About us


How do political, legal, religious or economic orders establish and change, how do power structures crystallize, how are power and life chances distributed – also on a transnational level? The academics involved in the Research Centre Normative Orders think about these questions. It is about current social conflicts, in particular about a just order of society in times of globalization, and their long histories. The normative ideas that play a role in such processes and conflicts will be examined.

The questions are complex. This is why Research Centre Normative Orders at Goethe University Frankfurt works on an interdisciplinary basis: from philosophy, history, political science and law to ethnology, economics, sociology and theology.

Normative orders are understood as “orders of justification” that are historically founded and based on “narratives of justification”. They are characterized by certain legitimations, whereby norms and values of various kinds (morality, law, religion, to name but a few) intertwine or create tensions.

Goethe University’s Research Centre Normative Orders is a network in which a number of partner institutions participate, including the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, the Institute for Social Research (Frankfurt am Main), the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg), Point Sud, Centre for Research on Local Knowledge (Bamako, Mali) and the Technical University of Darmstadt.

The research center emerged from the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, which was funded by the German Research Foundation as part of the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state governments.


Spokespersons of the research center:

Prof. Dr. Nicole Deitelhoff (Institute of Political Science) and
Prof. Dr. Rainer Forst (Institute of Political Science and Institute of Philosophy)

News from the research institute

Event
16.06.2025 | Frankfurt am Main

Trump and the Assault on the State

Lecture

Vortrag von Jeffrey Kopstein Professor der Politikwissenschaft an der University of California, Irvine) über die Gefahr einer Erosion des Staates und Wege gegen den Trend zur Zerstörung.

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News
19.05.2025

What can a baroque tapestry tell us about colonial iconography?

Lecture by Cécile Fromone on May 21. The professor at the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, director of the Cooper Gallery at the Hutchins Center and author will talk about the long-forgotten African origins of iconography and its colonial dimension.

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News
05.05.2025

Normative Orders Newsletter 01/25 published

The newsletter from Research Centre Normative Orders collects information on current events, reports, news and publications several times a year. Read the first issue 2025 here.

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News
05.05.2025

"Hitler. History of a Dictator" by Sybille Steinbacher will be published on May 15, 2025

The historian's new book deals with Hitler's origins, the roots of his anti-Semitism and his rise to power.

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News
29.04.2025

Public lecture series “Racism in the police” begins on May 13, 2025

Racism in the police has various dimensions. In the lecture series “Racism in the police - empirical findings, methodological approaches and controversies”, three empirical studies on police work will be presented.

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Publication
22.04.2025 | Encyclopedia

Edessa (Fourth Century bc to the Eighth Century ad)

Leppin, Hartmut (2025): "Edessa (Fourth Century bc to the Eighth Century ad)". In: Raja, Rubina (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East, Oxford Academic, pp. 491-506.

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News
10.04.2025

Shaping the future - between climate change, technology and social responsibility

A new series of lectures by the research center as part of the “Fixing Futures” exhibition on the implications of climate change and technological progress.

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