Spotlight on Research Focus Areas: The University of Mannheim Is Enhancing Its Research Profile
This workshop was the start of a new phase in a process that has already started this summer: The aim is to newly and more clearly define the research focus areas of the university. The intention behind this is to make the university’s strengths even more visible—both within and outside the scientific community.
A common process for a strong profile
As early as this summer, more than 160 researchers, mainly professors, participated in a survey that delivered a first impression of opinions on key research topics. In addition, the works published over the past years were evaluated to make the university’s actual scientific focus areas visible.
This provided the basis for the workshops conducted. In the following weeks, the results of these workshops will be discussed in more detail with external experts and further enhanced based on analyses of successful acquisitions of third-party funding and the research community at universities with a similar profile or size or in geographic proximity.
Why this is important
Clearly defined research focus areas help identify synergies between individual schools, strategically promote our strengths and increase the university’s visibility—both internally and in the competition for national and international research funding. This way, the University of Mannheim establishes a central basis for positioning its research even more successfully in the long term—especially in view of large research networks.
The next steps
- 28 October: Meeting with external experts
- 25 November: Second workshop with all interested researchers at the university
- December: Approval of the President's Office and presentation at the Concilium Decanale, the Senate and the University Supervisory Board
In addition, the suggested research focus areas will be discussed in the university bodies. Feedback and ideas from these discussions are explicitly welcome and will be taken into account in the next parts of the process.
The entire process is intended to be completed by the end of 2025.
The currently discussed preliminary research focus areas as well as Vice President Professor Jutta Mata’s presentation can be found here: https://intranet.uni-mannheim.de/en/research-focus-areas/.