Professorship for Work and Knowledge

Professor

• Prof. Dr. Stefanie Ernst

Profile

The work and teaching area "Work and Knowledge" is dedicated to research into the genesis, structural peculiarities and polyvalences of work and knowledge as a relatively stable and at the same time versatile power and social structure of society. This implies in particular the theoretical and empirical investigation of the societal transformations that call into question the traditional self-understanding of modern societies and their social cohesion. On the one hand, the changing work and knowledge society in particular holds ambivalent challenges that need to be explored more closely in micro- and meso-sociological terms. On the other hand, on the macrosociological level, contributions are made to the further development of work and knowledge sociology on the basis of process theory. The question of the location of the individual in the work, knowledge and educational process is fundamentally reopened against the background of an extended sociological research framework (from classical industrial and business sociology to work and organisational sociology to the investigation of knowledge and service work alone).  A knowledge sociological view of the location-bound nature of discourses on the work and knowledge society and the factual mobilization of implicit knowledge in work organizations is also extended here by a view of the long-term socio- and psychogenetic dimensions of social transformations.

In accordance with the Master's programme, which is oriented towards antinomies, self-dynamics and ambivalences, several research projects are located in the process sociological focus "Work and Knowledge", which deal in particular with the transformations and subjectivation processes of work and knowledge as well as their effects on social inequalities (gender, origin, age, etc.).

Projects

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  Projects

  • DIV – Diversitätsklima-Erhebung an der WWU Münster (2023 – 2024)
    Internally at the University of Münster Funded Project: Uni Münster-internal funding schemes
  • Re-defining the public. Die neue Sichtbarkeit von Frauen in der Öffentlichkeit: Teilprojekt im DFG-Vorhaben des ZEUGS, Uni Münster, Sichtbarkeit von Frauen in Arbeitsorganisationen (Diversity-Management und Teamarbeit) (2014 – 2022)
    Own Resources Project
  • SPRYNG – Spreading Young Non-discrimination Generation - SPRYNG (2017 – 2020)
    EU-Project Hosted outside the University of Münster: EC - Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme | Project Number: JUST/2014/RDIS/AG/DISC/8129
  • The forgotten generation. Youth and long-term unemployment (2014 – 2017)
    Own Resources Project
  • ARBEITsLEBEN. Filmreihe im CINEMA Münster (2017 – 2017)
    Scientific Event: Sparkasse Münsterland Ost
  • International conference: Changing Power Relations and the Drag Effects of Habitus - Theoretical and Empirical Approaches in the Twenty-First Century, Münster 08.-10.09.2016 (2016 – 2016)
    Scientific Event: Participation / conference fees , Norbert Elias Foundation
  • Live and Work in the Cultural and Creative Industry (since 2015)
    Own Resources Project
  • FIG – Social Processes and Individual Practice. Lecture Series in Memory to Norbert Elias's Guestprofessorship at the WWU Muenster 50 years ago, supported by the Norbert Elias-Foundation (2015 – 2016)
    Own Resources Project
  • EVA – Innovation and Sustainability in the social economy: evaluation of the stabilisation programme (2010 – 2012)
    Own Resources Project
  • FIG – Thinking in Figuration: A knowledge sociological study about processtheory (since 2008)
    Own Resources Project

• Innovation and Sustainability in the Social Economy: "Evaluation of the Stabilisation Phase".

  Cooperation with Hamburger Arbeit GmbH, Lawaetz-Stiftung Hamburg
  Funding: State of Hamburg, Ministry of Economic and Labour Affairs

  In the course of comprehensive case and care management as well as health promotion and psychosocial counselling, the need for action of long-term unemployed people with health impairments who are remote from the labour market and low-qualified is identified. The aim is to evaluate the optimisation of labour market policy measures for this particularly disadvantaged group. The changes are measured, evaluated and fed back into the ongoing process. In the sense of knowledge transfer, the results are also passed on for sustainable labour market and health policy concepts.

• Diversity and teamwork as an innovation in gender-equitable organisational development

  Funding: University of Hamburg, Women's Fund, 2009-2010

  The empirical-theoretical research project investigates whether and how mixed-gender and gender-homogeneous work and team structures differ and have a lasting effect on the efficiency and effectiveness of work, organization and work structures. Empirical surveys were carried out and evaluated in the first enterprise under investigation, which introduced teamwork at the strategic and operative levels of work and process organisation as part of reorganising processes and which recorded a medium level of participation by women in management positions. In the second part of the project, this case study in the healthcare sector will now be supplemented by further analyses of teamwork.

• Thinking in Figurations: A Sociological Knowledge Study on Process Theory

  Funding: Norbert Elias Foundation, since 2008

  This knowledge-sociological project deals with the reconstruction of the figuration-sociological scientific community within the history of science. By means of guideline-supported English and German interviews with companions, colleagues and students of the exile sociologist Norbert Elias, a European generation of scientists becomes visible in their mutual interdependencies, traditions and national points of reference, which has decisively received, further developed and shaped process theory.

• Subjective working between market form and experimental diversity

  Funding: University of Hamburg, Department of Social Economics

  With the stated paradigm shift from the Fordist industrial society to the knowledge and service society, which is characterized in particular by a forced market form of the individual and reflexive knowledge, the question of the location of the individual in the work process also arises anew. To what extent the associated erosion of the largely male normal working relationship also has consequences for the modelling of emotional structures, for the personal shaping of life and specific constraints of the individual in his or her social interdependence is also a question, as is the sectoral distribution and significance of qualifications and gender.

Events

• Changing Power Relations and the Drag Effects of Habitus

  Theoretical and Empirical Approaches in the Twenty-first Century

  The Institute of Sociology at the Westphalian Wilhelms-University is organising a conference in Münster, Germany, on 8–10 September 2016. The conference results from collaboration between Stefanie Ernst (Professor of Sociology, Work and Knowledge) and Christoph Weischer (Professor of Sociology, Analysis of Social Structure, and Methods), and has the support of the Norbert Elias Foundation, Amsterdam.

  For further details see also: https://www.uni-muenster.de/Soziologie/en/forschung/tagungen/elias.shtml