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On April 21, 2026, the Goethe University hosted the kickoff event for the new workshop series “Rethinking Education and Training.” With nearly 50 registrations, the event for training staff received an enthusiastic response. 

With approximately 3,000 manuscripts, including some 600 medieval manuscripts and numerous early modern manuscripts, the Frankfurt University Library’s collection is one of the largest of its kind in Germany. Now, an extraordinary object has come into focus.

For decades, the collection of the Psychiatric Clinic at Frankfurt University Hospital contained medical specimens with human tissue. Little attention was paid to these “human remains,” which remained hidden and largely forgotten – or perhaps deliberately repressed. Over the course of a three-year research project, Dr. Moritz Verdenhalven investigated the origins of the collection. Supported by Goethe University’s management and Frankfurt University Hospital, he set out to reconstruct the history behind the specimens and the people from whom they came. In a recent lecture, Verdenhalven offered insights into both his research process and his findings.

Researchers at Goethe University and Philipps University Marburg, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology ITMP, have developed a new artificial intelligence to reduce animal experiments. The AI, called genESOM, was trained to “learn” the structure of small datasets. It uses this learned information to generate new data points. These data points reproduce the properties of experimentally collected data as accurately as if they had been obtained in laboratory experiments. In the future, genESOM could reduce the number of laboratory animals needed for testing new active substances by between 30 and 50 percent.

Last week, Germany’s Federal Council approved the Retirement Plan Reform Act, overhauling the previously state-subsidized Riester pension scheme. Prof. Raimond Maurer from Goethe University Frankfurt’s Faculty of Economics and Business was a member of the federal government’s focus group on private retirement provisions, which developed many of the reform proposals. Maurer welcomed the government’s decision to follow the experts’ recommendations and expressed hope that this approach will continue in future reform efforts.

Each year, Goethe University’s Faculty of Law recognizes exceptional academic achievement through a number of prestigious awards. The 2026 Baker McKenzie Award, presented by the renowned law firm of the same name, will go to Dr. Alexander Heger and Dr. Felix-Julius Konow for their outstanding doctoral dissertations in business law.

The Faculty of Economics at Goethe University has once again achieved outstanding results in the latest ranking by the Center for Higher Education (CHE). 

Some evenings offer more than a meal. In Frankfurt, a handful of tables became the setting for conversations reaching from Tokyo to Kolkata, from Nigeria to South Africa, from philosophy to immunology. The Social Dinners hosted by the Foundation for the Promotion of International Academic Relations at Goethe University serve as a first taste of global science in its most vital form: personal, curious and based on exchange. 

Science-Policy Dialogue at Goethe University Frankfurt and upcoming Environmental Ministers’ Conference focus on organized environmental crime and the illicit trade in fluorinated greenhouse gases.

Religions look beyond the visible world. However, most believers also look to them for help with everyday problems. In Christian Europe, these hopes were long realized in “spiritual home remedies”: Compiled without fixed rules, they contained—well into the 20th century—religious and religion-inspired objects that were believed to provide relief from both physical and emotional suffering. 

Keynote by humor researcher Désirée Krüger on Thursday, May 21, 2026, from 4:00–6:00 p.m. in the Casino (Room 823) on the Westend Campus.

Artificial intelligence and digital technologies are rapidly transforming the way people learn – from schools and universities to professional training and lifelong education. They enable more personalized learning experiences, support learners and educators alike, and open up entirely new approaches to teaching and instruction. Yet their effective and responsible use requires expertise that is still rarely taught in a systematic way. This is the starting point for the new master’s program “AI and Digital Technology in Learning and Instruction” (ALI) at Goethe University Frankfurt. The interdisciplinary, research-oriented program prepares students for scientific, strategic, and applied roles at the intersection of artificial intelligence, digital technologies, and education.