Disciplines

• Philosophy

  Philosophy is not intrinsically confined to certain subjects, methods or basic terms. It has however always made critical contributions to subjects of general cultural and scholarly discourse as well as the methods and basic terms of other disciplines. In view of the societal importance of this supportive critical reflection, which also includes enhancing historical awareness, the Foundation supports philosophy in its entire breadth. No priority is assigned to certain fields of work or approaches – nor, say, to moral philosophy as opposed to  the philosophy of mind, historical versus systematic works, or problems of a fundamental theoretical nature over applied ones, or to formal versus verbal methods of argumentation. Such categories make good sense. They can however harm the discipline if they lead to schisms in the discourse. The same applies to the borders between philosophy and other disciplines with which it shares subjects and problems. Some borderlines, often even institutionalised ones, are not based on any logical division of academic labour, but are instead the result of mainstream-based publication cultures and the constraints of well-trodden career paths.

  Boundaries which used to be largely confined to theoretical philosophy have recently become more permeable with respect to the cognitive sciences. In practical philosophy, there are closer links with adjoining normative and empirical disciplines, which require support.

  The Foundation especially welcomes projects which, regardless of their field, work to reduce unjustifiable barriers to discourse within or between disciplines, be it by exploring the roots of these barriers and their consequences, by translating between fields or disciplines, or by correcting sweeping judgements. This is where junior scholars, being less set on a particular perspective, can play a special role as long as their work is based on their own detailed readings. The Fritz Thyssen Foundation leaves it up to applicants to take the initiative in selecting specific topics in the broad field of philosophy. The Foundation’s intention is to preserve and uphold the traditional strengths of this discipline – its openness, its scope on fundamental questions, its critical faculties and the originality of its contributions.

• Theology and Religious Studies

  Religion-related academic studies have been undergoing  a process of dynamic change for several decades now. For a long time, ‘theology’ stood exclusively for European Christian theology in its exegetic-philological, historical, systematic and practical-theological subdisciplines. The field of religious studies, on the other hand, seemed to be mainly responsible for religions other than Christianity. This situation has altered considerably in recent decades as a result of major institutional and methodological awakenings and change: On the one hand, especially Judaism and Islam are now addressing their histories and faith beliefs in independent teaching and research institutions. On the other hand, religious self-perceptions and interpretations across all religions continue to critically benefit in content and methodology when examined in the context of religious studies. Both religious studies and theological research are furthermore increasingly shifting the spotlight toward phenomena relating to global and local interaction as well as interdependence of religious cultures.

  The Fritz Thyssen Foundation accepts applications from all areas of theology and religious studies. The foundation´s support policy allows it to include in its programmes a wide range of thematic interests, a variety of methodological approaches, specialisation in the sub-disciplines, and their interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary networking. Historical projects such as editions and other contributions to basic research and the material culture of religious traditions are welcome, as well as sociological and philosophical studies on the current cosmoses of religions as they undergo transformation through globalisation, digitalisation and artificial intelligence. Research in religious education and pedagogy, however, is not a primary focus of our funding priorities. In addition, the foundation supports projects that aim to create synergies with other academic disciplines, regardless of the interdisciplinary structures already inherent in theology and religious studies themselves.

• Historical Studies

  The thematic and methodological range of historical scholarship has become tremendously differentiated in recent decades. Following the ascendance of the social sciences in the 1970s and significant influence coming from social-historical research, the 1990s saw a cultural paradigm shift in scholarly interest that also generated many new impulses for established fields such as political history and the history of international relations. This was accompanied by an opening up of historiography, a domain which had long been shaped by national perspectives, through transnational approaches and the methodological perspectives of comparison, transfer, and entanglement. With this foundation, questions concerning opportunities and challenges in the field of European and global history have increasingly moved to the fore in recent years. New thematic fields of research have been developed in the history of knowledge, consumption, and the environment (“environmental humanities”). At the same time, however, ostensibly traditional topics have been given new emphases, for example through a historical perspective on experiences of space, whether with a focus on locality or regionality, or in the relationship between nation-states and empires.

  Transdisciplinary approaches – for instance between literary studies, jurisprudence studies, and history – as well as cross-epochal themes such as imperiality and violence have gained currency. At the same time, history is being confronted with new questions arising from contemporary experience and technological possibilities: with regard to the future of Europe as a space of peace, the resilience and regression of democracies, the transformation of memory and remembrance through generational change and the changing nature of contemporary witness-bearing, or the use of AI in the compilation and analysis of source collections. Not least the dangers of a political instrumentalisation of history and the blurring of fact and fiction underscore the role of critical historical scholarship in our present day.

  The Fritz Thyssen Foundation welcomes funding applications from all areas of historical scholarship, from all periods and across the full methodological spectrum. It particularly invites thematically or methodologically innovative proposals whose projects combine the analysis of historical change with thematic relevance and broader scholarly connectivity.

• Study of Classical Antiquity; Archaeology

  A growing interest in the study of ancient cultures has triggered a major surge in excavation activity worldwide. Intensive collaboration between archaeology and the natural sciences is at the same time gaining momentum; multidisciplinary research approaches in particular are opening up new avenues of insight at an accelerating pace. In light of this expansion of research activity, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation has to concentrate on specific areas. Traditionally, the focus of its funding has been on the early cultures of Old Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East, although in cases of particularly outstanding applications it may occasionally expand funding beyond these fields.

  Generally speaking, all forms of archaeological research are eligible for funding, whether theoretical or practical. The Foundation’s interest, however, is directed less toward the mere presentation of material and catalogue work than toward projects whose research questions and methodological approaches break new and innovative ground.

  In the fields of ancient studies and archaeology, priority is assigned to work that investigates the distinctive features and transformations of a culture within specific historical contexts. Particularly promising are studies on settlement and urban development, on changes in social and economic conditions, on cultural transformations, as well as projects in the history of images. By the same token, there are no thematic restrictions; the decisive criteria are solely the excellence of the research question and methodological approach, and ideally the exploration of new scholarly terrain.

  In the area of ancient history and classical philology, funding is primarily granted to projects that are interdisciplinary in terms of their methodology or subject matter and that can, wherever appropriate, be linked to questions in archaeology. This especially goes for projects in the history of religion, the economy, society, science, and mentalities.

  Finally, research approaches are welcomed that relate the study of antiquity as a whole to other cultural sciences.

• Aesthetics

  The dynamics of cultural and social change have been posing new challenges for disciplines involving the arts, in particular art history and music history as well as theatre studies and media studies. Today, the focus is less on new avant-gardes or artistic progress than on an expansion of perspectives on these disciplines and their subject matter, which are now increasingly grounded in cultural studies and based on more empirically oriented work. A changed awareness of the present has not only led to an expansion of research topics, but has also directed attention to processes of artistic exchange above and beyond the Europe-centred art canon. Transcultural questions are assuming a growing relevance within these disciplines. These processes go hand in hand with a critical reassessment and readjustment of methodological approaches and research questions applied to the objects and topics under investigation.

  The Fritz Thyssen Foundation supports projects from the entire field of the arts and humanities as well as related disciplines, in particular historically grounded projects that engage in innovative ways with textual and visual sources, demonstrate an awareness of the mediality and materiality of artefacts, reflect on methodological questions and guiding categories of the disciplines, and are interdisciplinary in design or open to interdisciplinary connections – in short, scholarly investigations characterised by a high level of reflexivity.

  Purely cataloguing and editorial projects are not among the Foundation’s priority areas of funding support; projects that are primarily technically or natural-scientifically oriented cannot be funded.

• Literary and Linguistic Studies

  The breadth of literary and linguistic studies encompasses a plethora of disciplines exhibiting an extraordinarily wide range of historical and systematic interests. These disciplines are in part “large” and therefore highly differentiated internally, or “small” and comparatively clear in structure. At times, literary and linguistic research reflects aspects of a broader discipline (e.g. Byzantine studies), while in many cases it is split up at a common institutional level into independent fields (e.g. Romance studies) or aligned in separate and distinct disciplines (e.g. German linguistics). These fields maintain, as it were, various loose or stable contacts with one another, exhibit heterogeneous inter- and transdisciplinary interfaces, (inter)national networks, and institutional affiliations (for example with the school system). The scope of their epistemic objects ranges from micro-level analyses of specific individual phenomena or single texts to the examination of very large datasets.

  In many areas, literary and linguistic practices as well as epistemic objectives have diverged from one another, while in other areas – such as digital humanities or research fields informed by cognitive science approaches – opportunities for collaboration are emerging. It is self-evident that the medial foundations of communication and shifting multimodal contexts pose a central challenge for literary and linguistic studies. This is particularly true in the post-digital phase in which we find ourselves: the omnipresent availability of easily accessible tools based on large language models or AI-driven methods is changing the very conditions underlying literary and linguistic scholarship. Against this background, foundational philological research is explicitly encouraged.

  Given the diversity of epistemic options and objectives, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation primarily supports projects that are not merely of isolated interest, but that promise sustainable effects for future, larger disciplinary and interdisciplinary research agendas, that offer surprising insights in productive engagement with the current state of research, or that contribute to the establishment of larger collaborative frameworks with concrete prospects for further development. In light of the wide accessibility of digitised sources, editorial projects require particularly strong justification and must provide detailed explanations of their philological decisions and procedures, their technical foundations, and their data management.