Start May 22, 2025
End May 23, 2025
Against the backdrop of the diagnosed polycrisis of contemporary societies and the challenges of a new "great transformation", the relationship between (social) science and society has been debated anew for several years (Maasen 2020). The old Weberian demand for "freedom of value judgment" seems to have long since been overtaken by the present in view of the many and increased appeals to science and third-party funding programs geared towards applied knowledge and transfer practices - or is it more topical than ever? In any case, the (social) sciences are no longer only publicly required to conduct research, but also to communicate the results on a broad basis, even to produce social, technical and economic innovations, i.e. to initiate change, to actively (co-)shape change, in short: to have a transformative effect. This transformative claim is regularly linked to the call for inter- and transdisciplinary action and the expectation of participatory research.
