Matthias Hensel, M.A.

There has been hardly any debate in recent decades that shows more clearly the relevance of cultural sciences than the issue of refugee policy. For this issue is a point of culmination of the fundamental questions of historically oriented cultural research, like "own" and "stranger", identity and diversity, continuity, persistence, change and transfer.

Research in Volkskunde and Cultural History - yes, the question of "our" culture - is a hotter topic than ever. For culture, understood in a broad and dynamic sense as a practice that permeates all areas of life, is the subject it explores, encompassing the behaviour, actions, ways of life, patterns of thought and habits of individual people and social groups, the structure of everyday life, of perceptions, customs, rites and transformations. Its purpose is always the analysis and understanding of cultural phenomena in a social and historical context. It was precisely its multidimensionality, its scepticism against simple answers and its search for the mundane in history that led me to Volkskunde  / Cultural History. The historical anthropology of the early modern period, especially the history of university towns and student history, history of everyday life and crime history, history "from below", subcultures in art and everyday life, as well as historical building research, crystallized as my research interests.

After my studies, came teaching assignments and activities as a freelance cultural scientist. At the same time, I began working on a dissertation entitled "University and Everyday Life in Jena - Conflict Stories of an Early-Modern University Town".