International Days - Projects

Feeding the world sustainably is the great challenge of our time. To address it, we need to better understand and transform our food system. Studying Agricultural and Food Economics (AFECO) at the University of Bonn enables you to address this challenge and opens up diverse career paths in the private sector, governmental, non-governmental, or international organizations. AFECO allows for specializations in agricultural production and its associated sectors, consumer studies and behavior, food marketing, and policy analysis across the food system, the bioeconomy, and their impacts on the environment and natural resources.

The Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE) invites ambitious students from around the world to join our graduate programs in economics. One-third of our students have an international background. As a BGSE student, you will have the chance to study and do research, entirely in English, in a supportive and intellectually demanding environment. Nevertheless, all students at BGSE will have an international experience: Doctoral students of the BGSE are encouraged to submit papers to international leading conferences.
Internationally distinguished experts give lectures in our seminars and workshops. Of course, all activities of the BGSE are conducted in English.

The Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) is a research center in a global world. Our aim is to establish a very strong network of institutions that deal with slavery and other forms of strong asymmetrical dependencies all over the world. We pursue a threefold aim: to recruit internationally, to teach internationally, and to network internationally.

Students on a teaching degree have the opportunity to do an internship in Belgium, Italy, France or Spain thanks to our contacts with schools abroad. We enjoy excellent partnerships with the German Schools of Rome and Brussels for students’ practical semesters, while the German School of Madrid will be joining the program in time for the 2023/24 practical semester. Students who have spent time abroad and engaged in extracurricular activities in an international setting can obtain the Certificate of Intercultural Competence—Cosmopolitan Teaching in recognition of their efforts. Our mission is to improve the intercultural skills of students on a degree at the University of Bonn and give them the best possible preparation for teaching lessons that are sensitive to diversity issues, so we are hoping to keep on expanding our network in the future.

International knowledge transfer in the field of religious education is still a fairly new topic. Many researchers consider this exchange to be vital for the future of religious education and religion as a school subject. This book builds on the discussion started by an international group of researchers in Berlin (2018 and 2019) and connects it to teacher education. It comments on the insights of an expert conference hosted by the Bonn Chair of Religious Education in 2021 with funding from the Bonn Global Collaboration Fund, putting a focus on the challenges that trainee teachers and their training supervisors are facing when it comes to religious instruction in a pluralized and detraditionalized society. However, international exchange of research findings for comparison purposes and mutual benefit is yet uncommon. The open-access book provides observations made that can promote and facilitate this dialogue. A follow-up conference on the relationship between knowledge transfer and the diverse organization of religious education in Europe was organized in Vienna in 2023.

Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle signed the Traité de l’Élysée in 1963. Bonn, the capital of West Germany at the time, became an important symbol of this post-war reconciliation. In their virtual street map, schoolchildren, students and teachers from the Friedrich-Ebert-Gymnasium in Bonn, the Cité Scolaire Internationale in Lyon and the Chair for Romance Didactics demonstrate how the spirit of friendship and coming together can still be felt in 2023 in all manner of different places in and around Bonn and what extracurricular learning opportunities this opens up. Bonn découverte!

“Studierendenfutter” (“Fodder for Students”) is the University of Bonn’s new podcast dedicated to students. In it, the Central Study Advisory and Counseling Service provides tips for how students can navigate their studies successfully, whether this be hitting the ground running, handling exam stress or getting extra qualifications under their belts. The podcast will also feature regular interviews with experts.
 
To coincide with the start of the 2023/24 winter semester, the Central Study Advisory and Counseling Service and the International Office will be talking about “Studying as an international student—what’s in it for me?”. More seasoned international students also make their contributions in the current episode, discussing the counseling and other services offered by the University as well as ways to connect with other students. First-year students from all over the world can get a wealth of handy hints all about their studies and much more besides.
 
The Central Study Advisory and Counseling Service and the International Office would like to wish all international students a successful start to their studies and hope they have a truly fantastic time at the University of Bonn!

In May 1991, the first international conference on correspondence analysis was organized in Cologne. Since then, seven other such conferences have been organized every four years under the name CARME (Correspondence Analysis and Related Methods), opening up the conference to related statistical methods and the analysis of categorical data in general. All of these conferences were organized by Michael Greenacre (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona) and Jörg Blasius (University of Bonn), in cooperation with the local organizers from the hosting University. The ninth CARME conference will take place in Bonn on 26-29 September 2023. Historically, these conferences have an informal atmosphere that aims at promoting the exchange of ideas between disciplines and scientific collaboration. As one can see in the previous programs on the page of the CARME network (www.carme-n.org), these conferences have consistently had many distinguished invited and contributing speakers.

The Center Ernst Robert Curtius (CERC) is a research center with a focus on "European cultures from a German and French perspective", a platform for France-related projects of all faculties of the University of Bonn and a forum for the German-French-European dialogue. Since 2022, the location of the center has been Konrad-Zuse-Platz 1-3 am. Bonner Bogen; In the city center, the management is also represented in the department for Romance languages. A newsletter with current event information is published monthly. We look forward to visitors or messages from interested parties! Contact: cerc@uni-bonn.de 

At the Forum Internationale Wissenschaft (FIW), internationalization is not only practiced but is also the subject of research. With the support of the DAAD, a guest professorship was acquired (2021-23) dedicated to the topic "Internationalization of Higher Education in Times of Global Crisis". In the past two semesters, we were able to win Prof. Patrício Langa (Mozambique) and Prof. Carolina Guzmán-Valenzuela (Chile) for a stay, from October the anthropologist Prof. Maheshvari Naidu (South Africa) will follow. She will offer seminars on feminist ethnography and on the relationship between African and Western knowledge systems.

The annual Frontiers and Careers (F&C) workshop is aimed at young researchers from the field of nuclear and hadronic physics, providing them the opportunity to discuss their research, explore career prospects, and make professional connections. The F&C 2022 was organized at MIT, Boston, USA, and led by Dr. Farah Afzal (HISKP, University of Bonn) as well as Jackson Pybus (MIT) with 35 participants from international laboratories and universities, fostering scientific exchange between the communities. The workshop was financially supported by TRA Matter.

"Future Rural Africa" is a large collaborative research center (CRC-TRR 228) funded by the German Research Council (DFG). The center´s research work is jointly conducted by  the Universities of Bonn and Cologne, as well as partners at other institutions, especially in Africa. Researchers cover a wide range of disciplines, including geography, anthropology, political science, agronomy, ecology, and virology.  They focus on growth corridors in Eastern and Southern Africa, where processes of large-scale land use change and related social-ecological transformation have been particularly dynamic in recent years. The key question of the CRC concerns the future of rural Africa: How are futures made, by whom, and for whom?  

A collaboration between Prof. Dr. Britta Hartmann from the University of Bonn and Dr. Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann from Hebrew University Jerusalem and funded by Collaborative Research Grant, this research project explores the political appropriation of TikTok’s entertaining trends and aesthetics by focusing on the negotiation of national identity in the context of the entangled Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in relation to Jewish/Israeli and Arab/Palestinian self-awareness in Germany. With the help of researchers Tom Divon and Aya Jubeh in Israel and Jonathan Guggenberger in Germany Ebbrecht-Hartmann and Hartmann are closely analyzing a wide selection of videos, exploring their modes of address, adopted visual styles and narrative practices, as well as their use of cultural stereotypes and rhetorics of affects.

The Young African Mathematicians (YAM) Bonn Visitor Program is a cooperation of the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics with the International Office of the University of Bonn and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) with its five centers of excellence in Rwanda, Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon, and South-Africa.  Each year, three students are selected by a committee in Africa through a multi-stage selection process and get to know a high-quality international research environment. Read an interview with the first scholarship holder in the YAM program, Sefah Frimpong.

 Japanologists Prof. Harald Meyer and Dr. Takahiro Nishiyama came together in early 2021 with their long-time research partner and well-known media sociologist Prof. Mamoru Ito (Waseda University). The exchange with the group led by Prof. Ito enabled submission of six Japanese essays on various aspects of multimedia representations concerning “Tōkyō 2020,” which were translated into German by a Bonn group of Japanologists around Prof. Meyer and supplemented with contributions on additional aspects of the Olympics of their own. Further collaborations between Bonn Japanologists and Japanese media sociologists are to follow, with the Ukraine war and other conflicts forming suitable topics. Joint book publication planned by members of the Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies (Japanology) for December 2022 in cooperation with a group of Japanese sociologists from Waseda, Tsukuba, Hōsei, Seijō and the International Christian University (Japan)

Research in the natural sciences is a pillar of modern society, with a key role
to play in climate change, the biodiversity crisis and other societal and
environmental challenges we face. An abstract approach is often taken in school
teaching, however, that fails to give students reference points to the real
world. And this is why Open Science Communities (OSCs) are being formed as part
of the MULTIPLIERS Horizon 2020 project: to give students a tangible experience
of natural sciences, heightening their interest. Possibilities for learning
about the natural sciences in schools are expanded through partnerships with
universities, lifelong learning providers, museums, local associations,
industry, civil society, policy makers and the media. Educational networks are
thus being built up in six European countries which are to create joint
scientific projects tackling real-world challenges, with the aim of getting
schools involved. School kids are able to interact and work together with
experts of broadly different backgrounds in these projects, contributing to the
development of science-based solutions to societal and environmental problems.
Students then share their results and experiences with their families, friends
and people in the communities where they live, thereby functioning as
multipliers.

In "Faces of PhenoRob" meet researchers and staff from the only DFG-funded Cluster of Excellence in Germany focusing on agriculture. In PhenoRob, researchers from all over the world collaborate on research in robotics and phenotyping for sustainable crop production. PhenoRob’s vision is to transform crop production by optimizing breeding and farming management through developing and deploying new technologies. The Cluster addresses a real-world problem with a technology-oriented approach and its researchers hail from the areas of computer science, geodesy, robotics, plant science, soil science, economics, and environmental science. Get to know them and learn why it’s great to be a part of PhenoRob!

International experience, knowledge of foreign languages ​​and intercultural competence are important key qualifications in today's globalized world of science and business. Romance Studies in Bonn together with, among others, Bonn German Studies maintains numerous partnerships which enable students and doctoral students to spend excellently supervised stays abroad. In addition to funding programs such as Erasmus/DAAD, there are international courses and graduate schools that are unique in Europe.

DigiCrop.Net is a network of excellent research groups and institutions, founded by the Cluster of Excellence PhenoRob with its partners AIFARMS and Center for Digital Agriculture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, ETH Zürich, and Wageningen University and Research. In DigiCrop.Net, international researchers who support a technology-driven approach as one way to address the challenges and investigate novel approaches for achieving sustainable crop production come together. DigiCrop.Net is a hub for interdisciplinary scientific collaboration of key institutions in this field and aims at jointly fostering collaborative research, increasing visibility, expanding internationalization at the partners’ sites, supporting exchange, and providing unique teaching opportunities for the next generation of students and researchers. For more information please visit the DigiCrop.Net website.

This transparent church was one of the sacred spaces we came across during our student pilgrimage in Belgium in 2018. Together with fellow teacher students from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and Ireland, we collaborate in the SpiRiTex-Project, which deals with sacred spaces, rituals, and texts in European teacher education. By learning in the presence of these remarkable resources and in the presence of each other, we explore the possibilities of including this approach in the teacher education program at the Faculty of Catholic Theology. 

"The Master of Science (MSc) in “Geography of Environmental Risks and Human Security” is jointly offered by the Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) and the Department of Geography (GIUB) at the University of Bonn as an international degree program with a research-oriented profile. The two-year program educates students from across the globe in an interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary manner on how to investigate and manage various resources related to environmental hazards by implementing science-based principles and methodologies for disaster risk management. With the support of the German Academic Exchange’s (DAAD) Epos scholarship scheme, the program enables equal study opportunities to students from developing and least-developed countries.

The Center for Development Research (ZEF) of Bonn University works closely with academic partners in the Global South. One of our recently established projects, the African Climate and Environment Center Future African Savannas (AFAS) focuses on Improved livelihoods through nature-based solutions and capacity development. AFAS is one out of eight DAAD Global Centres.

The Program of Accompanying Research for Agricultural Innovation (PARI) at the Center for Development Research (ZEF) of Bonn University accompanies research in agricultural innovation, with a focus on food security and agriculture policy in Africa and India. PARI research addresses policymakers in the Global North and South and works with a broad network of experts and partners based in the Global South. Read the PARI policy briefs and country studies, e.g. the latest on the development and success of the poultry sector in Senegal. PARI research Is funded by BMZ.

The Center for Development Research (ZEF) conducts interdisciplinary research in, for, and with the Global South. This also applies to its Gender Group, which is drawing on ZEF’s multidisciplinary expertise and strength. Read the latest journal article by members of ZEF’S Gender Group which was published in SpringerNature I Human Ecology I by Avilés Irahola, D., Mora-Motta, A., Barbosa Pereira, A. et al.

ZEF runs a high number and wide range of Master’s and Doctoral studies programs in Africa and Latin America. One of them is the bilateral Doctoral Studies Support Program with Colombia. In the picture: Acting director Eva Youkhana giving a speech at a workshop at ZEF on Participatory Monitoring of biodiversity loss in Colombia (ColPaMon) in August 2022. The project is funded by DAAD, BMZ and BMBF.

LANUSYNCON is a ZEF-based project looking at the Science Policy Interface of Land Use Synergies and Conflicts within the framework of the 2030 Agenda.  Read the ZEF blog post by LANUSYNCON  and ZEF doctoral researcher Sara Velander about her trip to the COP15 of the UNCCD in Abidjan in June 2022, on “The Role of Land in Sustainable Development: Observing Science Policy at the UN Land Conference”.

The one-year program at ZEI boasts more than 20 years of experience! Joining our highly acclaimed Master's program is an important point for your career. Taught by a faculty of renowned experts from all over the EU, you will be a part of an international group of students with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Additionally, students take part in inspiring excursions to the EU institutions in Brussels, Luxembourg, and the German capital, Berlin. Our welcome days are starting soon - get in touch!

The starting point of the interdisciplinary research group of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, which is based at the Forum Internationale Wissenschaft (FIW), is the thesis of a crystallization point: In practice and in the discourse on civil sea rescue in the Mediterranean, a dispute is crystallizing in Europe about what is democratic. Since July 2022, we have therefore been investigating in three European countries (Germany, Italy, and Spain) how a social movement is forming around the work of sea rescuers, the pursuit of which goes far beyond humanitarian issues.

We are "Celebrating the Global" from 19 to 31 October.

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Everything about our international network and intensive teaching and research cooperation worldwide.

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Research at the University of Bonn takes place under excellent conditions.

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