Christoph Wulf

Christoph Wulf is one of the most famous German educational scientists and anthropologists. His books have been translated into 15, his works into 20 languages. In 1972 he founded the Peace Education Commission of the International Peace Research Association, of which he was the first secretary, and later the commissions for Educational Research with the Third World and Educational Anthropology of the German Society for Educational Science. Among other things, resp. he was a member of the Board of Trustees of the German Society for Peace- and conflict research, the Council of the International Peace Research Association, the Scientific Advisory Board of the Funkkolleg Beratung in der Erziehung, the scientific advisory group Gesamtschulversuch in Nordrheinwestfalen, President of the Network Educational Science Amsterdam, member of the scientific Advisory Board of the Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique (Paris/Lyon) and the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (Vienna) as well as the International Advisory Board of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Perspective" of Heidelberg University, the University of Strasbourg, Institute for Advanced Study. He is an editor, editorial and advisory board member of numerous national and international journals. For his anthropological research, the University of Bucharest awarded him the title of "professor honoris causa". Due to the global importance of his anthropological studies, he has been invited to research stays and visiting professorships in many parts of the world, including: Stanford; Tokyo, Kyoto; Beijing; Mysore, Delhi; Paris (Diderot, Nanterre, Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Institut de France, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales), Lille, Strasbourg; Modena; Amsterdam; Stockholm; Copenhagen; London; Saint Petersburg, Kazan. In 2008 he was elected Vice-president of the German Commission for UNESCO. He is a member of the National Committee for Education for Sustainable Development and the Expert Group Inclusive Education as well as the Board of Trustees of the German Academic Exchange Service.

Biography

Christoph Wulf grew up in a rectory in Berlin-Britz. He passed his Abitur at the Gymnasium Steglitz. He began his studies with the subjects of history, educational science, philosophy and literary studies at the Free University of Berlin, which he completed in 1968 with the Magisterexamen. During his studies, he worked as a student assistant for Johannes Flügge. A scholarship fr om the VW Foundation brought him to Marburg in 1969, wh ere he completed his doctorate under Wolfgang Klafki. There he met his future friend and Berlin colleague Dietmar Kamper in a senior seminar. After an information tour through the USA as a guest of the US Office of Education, he spent a year researching for his dissertation at the universities of Stanford, Los Angeles, Boulder and New York. From 1970 to 1975 he was a research assistant at the German Institute for International Educational Research in Frankfurt am Main, headed by Walter Schulze. In 1973 he received his doctorate as Dr. phil., already two years later Christoph Wulf habilitated in the subject of educational science. Since 1975, Christoph Wulf has held a full professorship for educational science at the University of Siegen. Christoph Wulf has been Professor of Anthropology and Education at the Department of Educational Science and Psychology at Freie Universität Berlin since 1980.

Some of the studies

Main focus of work

Prof. Wulf has been working on questions of anthropology and educational anthropology for more than thirty years. He is concerned with the knowledge of humans in a globalized world characterized by cultural diversity. The aim of his research is to make a contribution to the self-understanding of people in modern times with the help of historical and ethnographic methods as well as philosophical reflection.

Historical Anthropology

Wulf's anthropological research takes as its starting point the insight that the anthropologies, at the center of which was the white Western male man, have lost their universal claim. Therefore, today we have to start from a polycentric anthropology. The focus is no longer only on European human images and Western thinking. Other cultures claim, with the same right, to make statements about man from their perspective.

In order to give continuity to research in the field of educational anthropology, Wulf initiated the establishment of the Commission for Educational Anthropology in the German Society for Educational Science in 1992. This initiative was supported by Dieter Lenzen, Klaus Mollenhauer, Konrad Wünsche, Theodor Schulze, Eckart Liebau and Max Liedtke. Later they were joined by: Johannes Bilstein, Jörg Zirfas, Michael Göhlich, Birgit Althans, Micha Brumlik, Maike Sophia Baader, Doris Schuhmacher-Chilla, Helga Peskoller, Stephan Sting, Ursula Stenger, Hans-Rüdiger Müller, Gabriele Sorgo, Edgar Forster, Christian Rittelmeyer, Gisela Miller-Kipp, Anja Tervooren and many other colleagues. These researches take their starting point in the works on educational anthropology, which were created after the Second World War and whose most important representatives include: Otto Friedrich Bollnow, Heinrich Roth, Andreas Flitner, Rudolf Lassahn, Hans Scheuerl and Max Liedtke.

Over the years, this commission, initiated and led by Wulf for a long time, has worked on many basic topics. The now about 20 studies cover a wide range of educational-anthropological research. They include books on the history and theory of pedagogical anthropology, on the anthropology of perception and aesthetics, on play, imagination and work, on pedagogical activity, including its basic anthropological and ethical conditions, on the role of space, time and institutions in pedagogical work, on the importance of nature and religion, generation, love and friendship, on the senses and gender issues. What the authors of these studies have in common is that they are convinced of the importance of the historical and cultural dimension of anthropology and, with the help of philosophical reflection, historical and empirical research, they try to develop important perspectives for the understanding of upbringing, education and socialization in the present. In addition, there is the conviction that educational research and pedagogical work, due to European and global changes, are in great need of basic anthropological research, which should contribute to a better understanding of education, education and socialization in different parts of the world. It is no longer enough to situate education and training in national contexts. The European orientation also needs to be supplemented by taking Asian, Latin American and African perspectives into account, i.e. taking global influences into account.

Mimesis, imagination and emotion

In connection with his membership as principal investigator in the Cluster of Excellence "Languages of Emotion", Wulf has increasingly turned to the research of emotions in recent years. His main aim was to explore the historical and cultural character of emotions within a wide range of emotions. This led to exploratory studies on the relationship between: emotions and movement, emotion and memory, emotion and rituals, emotions and imagination: studies on the happiness of the family in Germany and Japan, on emotions in the Muslim world, on the formation of feelings and emotions. Finally, an ethnographic study on recognition and appreciation in school was conducted.

In detail, the following studies were conducted:

• Emotions as a movement, with Valerij Savchuk, Goulnara Kaidarova and Russian colleagues from Saint Petersburg State University;

• Emotions and Memory, with Chen Pan Lu and colleagues from Peking University in Beijing;

• Emotions in Rituals, with Axel Michaels and Indian colleagues in Goa;

• Emotion and imagination, with Norval Baitello and Latin American colleagues and colleagues in São Paulo;

• The happiness of the family. Ethnographic studies in Germany and Japan;

• Emotions in a transcultural world, especially emotions in Arabic and European culture in Beirut;

• The Formation of Feelings, with Ute Frevert (Max Planck Institute for Human Development);

• Emotions, thematic issue of the Journal of Educational Science;

• Recognition and appreciation in education, education and socialization. An ethnographic study in Berlin (2008-2011).

In this context, further studies are in progress, e.g. on emotions in connection with wisdom. Another focus of research in the field of cultural diversity is the project "Passage to India - Passage to Europe", funded by the German Academic Exchange Service, in which a book about experiences and research in the other country is being developed in cooperation between a total of 40 Indian and German doctoral students.

Selected writings

• The human being in the globalized world. Anthropological reflections on the understanding of our time. Christoph Wulf in conversation with Gabriele Weigand. Münster 2011.

Monograph

• Anthropology. A Continental Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

• Anthropology. History-Culture-Philosophy. Cologne, 2009 (new ed. 2nd Edition; first edition Reinbek 2004).

• Une anthropologie historique et culturelle: Rituels, mimesis sociale et performativité. Paris, 2007.

• Anthropology of cultural diversity. Intercultural education in times of globalization. Bielefeld, 2006.

• The genesis of the social. Mimesis, performativity, ritual. Bielefeld, 2005.

• with Gunter Gebauer: Mimetic World access. Stuttgart, 2003.

• Anthropology of education. introduction. Weinheim, 2001.

• with Gunter Gebauer: play, ritual, gesture. Mimetic action in the social world. Reinbek, 1998.

• with Gunter Gebauer: Mimesis - Culture - Art and Society. Berkeley, 1995.

• Theories and concepts of educational science. Munich, 7th ed. 1993.

• with Gunter Gebauer: Mimesis - Kultur - Kunst - Gesellschaft. Rowohlts Enzyklopädie. Reinbek, 1992.

• with Dietmar Kamper: In the shadow of the Milky Way. Tübingen, 1981.

• with Jürgen Dietrich: Gesamtschulalltag. The Kierspe case study. Paderborn, 1979.

• The political-social science curriculum. Munich, 1973.

Project volumes

• with Shoko Suzuki/Jörg Zirfas/Ingrid Kellermann /Yoshitaka Inoue /Fumio Ono /Nanae Takenaka: The Happiness of the Family. Ethnographic studies in Germany and Japan, 2011.

• with Birgit Althans, Kathrin Audehm, Gerald Blaschke, Nino Ferrin, Ingrid Kellermann, Ruprecht Mattig, Sebastian Schinkel: The Gesture in Education, Education and socialization. Ethnographic field studies. Wiesbaden, 2011.

• with Birgit Althans, Kathrin Audehm, Constanze Bausch, Michael Göhlich, Stephan Sting, Anja Tervooren, Monika Wagner-Willi, Jörg Zirfas: Ritual and Identity. The Staging and Performing of Rituals in the Lives of Young People. London, 2010.

• with Althans, Birgit. With the collaboration of Julia Foltys, Martina Fuchs, Sigrid Klasen, Juliane Lamprecht, Dorothea Tegethoff: Birth in family, clinic and media. A qualitative investigation. Opladen, 2008.

• with Althans, B., Blaschke, G., Ferrin, N., Göhlich, M., Jörissen, B., Mattig, R., Nentwig-Gesemann, I., Schinkel, S., Tervooren, A., Wagner-Willi, M.: Learning cultures in transition. Ritual practices in school, media, family and youth. Wiesbaden, 2007.

• with Birgit Althans, Kathrin Audehm, Constanze Bausch, Benjamin Jörissen, Michael Göhlich, Ruprecht Mattig, Anja Tervooren, Monika Wagner-Willi, Jörg Zirfas: Education in Ritual: School, family, Youth, media. Wiesbaden, 2004.

• with Birgit Althans, Kathrin Audehm, Constanze Bausch, Michael Göhlich, Stephan Sting, Anja Tervooren, Monika Wagner-Willi, Jörg Zirfas: The Social as a Ritual. For the performative formation of communities. Opladen 2001.

• Birgit Althans, Kathrin Audehm, Constanze Bausch, Benjamin Jörissen, Michael Göhlich, Stephan Sting, Anja Tervooren, Monika Wagner-Willi, Jörg Zirfas: Fundamentals of the Performative. An introduction to the interrelationships of language, power and action. Munich, 2001.