Humanities

Our mission and vision

The mission and vision of the Faculty of Humanties have been determined in the Faculty Strategic Plan (FSP).

Faculty Strategic Plan

The Faculty Strategic Plan was produced in consultation with the Faculty community and reflects the Faculty’s shared ambitions for the period 2022 - 2027. The Strategic Agenda contains the policy intentions, which develop the strategy in terms of how it will be implemented in practice.

The Faculty has formulated its mission and vision in 2021. In short: The Faculty of Humanities stands for leading-edge research and education. We aim to achieve a stimulating, fair and sustainable academic environment that allows space for talent and respects everyone’s needs.

Our mission

The Faculty of Humanities stands for leading-edge research and education. Our basic principle is to maintain this level of academic excellence and to promote the essential values of the humanities in contemporary social, cultural, political and economic debates. Our global orientation, our broad disciplinary and interdisciplinary expertise and provision of quality education, fuelled by our research, provide our students with the skills and knowledge they need to reflect and to act as critical and engaged citizens.

The Faculty recognises the importance of diversity, both in terms of people and in academic perspectives. We aim to achieve a stimulating, fair and sustainable academic environment that allows space for talent and respects everyone’s needs. This healthy work and learning environment will necessarily have to operate with a smaller ecological footprint.

Our vision – implementing our mission in practice

The Faculty of Humanities builds on the collective specialist knowledge and creative scope of our institutes in the areas of history, art and culture, regional studies, artistic research, philosophy and languages. Humanities reflect how people understand the world, how they interact with it and ‘create’ it. We do this by asking fundamental questions that sometimes seem far removed from current problems, but in fact form the basis of our contemporary experiences; for example, we research how people dealt with changes in the past and how they can guide them in the present. This enables us to determine the kind of future we can or should imagine for ourselves, or must work to bring about. The Faculty will continue to contribute to this, as part of an open, productive exchange between the University and society. We will respond dynamically to society’s changing needs, seek to create conditions where the voices of all strata of the population are heard, and communicate the results to a wide audience. At the same time, we will recognise freedom of research and the individual nature of research methods and will cherish unexpected outcomes. The University’s core values are: connecting, innovation, responsibility and freedom.

Diversity and inclusion are integral to the Faculty policy on staff and students, which necessitates collective efforts and recognition of the difficulties and sensitivities inherent for all involved. There must be clarity about what these terms mean for everyone in the Faculty, and we need to be honest about our shortcomings and to acknowledge different views. Overcoming inequality will inevitably mean encountering many vulnerabilities and obstacles. But if we address this considerable challenge with sincerity, we will be pursuing the Faculty of Humanities’ ambition to make an important contribution to a diverse and inclusive work and learning environment.