Interdisciplinary Constitutional Research

Freiburg researchers apply for Cluster of Excellence

A group of researchers from the University of Freiburg, the Max Planck Institute, and the Walter Eucken Institute are applying for a Cluster of Excellence to conduct top-level research on constitutional issues. The initiators are the legal scholars Matthias Jestaedt and Andreas Voßkuhle.

An interdisciplinary team of 25 academics from Freiburg is applying for a Cluster of Excellence called “Constitution as Practice in Times of Transformation” (“ConTrans”). The cluster unites the disciplines of the humanities and the social sciences, with the aim of carrying out international research on constitutional matters. According to the letter of application, “ConTrans (...) brings together, for the first time, perspectives from a wide range of fields – from law and history to literature and psychology – in a comprehensive and long-term analysis of constitutions as social practices. This is the only way to capture variants of constitutionality across space and time”.

The participating researchers: Many of the experts are from the University of Freiburg; they are based in the Faculty of Philology, the Department of Philosophy, the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Theology, and the Faculty of Economics and Behavioral Sciences. The Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law is represented by Ralf Poscher, who heads the Department of Public Law there and is also an honorary professor at the University of Freiburg. Lars Feld, director of the Walter Eucken Institute and the chair for Economic Policy and Constitutional Economics at the University of Freiburg, is also taking part. Taken together, the 25 specialists pursue research and are active in eleven different disciplines.

The program is being jointly implemented by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Science and Humanities Council (WR).

• Read the German report in the Badische Zeitung of 25 October 2023.