Unique Institutional Partnership Finalised

This new, affiliated partnership between the university and the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories can only be described as a win-win situation in which both sides reap the benefits of close cooperation in aspects of administration, teaching, scholarship and research. The LIfBi profits from the scholarly expertise and research findings of Bamberg’s professors, and the University of Bamberg benefits from the advanced know-how and experience that scholars working with the institute can apply to university teaching and research.

Both the University of Bamberg’s president, Godehard Ruppert, and the LIfBi director, Professor Hans-Günther Roßach, agree that “this cooperation allows us to support each other both in our public presentation and in the cultivation of our academic profile.” This kind of collaboration is still relatively rare in Germany’s system of federal research funding, but both partners hope that it will contribute to the creation of an increasingly unified field of research activities by streamlining administration and providing a practical basis for the mutual utilization of facilities and technical infrastructure like libraries, computing services and the university language centre.

The history of a truly unique project

The NEPS project was created in order to learn more about education and knowledge acquisition and their effects on individual life paths. Since its founding in 2009, the research project has been observing and supporting approximately 60,000 study participants and 40,000 related persons on their paths through the educational system, from early childhood through advanced adulthood. Over 200 researchers from such fields as educational science, sociology and economics are currently working on the project. As Professor Roßach explains, “In order to insure that our longitudinal observations and studies are sustainable, we have been focused for a number of years on expanding NEPS from a short-term research project to a permanently funded Institute.” And that is just what this new partnership has accomplished.

The Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories was founded in May 2013 and was effectively incorporated in to the Leibniz Association on January 1, 2014. As president Ruppert is proud to point out, this partnership is the first of its kind in the German research community: “We are delighted to have been able to complete the process of founding an external institution so quickly. Five years is a remarkably short time for this kind of process. In Germany, this achievement is one-of-a-kind.”

Notice

This press release was written by Maike Bruns and Tanja Eisenach for the University of Bamberg’s press office. It may be used without restriction for journalistic purposes.

Please contact the press office with any questions or image requests by email or telephone at medien(at)uni-bamberg.de, or ++49 (0)951-863-1023, respectively.