University of Tübingen Appoints Dual Leadership at Faculty, a First in Baden-Württemberg
Professor Angelika Zirker and Professor Dietmar Till were elected dean and dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Tübingen on Friday. This is the first time in the history of Baden-Württemberg that the faculty of a university will be led by a tandem.
Zirker and Till succeed Professor Jürgen Leonhardt, whose term of office ends on September 30th. The establishment of dual leadership required prior approval from the University Council and Senate of the University of Tübingen and the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, as this structure is made possible for the first time. The term of office of Zirker and Till is five years.
“The Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Tübingen is characterized by a great diversity of subjects and specialist cultures. We want to bring the different areas of our faculty into greater conversation with one another, network them and thereby create synergy effects,” said Professor Karla Pollmann, Rector of the University of Tübingen. A dual leadership of men and women who belong to two different disciplines supports this goal.
“An important task will also be the greater integration of digital humanities into studies and teaching as well as digitalization in general,” added Professor Angelika Zirker. She studied English, German and Romance languages at Saarland University and received her doctorate from the University of Tübingen. She then completed her habilitation with a thesis on William Shakespeare and John Donne. She took on substitute professorships at the Free University and the Humboldt University in Berlin before returning to the Chair of English Literatures and Cultures in Tübingen. Angelika Zirker is the sub-project leader in the special research area “Other Aesthetics”.
“The Faculty of Philosophy occupies a top position in all national and international rankings. In a time of declining financial resources – not least due to energy prices – and falling student numbers, we want to maintain room for maneuver for the faculty,” said Dietmar Till. He studied general rhetoric, modern German literature and philosophy at the University of Tübingen and then received his doctorate in general rhetoric. He researched empathy at the Free University of Berlin as part of the Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion” and completed his habilitation at the University of Göttingen. A visiting professorship took him to the University of Washington in Seattle. Since 2011/12 he has held the chair for general rhetoric at the University of Tübingen.
At the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Tübingen, 7,200 students are currently studying in 36 humanities disciplines – from archeology to art history, Asian and Oriental studies, music, religious studies, history and linguistics to general rhetoric and media studies. Worldwide, the University of Tübingen has been and is associated with the work of researchers in all areas of the humanities and cultural studies. The Faculty of Philosophy is currently one of the most research-intensive humanities research locations in Germany, which is confirmed by numerous rankings for individual areas and the humanities as a whole. Top positions are regularly achieved in comparative studies.