The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University in Bad Homburg has welcomed two new Goethe Fellows. Guido Friebel (economics) and Christoph Burchard (law) were formally inducted into the Kolleg at the reception to open the summer term on Monday, May 6, 2019.

»The newly appointed Goethe Fellows, legal scholar Christoph Burchard and economist Guido Friebel bring new, timely and important research questions to the Kolleg,« said the Director of the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Prof. Matthias Lutz-Bachmann. »The development of artificial intelligence and its use in almost all areas of our everyday lives is progressing very rapidly. Burchard's research is of immense importance because it deals with how central, normative concepts of social coexistence - such as the meaning of autonomy and responsibility - are fundamentally changing in this context. In close cooperation with the Frankfurt sociologist Daniela Grunow, the economist Friebel is investigating a question that is still lacking a satisfactory answer: How is it possible that women are still underrepresented in pivotal areas of our society such as top management, science, politics and art - despite above-average educational achievements and despite political efforts to achieve equal opportunities?«

Christoph Burchard is professor of criminal law and criminal procedure, international and European criminal law, comparative law and legal theory at Goethe University and principal investigator at the Cluster of Excellence »The Formation of Normative Orders«. His research project at the Forschungskolleg is entitled »Die normative Ordnung künstlicher Intelligenz« [The Normative Order of Artificial Intelligence]. Results and questions arising from his initial work will be discussed in two public lectures during the summer semester: at an evening lecture on June 6, 2019 and at the Bad Homburg Conference from September 19 to 21, 2019, which will be devoted to the topic »Artificial Intelligence: Health, Safety, Money and Mobility«.

Guido Friebel is professor of human resource management at Goethe University. He surmises that the reasons why women are still severely underrepresented in key positions in society are deeply rooted in the structures of our society, in norms that come to bear in intra-family negotiations. With sociologist Prof. Daniela Grunow, he will examine how decisions on the division of labour in private households are made and which gender norms underlie both the division of labour in the household and the allocation of managerial positions. The title of his interdisciplinary project is »Household bargaining, gender norms and careers in organisation«.

The Goethe Fellowship Program was initiated in 2017 by the Board of Directors of the Forschungskolleg in cooperation with the Executive Board of the Goethe University. The aim is to promote outstanding research in the humanities as well as the internationalisation of research at Goethe University. To this end, professors at the university who are working on the development of a new research topic are appointed to the Kolleg as Goethe Fellows for a period of up to four years. The Goethe Fellows currently include: Iwo Amelung (sinology), Roland Borgards (literature), Daniela Grunow (sociology), Sandra Seubert (political science), Astrid Wallrabenstein (law), Christian Wiese (Jewish philosophy of religion).