lambach
Project duration: September 1, 2018 to November 14, 2023

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14.11.2024

The political difference of life. A new conception of the crisis of state and society

Dr. Jonas Heller
Dr. Marina Martinez Mateo
Prof. Dr. Christoph Menke
Project duration: January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2021

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13.11.2024

VICTOR-E Visual Culture of Trauma, Obliteration, and Reconstruction in Post-War Europe

Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Hediger
Project duration: May 1, 2019 to April 30, 2022

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10.10.2024

Working group 2: Coercion and sanction

In all political systems of rule, coercion is used to deal with conflicts. Against this backdrop, the working group poses the key question of how coercion contributes to the production of trust or mistrust in and through conflicts. It examines how selected forms of coercion (legal, military, etc.) can be traced back to positive and negative experiences of conflict, influence the course of conflicts and thus produce trust in and through conflicts over the course of time.

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10.10.2024

Working group 3: Market

The working group analyzes the complex relationship between trust and forms of economic conflict. While markets are generally seen as a guarantor of economic trust, most decisions are not made in an institutional vacuum, but within the framework of formal and informal institutions. At the heart of the group’s empirical work program are two projects, one on how the COVID-19 pandemic is reshaping the relationship between the state and the economy, and one on how crises are changing the gendered division of labor in the household.

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10.10.2024

Working group 4: Knowledge

The working group investigates the role of knowledge and knowledge-based institutions (epistemic authorities) for the emergence of trust and mistrust in social conflicts. Knowledge about the preferences of others, but also about the social and natural world, is an essential resource for managing conflicts productively. Where knowledge is shared, trust develops and stabilizes. However, this stabilizing power itself depends on epistemic trust, the exact form and role of which has yet to be determined by the working group’s research.

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10.10.2024

Working group 5: Media

The working group examines how media create trust in pluralistic societies and thereby enable the productive resolution of conflicts and at the same time reflect these processes. Based on the findings of the increasing digitalization of communication, the working group examines the operational and formal aspects of mass media (press, TV), film, literature, telecommunications and social media as well as functional media in law, business and politics in their formal and informal use. The working group’s methodological approach goes beyond content-, text- and technology-centered analyses and takes aesthetic, legal and economic factors into account.

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01.10.2021

Communities under suspicion – Do proactive security policies and extremism prevention have unintended racist side effects?

INRA_A04 – Project of the FGZ Frankfurt am Main

Prof. Dr. Christopher Daase
Project duration: October 1, 2021 to December 31, 2024

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01.01.2019

News from the research center

News
04.12.2025

The crisis of democratic theory from a sociological perspective

Sociologist Jenny Brichzin's lecture "Crisis of Democratic Theory? A sociological intervention" opened our lecture series "At the crossroads? On the future of democratic theory". The sociologist criticized the fact that social coexistence has so far been insufficiently addressed in democratic theory. A follow-up report

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Publication
21.11.2025 | Anthology

Handbook of Leadership. Applied Business Psychology for Managers

Felfe, Jörg; Dick, Rolf van (eds.) (2025): Handbook of Leadership. Applied Business Psychology for Managers. Springer.

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News
20.11.2025

Voluntary or compulsory? Military service, peace and democratic responsibility

Review of the 58th "Römerberggespräche". The topic of compulsory military service and the question of what a democratic state is allowed to demand of its citizens were at the center of the 58th "Römerberggespräche" "Conditionally ready for action? Military service and the duty to serve the state", which took place on November 15 in cooperation with the Research Centre Normative Orders in the Chagallsaal at Schauspiel Frankfurt.

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News
13.11.2025

Goethe Lecture Offenbach on ableist discrimination

Regina Schidel hat im Rahmen der Goethe Lectures Offenbach eine Kritik ableistischer Diskriminierung präsentiert. In ihrem Vortrag „Ich kann, also bin ich?“ diskutierte sie praktische Ausprägungen und philosophische Herkünfte von Ableismus.

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Event
10.02.2026 | Frankfurt am Main

Satanic Politics. Democracy after Liberalism

Lecture, Lecture Series

Lecture by Michael Rosen (Harvard University) as part of the lecture series "At the Crossroads? On the crisis of democracy" in the winter semester 2025/2026

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Event
04.02.2026 | Frankfurt am Main

Demokratien verteidigen. Zur Aktualität des Gewaltbegriffs bei Camus und Derrida

Lecture Series, Lecture

Vortrag von Christine Abbt (Universität St. Gallen) im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung "Am Scheidepunkt? Zur Krise der Demokratie" im Wintersemester 2025/2026

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Event
29.01.2026 | Frankfurt

Civil Geopolitics and the Dilemmas of the Democratic State

Lecture Series, Lecture

Vortrag von David Owen (Universtiy of Southampton) im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung "Am Scheidepunkt? Zur Krise der Demokratie" im Wintersemester 2025/2026

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Event
14.01.2026 | Frankfurt am Main

Vom Retten der Welt zum Vorbereiten auf den Kollaps: Neuorientierungen in katastrophischen Zeiten

Lecture Series, Lecture

Vortrag von Christine Hentschel (Universität Hamburg) im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung "Am Scheidepunkt? Zur Krise der Demokratie" im Wintersemester 2025/2026

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Event
10.12.2025 | Frankfurt am Main

How Democracy Relies on the Future

Lecture Series, Lecture

Vortrag von Jonathan White (LSE) im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung "Am Scheidepunkt? Zur Krise der Demokratie" im Wintersemester 2025/2026

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