Welcome
Welcome to ZiF
The Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF: Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung) is Bielefeld University’s Institute for Advanced Study. It offers time, space, and funding for interdisciplinary research. ZiF is an independent, thematically unbound research institution and is open to scholars from all countries and disciplines.
Free from everyday academic duties, researchers have the chance to realise an interdisciplinary project at ZiF, together with international colleagues.
Continue reading about ZiF's goals and missionFunding Opportunities
ZiF offers various formats and opportunities for interdisciplinary research in groups:
Take a look at our funding formatsUniversität Bielefeld/P. Ottendörfer Open Calls
Ongoing Research
Understanding the Transformation of World Politics: Ordering Principles and Infrastructures of Communication
Mathias Albert
To the group's website
Heidi Tworek
Tobias WerronInternalizing Borders: The Social and Normative Consequences of the European Border Regime
Volker M. Heins
To the group's website
Sabine Hess
Dana Schmalz
Frank Wolff
Goals and Mission
Free from everyday academic duties, researchers have the chance to realise an interdisciplinary project at ZiF, together with international colleagues. For this purpose, ZiF provides ideal working conditions and a professional infrastructure for its fellows and guests.
Interdisciplinary exchange as a crucial driving force for scientific progress: Unbiased perspectives by colleagues from other disciplines make methodical assumptions and boundaries more explicit, open up new approaches to the common object of study and sometimes – as is evidenced by ZiF's history – even help define completely new fields of research.
This is why ZiF invites research groups (as opposed to individual researchers) to dedicate their time and efforts to a theme connecting various disciplines. Interdisciplinarity is conceived of as a process permanently requiring a new definition.
Hence, ZiF encourages research groups to further develop the term and the practice of interdisciplinarity for themselves.
ZiF endeavours to do justice to the interdisciplinarity between the Natural Sciences, the Social Sciences and the Humanities as well as to the increasing differentiation within disciplines. It attempts to inspire, mediate and host interdisciplinary cooperation, even if it proves intricate.