Faculty 05: Philosophy and Philology

The humanities are at the heart of reflection and contemplation in departments across the university, examining human culture, the mind, and the spirit of creativity. They explore and contextualize meanings as expressed in speech and writing, in images and performances. The humanities empower students to approach knowledge critically and draw on ideas of the past to resolve the challenges of the future.

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Our faculty embodies the diversity of approaches in the humanities, encompassing an exceptionally wide range of disciplines and subjects, traditions and current developments. With approximately 12,300 full-time students (as of winter semester 2016/17), the faculty is the largest at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, and also one of the largest in Germany. Over 350 academic staff, including around 70 professors, as well as several hundred associate lecturers, student assistants, and tutors teach and conduct research in 38 subjects. These range from American Studies, Book Studies, British Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Film Studies, German Studies and India Studies to Media Dramaturgy, Philosophy, Romance Studies, Slavic Studies, Theater Studies, and Turkology.

The seven institutes and departments of the faculty offer a total of 92 Language degree programs, including 37 bachelor’s, 33 master’s, and 22 Ph.D. programs. A great number of additional programs and initiatives deliver high quality mentoring to young researchers in the faculty’s disciplines. These include doctoral programs and doctoral colleges such as those on Life Writing, Literary Linguistics, Aspects of Linguistic Enrichment, Dimensions of 'Cognitive Enhancement,' the international Ph.D. program Performance and Media Studies, and the German-French Graduate School Mainz/Dijon.

The faculty’s research clusters on Media Convergence, Historical Cultural Studies, and SOCUM have received national and international acclaim. Media Convergence researchers critically assess the legal and economic consequences of the rapidly changing media landscape and investigate its cultural effects. The Research Unit Historical Cultural Sciences aims to link those disciplines in cultural studies and humanities that approach their subject matter from a historical perspective, and to integrate them on a new platform allowing more advanced methodological and theoretical reflection. The faculty’s research profile is further enhanced by the Research Center Social and Cultural Studies Mainz (SOCUM), as well as multiple other projects funded by the German Research Foundation and other associations and foundations.

Faculty 05 has also established a notable reputation as an international faculty. This is evidenced by its numerous international cooperative efforts in research and teaching with almost all European countries, for example in the Integrated German-French Study Program Mainz/Dijon or in the Mainz Polonicum, a course on Polish language, history and culture that is unique in Germany, the Joint Degree International Master Sociolinguistics and Multilingualism (SoMu), or the EU-funded Strategic Partnership TALC_me. Faculty 05 also cooperates with numerous other countries around the world, such as the USA, Canada, Russia, Japan, China, South Korea, Nepal, and Ethiopia. The faculty’s level of international exchange is reflected in its high percentage of foreign students (just short of 10%) and researchers (more than 20%).