Goethe-Universität — Press releases

Goethe University PR & Communication Department

Apr 17 2026

11:11

Eva Illouz will deliver a keynote at the annual workshop of the research training group “Aesthetics of Democracy” and the research focus “Democratic Vistas” at Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften Institute for Advanced Studies

Is Guilt Good for Democracy?

BAD HOMBURG. Emotions play a decisive role in shaping the political culture of democracy. Israeli-French sociologist Eva Illouz has explored in several widely discussed works – including The Emotional Life of Populism: How Fear, Disgust, Resentment, and Love Undermine Democracy and Explosive Emotions: How Modern Society Shapes What We Feel – how fear, resentment, anxiety, disgust, and love emerge from social conditions and influence democracy. In her keynote at the joint annual workshop of the new German Research Foundation (DFG) Research Training Group “Aesthetics of Democracy" and Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften's research focus “Democratic Vistas", she revisits this subject – this time with a focus on an emotion that sparks particularly intense debate in Germany: guilt.

In her English-language lecture, “Is Guilt Good for Democracy?", Illouz retraces the cultural and historical processes through which guilt has become a central emotion in the self-conception of liberal democracies since the 1980s. She explores the normative and political implications of this transformation and asks whether guilt acts as a productive or inhibiting force in democratic societies. The lecture will take place

on Friday, April 24, 7 p.m.
at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften Institute for Advanced Studies
Am Wingertsberg 4
in Bad Homburg.

Prof. Johannes Völz, spokesperson for the Research Training Group and co-spokesperson of “Democratic Vistas," will introduce the topic.

Eva Illouz is a professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. She has published numerous books on the sociology of emotions, consumer capitalism, and modern culture. For her work, she was awarded the Frank Schirrmacher Prize 2024, the Aby Warburg Prize 2024, and the EMET Prize for Social Sciences, among others. Latest book publications: The Emotional Life of Populism. How Fear, Disgust, Resentment, and Love Undermine Democracy (Polity Press, 2023), Der 8. Oktober. Über die Ursprünge des neuen Antisemitismus (in German, Suhrkamp, 2025), and Explosive Emotions. How Modern Society Shapes What We Feel (Princeton University Press, 2026).

Registration: Registration open until April 21 at anmeldung@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de

The event poster is available for download here: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/184956955.

Getting Here
Public Transportation: The nearest stops are Kaiser-Wilhelms-Bad (Bus 6), Bad Homburg Station (S 5), and Ober-Eschbach (U 2).

By Car: Please use the nearby parking options – the Casino Parking Garage, accessible via Weinbergsweg, or the parking lot at the Tennis Club and Kur Royal Aktiv, located at Kisseleffstraße 20.

Further Information:
Monika Hellstern
Science Communication
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften – Institute of Advanced Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt
Tel. +49 (0)6172 13977-45
E-Mail hellstern@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de
Homepage www.forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de
Facebook / YouTube @FKHbadhomburg

Apr 14 2026

16:00

Public events on the occasion of the scientific opening symposium of the Cooperative Brain Imaging Center Frankfurt

Public Events: How Our Brain Perceives Music – Insights into the Studies of the Brain Research Center CoBIC

FRANKFURT. The Cooperative Brain Imaging Center Frankfurt (CoBIC) is celebrating its opening with a scientific symposium, after the building officially began operations one year ago. CoBIC is a collaboration between Goethe University Frankfurt, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, and Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) of the Max Planck Society. The close cooperation between basic research institutes and Universitätsmedizin Frankfurt provides researchers with a dynamic environment for innovative research projects.

As part of the symposium, in addition to numerous expert lectures, two events will be offered for interested members of the public which explain brain research in an accessible way – in English.

Professor Robert Turner from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig studies how music is perceived and processed in our brain. How does the brain change when we learn to play a musical instrument or read sheet music? How does music processing differ from language processing in the brain? And how is it possible that musical memories persist despite dementia – so that some people who can no longer speak due to illness are still able to sing songs? In a musical dialogue with Prof. Fredrik Ullén, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Turner discusses in his lecture how music serves as a “window into general brain functions."

“Imaging Music in Our Brain"
Prof. Robert Turner, MPI Leipzig
moderated and musically accompanied by
Prof. Fredrik Ullén, MPI Frankfurt am Main

Monday, April 20, 2026, 6:15 p.m.
Festsaal at Casino, Campus Westend
Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 1
Goethe University Frankfurt

The research questions pursued by CoBIC scientists in studying the human brain will be the topic of a series of interactive sessions in the new CoBIC building in Frankfurt-Niederrad. What does a nerve cell feel like within a network? How do thought processes differ between people with and without ADHD? How can high-field MRI improve medical diagnoses or allow us to observe the brain at work? What happens in the brain when someone plays the piano while lying in an MRI scanner? What influence does nutrition have on brain performance? Researchers will explore these questions in an accessible and engaging way.

“Research at CoBIC"
Frankfurt scientists

Tuesday, April 21, 2026, 3:00 p.m.
Cooperative Brain Imaging Center (CoBIC)
Heinrich-Hoffmann-Straße 9
Campus Niederrad
Goethe University Frankfurt

Information and registration:
Both events are public and free of charge.
Registration is requested by April 16, 2026 via info@cobic.de

Website CoBIC: https://cobic.de/

Apr 2 2026

11:25

A large-scale, multi-analyst study on the objectivity of statistical analyses has now been published. Jan Landwehr, Professor of Marketing at Goethe University Frankfurt, says the findings highlight the critical role of collaboration and exchange across diverse research teams.

Conclusions Often Diverge When Hundreds of Researchers Reanalyze the Same Data

A new study published in Nature, “Estimating the Analytic Robustness of Social and Behavioural Sciences,” finds that scientific conclusions can shift dramatically depending on who conducts the analysis. The results come from a large-scale international collaboration led by Balázs Aczél and Barnabás Szászi (Eötvös Loránd University and Corvinus University), conducted as part of the Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (SCORE) program. A team of 457 independent analysts from institutions around the world conducted 504 re-analyses of data from 100 previously published studies across the social and behavioral sciences. All analysts received the same dataset and the same key research question but were given freedom in how to conduct the analysis based on their informed judgment.

Over the past decade, the social and behavioral sciences have undergone substantial reforms aimed at making research more transparent, rigorous, and reliable. Preregistration, registered reports, replication studies, and checks of analytical reproducibility all seek to reduce the prevalence of chance findings and biased results. One important question, however, has received relatively little attention: to what extent do research findings depend on the specific way in which data are analyzed?

In standard scientific practice, a dataset is typically analyzed by a single researcher or research team, and the resulting publication presents the outcome of one particular analytical pathway. While peer review assesses methodological acceptability, it rarely reveals what results might have emerged under alternative, yet equally defensible, statistical decisions.

Yet empirical research involves numerous decision points: how data are cleaned, how variables are defined, which statistical models or software are used, and how results are interpreted. Together, these choices constitute what is known as analytic variability – the flexibility that can fundamentally influence final conclusions.

Key Findings
The study now published in Nature shows substantial variation in the outcomes of independent analyses of the same question using the same data across 100 studies. Although most re-analyses broadly supported the main claims of the original studies, effect sizes, statistical estimates, and levels of uncertainty often differed meaningfully. All analysts reached the same conclusion as the original authors in about one third of cases.

Importantly, these discrepancies were not due to a lack of expertise. Experienced researchers with strong statistical backgrounds were just as likely to arrive at divergent results as others. At the same time, observational studies proved less robust than experimental ones, suggesting that more complex data structures allow greater analytical flexibility – and thus greater uncertainty.

Prof. Dr. Jan Landwehr of Goethe University Frankfurt, who was involved in the study as an analyst, explains the findings: “Just as major decisions should not rest on a single study, they should not depend on a single data analysis either. Only when different, well-founded analytical approaches converge on a consistent pattern can a result be considered truly robust. In that sense, our study is also a call for stronger collaboration across research teams and for more intensive scientific exchange.”

The study, published in Nature, is available here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09844-9

Contact: Prof. Dr. Jan Landwehr, Chair of Market and Consumer Psychology, Goethe University Frankfurt. Tel. +49 (0)69 798-34631; landwehr@wiwi.uni-frankfurt.de

Apr 1 2026

16:42

The 2026 recipients are the philosopher Dr Kirill Chepurin and the art historian Dr Elisabeth Ansel

Third presentation of the Klaus Heyne Prize for Research into German Romanticism

FRANKFURT. “Bliss” and “Ossian”: these are the two keywords outlining the thematic areas explored by the two scholars who have won the Klaus Heyne Award for Research in German Romanticism at Goethe University Frankfurt in 2026. The philosopher and theologian Dr Kirill Chepurin receives the award for his monograph “Bliss against the World: Schelling, Theodicy, and the Crisis of Modernity” (published with Oxford University Press in 2024), while the art historian Dr Elisabeth Ansel receives the award for her essay, “Ossianic images and visual translation processes in J.M.W. Turner and Carl Gustav Carus” (published with Manchester University Press in 2025 in a volume entitled “Picturing the Romantic: New Perspectives on European Romanticism(s) in the Visual Arts”).

The year 2026 marks the third presentation of the Klaus Heyne Award, which was endowed to Goethe University Frankfurt by the paediatrician and Romanticism enthusiast Prof. Dr Klaus Heyne (1937–2017) who worked in Kiel. Heyne’s principal goal was to promote outstanding young scholars and their contributions to research in German Romanticism. In 2026, the award, worth a total of 15,000 euros, is given out in two categories for the first time: for a monograph, which comes with a prize of 4,000 euros and 10,000 euros for the organisation of a conference at Goethe University, and for an essay, which carries a prize of 1,000 euros.

Chepurin’s monograph, based on his doctoral thesis defended in 2022 at HU Berlin, deals with a hitherto neglected concept of the arguably best-known Romantic philosopher in the German-speaking world: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854). “Bliss” (“Seligkeit”), Chepurin argues, rather than “happiness” (“Glück-Seligkeit”), can be regarded as a key concept in Schelling’s thinking at the crisis-ridden threshold to modernity – from Schelling’s early texts on natural philosophy right through to his later metaphysical writings. Chepurin develops “bliss” as a concept that is relevant to Schelling in terms of his theory of freedom and natural philosophy: In its dual antagonism towards modernity and Christianity, “bliss” unfolds the vision of a dissolution of the “unblissful” present that is central to Romanticism – a state of undivided immanence, absolute indifference, a being in freedom that knows no hierarchies, ownership, appropriations or imperatives.

According to the jury of the Heyne Award, i.e. Prof. Dr Roland Borgards (Institute for German Literature and its Didactics, Goethe University), Prof. Dr Mechthild Fend (Institute of Art History, Goethe University), Dr Aurelio Fichter (Benvenuto Cellini Society), Dr Mareike Hennig (Freies Deutsches Hochstift Frankfurt), Prof. Dr Heidi Lucja Liedke (Institute of English and American Studies, Goethe University) and Prof. Dr Frederike Middelhoff (Institute for German Literature and its Didactics, Goethe University), Chepurin breaks new ground in several respects: First, the book demonstrates Schelling’s continuous engagement with the concept of “bliss”, thereby challenging the periodisation commonly employed in Schelling scholarship (the “early” vs. the “late” Schelling); second, Chepurin highlights the hitherto overlooked significance of “Schellingian bliss” for Romantic theories and modes of thought; third, the monograph is the first to engage in a nuanced examination of Schelling’s reproduction of racist and colonialist ideologies, which are closely linked to his conception of “bliss”.

The jury emphasises: “This is a highly original work that not only proposes a reinterpretation of Romanticism by illustrating how strongly “bliss” – which around 1800 was discussed within the semantic field of “blessing” and “salvation” – shaped Schelling’s philosophy and Romantic thought more generally. The study also examines the concept of “bliss” in terms of its relevance to ethical questions and visionary concepts of our present day.” Chepurin also intends to explore these perspectives and contemporary connections at the international conference he will organise in 2027 at Goethe University, with the support of the Heyne Award.

Chepurin studied mathematics and mathematical logic in Moscow, where he took up doctoral and lecturer position in the history of philosophy in 2012. In 2022, he came to Berlin and received his PhD from the Faculty of Theology and the Institute of Philosophy at Humboldt University in May 2022. Fellowships and research stays have taken him to Berlin, Hamburg and Berkeley. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin. In September 2026, he is taking up a post as Assistant Professor of the Humanities at Bilkent-University in Ankara.

Dr Elisabeth Ansels’ art-historical article, which has been awarded the Heyne Award for outstanding essays, examines how the English painter William Turner (1775–1851) and the German physician, natural philosopher and painter Carl Gustav Carus (1789–1869) shaped the Ossian myth through their paintings and drawings. The fictional Ossian and his Old Gaelic song texts, which the Scottish writer James Macpherson published in the 1760s as “rediscovered” Fragments of Ancient Poetry, generated an international resonance at the end of the 18th century previously known only from the writings of William Shakespeare. And although it was disputed from an early stage that these were authentic documents of “ancient” songs, the fascinating surrounding the Scottish bard and his “romantic” songs continued unabated. Ansel now distances herself from a purely national reading of paintings such as “Staffa, Fingal’s Cave” (by Turner, 1831/32) and “Insel Staffa” (by Carus, before 1846). Rather than interpreting the images as examples of German or British Romanticism, Ansel employs a comparative lens to outline how material on Ossian was translated into different cultural contexts and made productive in the visual arts. Ansel interprets Turner’s and Carus’ visual approaches to the “Ossianic” Hebridean Island of Staffa within the framework of a transnational romanticization of the Ossian myth or “Ossianic culture”. The jury of the Heyne Award agreed that her essay demonstrates the great potential of art-historical Romanticism research that focuses on processes of circulation, transmission and adaptation beyond the national logics of “schools”. What becomes apparent from this transnational perspective is what can only be described as “hybrid” or “pluriform” Romanticism.

Ansel studied Classics in Dublin, Law in Leipzig, and Art History, Sociology and Law at Technische Universität Dresden. In 2021, she was awarded a PhD in Art History there with a thesis on Jack B. Yeats and Irish Modernism (summa cum laude). Scholarships and fellowships took her to Cork, Dublin, Greifswald, New Haven and New York. She is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the Centre for European Romanticism at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena.

Both winners will be granted the Klaus Heyne Award during a ceremony at Goethe University on 22 June 2026.

Further information:
https://romantikforschung.uni-frankfurt.de/klaus-heyne-preis-zur-erforschung-der-deutschen-romantik/

Images for download: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/184555229
Photo of Ansel: Frank Pawella
Photo of Chepurin: Claudia Peppel (ICI)

Contact:
Prof. Dr Frederike Middelhoff
Institute for German Literature and its Didactics
Goethe University Frankfurt
Tel. +49 (0)69 798 328 53
middelhoff@em.uni-frankfurt.de
Website: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/Middelhoff

Mar 26 2026

19:00

International study tracks genetic changes in Arabidopsis thaliana across 30 sites worldwide over five years

Evolution in Fast-Forward: How Thale Cress Adapts – or Goes Extinct

In an unprecedented field experiment, an international research team led by Goethe University Frankfurt, the University of California, Berkeley, and CNRS Montpellier investigated the evolutionary adaptation of thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) to a wide range of climates, from the Alps to the Negev Desert. At 30 locations worldwide, team members sowed the plants, monitored their development, and analyzed genetic changes. The result: many Arabidopsis populations rapidly adapted to local climates – some, however, went extinct. The findings demonstrate how genetic diversity ensures population survival.

FRANKFURT. The large-scale experiment began in autumn 2017 with 360 small plastic tubes containing a mixture of Arabidopsis thaliana seeds, an inconspicuous annual plant with small white flowers. The tubes were shipped to 30 locations across Western and Northern Europe, the Mediterranean region, and the United States. At each site, biologists from a global network sowed the seeds in twelve plots, each about a quarter of a square meter, establishing twelve Arabidopsis populations. These populations persisted into the following year thanks to their seeds.

For up to five years, researchers monitored plant growth and performance and collected tissue samples annually for genetic analysis. Their shared goal: to trace how plants evolve to adapt to highly diverse environments.

The network “Genomics of Rapid Evolution in Novel Environment” (GrENE-net) was launched in 2016 by Niek Scheepens, Professor of Plant Evolutionary Ecology at Goethe University Frankfurt, together with Dr. François Vasseur of the Centre d’Écologie Fonctionelle et Évolutive in Montpellier and Professor Moisés Expósito-Alonso of the University of California, Berkeley.

Plant samples from the first three years have now been genetically analyzed by the U.S. team. The result: in most climate zones, populations survived and adapted to their local environmental conditions. This became evident through millions of changes across their entire set of genes—the genome. Many of these genomic changes were statistically similar across all twelve populations at a given site. Moreover, sites with similar climates exhibited similar genetic changes, affecting genes related to traits such as drought tolerance or flowering time.

Scheepens explains: “Both findings show how climate exerts evolutionary selection pressure, favoring genes and gene variants that help the plant better adapt to its environment.”

However, some thale cress populations – mostly at particularly hot and dry sites – went extinct after three years, leaving their plots barren. Genome analyses revealed that strong genetic fluctuations had preceded these extinctions, and the twelve populations did not evolve in the same direction. Scheepens notes: “In these populations, random changes apparently dominated due to the relatively small population size within each plot. Instead of successful adaptation, so-called ‘genetic drift’ prevailed.”

Evolutionary ecologist Niek Scheepens concludes: “With this experiment, we can watch evolution unfold almost in real time. It demonstrates that evolutionary adaptation can occur very rapidly – provided sufficient genetic diversity is present. Rare plant species with small populations and low genetic diversity are therefore poorly equipped to cope with environmental changes, including climate change. Overall, our experiment is a compelling appeal to preserve biodiversity: diversity ensures survival.”

Publication: Xing Wu, Tatiana Bellagio, Yunru Peng, Lucas Czech, Meixi Lin, Patricia Lang, Ruth Epstein, Mohamed Abdelaziz, Jake Alexander, Carlos Alonso- Blanco, Heidi Lie Andersen, Modesto Berbel, Joy Bergelson, Oliver Bossdorf, Liana Burghardt, Mireille Caton- Darby, Robert Colautti, Carolin Delker, Panayiotis G. Dimitrakopoulos, Kathleen Donohue, Walter Durka, Gema Escribano- Avila, Steven J. Franks, Felix B. Fritschi, Alexandros Galanidis, Alfredo Garcia-Fernández, Ana García- Muñoz, Elena Hamann, Allison Hutt, José M. Iriondo, Thomas E. Juenger, Stephen R. Keller, Karin Koehl, Arthur Korte, Pamela Korte, Alexander Kutschera, Carlos Lara-Romero, Laura Leventhal, Daniel Maag, Arnald Marcer, Martí March- Salas, Juliette de Meaux, Belén Méndez-Vigo, Javier Morente-López, Timothy C. Morton, Zuzana Münzbergova, Anne Muola, Hanna Akiko Nomoto, Meelis Pärtel, F. Xavier Picó, Brandie Quarles- Chidyagwai, Marcel Quint, Niklas Reichelt, Agnieszka Rudak, Johanna Schmitt, Gregor Schmitz, Merav Seifan, Basten L. Snoek, Remco Stam, Marc Stift, John R. Stinchcombe, Mark A. Taylor, Peter Tiffin, Irène Till-Bottraud, Anna Traveset, Jean- Gabriel Valay, Martijn Van Zanten, Vigdis Vandvik, Cyrille Violle, Detlef Weigel, Maciej Wódkiewicz, François Vasseur, J. F. Scheepens, Moises Exposito- Alonso. Rapid adaptation and extinction in synchronized outdoor evolution experiments of Arabidopsis. Science (2026) https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adz0777

Background information
GrENE-net project website: https://grene-net.org/

Picture download:
https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/184316322

Captions:
1 Genetic diversity ensures survival: thale cress, Arabidopsis thaliana. Photo: Niek Scheepens, Goethe University Frankfurt
2 Thale cress plants grew in twelve plots, each one-quarter of a square meter. Photo: Niek Scheepens, Goethe University Frankfurt
3 Each year during flowering, tissue samples were collected from all plants for genetic analysis. Photo: Niek Scheepens, Goethe University Frankfurt
4 The sites varied in climate, ranging from mountains to desert. Photo: Jean-Gabriel Valay, Jardin du Lautaret

Contact:
Professor J.F. Niek Scheepens
Evolutionary Ecology of Plants
Institute of Ecology, Evolution and Diversity
Department of Biological Sciences
Goethe University Frankfurt
Tel. +49 (0)69 798-42132
Scheepens@bio.uni-frankfurt.de
https://www.bio.uni-frankfurt.de/96381923/J_F__Niek_Scheepens

Bluesky: @goetheuni.bsky.social @cnrs.fr @mexpositoalonso.bsky.social @plantevoeco.bsky.social
LinkedIn: @Goethe-Universität Frankfurt @University of California, Berkeley @CNRS @Niek Scheepens @Moises (Moi) Exposito-Alonso