The focus professorships

The PeP@H-BRS focus professorships create targeted scope for research and networking. Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg is thus strengthening its profile in socially relevant subject areas and making the career path of a professor more attractive. The reduced teaching commitments allow professors to deepen their expertise, expand collaborations and provide impetus for sustainability, diversity and social justice - a benefit for excellence and the promotion of young talent.

The four focus professorships

As part of the PeP@H-BRS project, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg has created four professorships that strategically contribute to profile development in research, teaching and transfer. They are anchored in the university-wide focus on sustainability and address key social issues of the future.

Thanks to a reduced teaching commitment of six semester hours per week, the professorships open up scope for interdisciplinary research, strengthen networking within the university and provide impetus for innovation - with a particular focus on sustainability, diversity and social justice.

The focus professorship "Economic and Social Sustainability"

is held by Prof Dr Alexander Boden from the Institute of Consumer Informatics. His research is dedicated to the topic of "Sustainable human-machine interaction for responsible consumption". The focus here is on the question of how digitalisation can help to promote sustainable consumption patterns and support people in changing their everyday practices. Technology is not only understood as a tool and part of possible solutions, but is also analysed as part of social practice and with a view to its infrastructural character.

More information on the "Economic and Social Sustainability" professorship

The "Sustainable Social Policy" focus professorship

is held by Prof. Dr Simona Helmsmüller, Professor of Economics of Social Protection and Director of Studies for the Master's in Social Protection. The professorship focusses on the question of how we as a society can live in a more socially just and environmentally friendly way.

More information on the "Sustainable Social Policy" professorship

The focus professorship "Social Sustainability and Gender"

is held by Prof Dr Susanne Keil, Professor of Journalism at the Department of Engineering and Communication at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, as part of the PeP@H-BRS project. The professorship aims to incorporate gender aspects into research and society.

More information on the specialisation professorship "Social Sustainability and Gender"

The "Technical Sustainability" focus professorship

is shared by Prof Dr Margit Schulze (semesters 1-5 ) and Prof Dr Marc Williams (semesters 6-10), both from the Department of Natural Sciences, Institute for Technology, Resource and Energy Efficiency (TREE) at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg. It aims to develop innovative and sustainable solutions for the chemical and plastics industries.

„I am a focus professor at H-BRS because the implementation of the sustainability goals is probably the biggest challenge facing our society at the moment, and I would like to play an active role in overcoming it.”

Prof Dr Alexander Boden - Focus professorship "Economic and Social Sustainability", Co-Director of the Institute for Consumer Informatics

Prof. Dr. Alexander Boden

„I am a focus professor at H-BRS because I can devote more attention to my research project in Pakistan thanks to the reduction in my teaching load. This also creates new networks with researchers in the region and worldwide. Networks and research findings also flow into my teaching, which remains relevant.”

Prof Dr Simona Helmsmüller - Priority Professorship "Sustainable Social Policy", Professor of Economics of Social Protection, Director of the International Centre for Sustainable Development

Prof. Dr. Simona Helmsmüller

„I am a focus professor at H-BRS because I want to establish gender research at our university on a structural level. The variables of gender and diversity are relevant in many research projects: from social policy to computer science, from climate change to human-machine interaction. I would like to illustrate the effects of taking them into account through dialogue and networking within the university as well as through my own research. ”

Prof Dr Susanne Keil - Vice Dean of the Department of Engineering and Communication/Professorship of Journalism and Specialised Professorship "Social Sustainability and Gender"

Prof. Dr. Susanne Keil

„We applied for the focus professorship for technical sustainability as a tandem because we are both driven by the topic of transformation in chemistry and we want to advance it in teaching and research with a lot of experience and fresh ideas. We are delighted that our application was successful.”

Prof Dr Margit Schulze and Prof Dr Marc Williams - Professor of Industrial Organic Chemistry & Polymer Chemistry and Professor of Chemistry, both Department of Natural Sciences, Institute of Technology, Resource Conservation and Energy Efficiency