Research at the Faculty of Psychology can be described along four guidelines:
- in contrast to the almost exclusive orientation towards natural science at other universities, it is open to approaches from the social and cultural sciences.
- it is characterised by a pluralistic understanding of research methods.
- it is in principle interested in relevant developments in neighbouring disciplines;
- a culture of dialogue across all existing disciplinary and methodological boundaries is exemplarily established in the cooperation of researchers.
Research foci and research clusters
Research at the Faculty of Psychology is divided into four main research areas, each of which integrates several research clusters. The organisation of the research clusters, some of which span implementation locations, takes into account the internationalisation and European orientation of SFU as a whole.
- Psychology and history: history of science in social and political context; cultural psychologies of memory;
- Psychology of social and cultural change: resentment and change potential in Europe – RECHANGE; psychological gender & diversity research.
- Psychology of clinically special populations: clinical psychology and new media; human/animal relationship; psychology of obesity; psychology of epidermolysis bullosa;
- Psychology of education, work and organisation: work and health; psychology of family business; psychology of education and giftedness.
- Interfaculty Research Cluster on Covid-19 (PDF; in German)
Research and teaching
At the Faculty of Psychology, research and teaching are inextricably interwoven. Student teaching is committed to the principles of research-led teaching; teaching research projects introduce students to the main research areas represented at the Faculty. All students are encouraged to become involved in existing interdisciplinary and international cooperation projects and to write their scientific qualification theses under the competent supervision of project staff.