Lichtenberg-Kolleg

The Lichtenberg- Kolleg is the newly established Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Göttingen. It is a central element of the university’s concept for the future “Göttingen: Tradition – Innovation – Autonomy,” financed by the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal and State Governments and the German Research Foundation (DFG).

The Lichtenberg-Kolleg is named after Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 to 1799) who was a professor of experimental physics at the University of Göttingen. He was a physicist, philosopher of the Enlightenment, and author. His name stands for innovative ideas and independent, unconventional thinking.

The Lichtenberg-Kolleg focuses on close cooperation between international fellows and distinguished scholars from the Göttingen Research Campus, an exceptional research program from which young and emerging scholars also profit. Cooperating in topic-specific groups and workshops, Fellows-in-Residence are integrated into the local research network and simultaneously cross-fertilize the work of Göttingen scholars. With these measures, the Lichtenberg-Kolleg intends to promote collaborative research in the humanities and social sciences and to stimulate innovative research foci.