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Center for Life Ethics
Schaumburg-Lippe-Straße 7
D-53113 Bonn
Center for Life Ethics
Schaumburg-Lippe-Straße 7
D-53113 Bonn
24.10.2022
How do we look at life? At 4:30 pm on October 24, ethicist Professor Christiane Woopen will be discussing this question from a range of angles and discipline-specific perspectives together with the deans of all the faculties at the University of Bonn, an early-career researcher and a student. The event is being held to mark the official opening of the Center for Life Ethics and the associated House for Young Thinkers, both of them founded and led by Professor Woopen herself. Guests will also include Hendrik Wüst, state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), and Katja Dörner, Mayor of Bonn. Anyone who is interested is welcome to watch a livestream of the opening ceremony at: youtu.be/ugKF793LcrI
It was around a year ago that Christiane Woopen took up a Hertz Professorship in the University of Bonn’s Individuals and Societies Transdisciplinary Research Area — one of six University-wide research alliances established with the help of its Excellence funding. They are geared toward solving major societal challenges in a joint effort and untangling the complex questions associated with them that straddle discipline boundaries. At the heart of the inter-faculty concept lie the Hertz Professorships, which are filled by illustrious researchers in order to establish new areas of research, forge links between disciplines and inject significant fresh momentum.
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Center for Life Ethics
Schaumburg-Lippe-Straße 7
53113 Bonn
Christiane Woopen’s research, teaching and consultancy work focuses on life and the conditions required for it to develop and thrive. “Technologization, economization, ecologization and globalization are placing our lives and that of society as a whole under significant pressure to change and be reshaped,” she says. She and her team will be studying these four drivers and the ethical aspects associated with them at the new Center for Life Ethics.
Their work will rely on close partnerships with researchers from other specialist disciplines, including economics, ecology, medicine, information and communication technologies, cultural studies, philosophy, sociology, theology and law, with ethics the common thread that joins them all together.
However, the Center for Life Ethics will draw its inspiration from across the whole of society, not just the world of academia: “The House for Young Thinkers is intended to be a meeting place between the sciences and society,” Christiane Woopen explains. “Working together with a range of stakeholders in society, we want to come up with potential solutions to some of the urgent challenges of today.”
As part of the opening ceremony for the Center for Life Ethics and the affiliated House for Young Thinkers, Christiane Woopen will bring together researchers from all the University of Bonn’s faculties in a unique way, namely by moderating a debate entitled “Wie schauen wir auf das Leben?.” This will feature Professor Jürgen von Hagen (Dean of the Faculty of Law and Economics), Professor Thomas Heckelei (Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture), Professor Volker Kronenberg (Dean of the Faculty of Arts), Professor Cornelia Richter (Dean of the Faculty of Protestant Theology), Schlegel Professor Klaus von Stosch (Faculty of Catholic Theology), Professor Bernd Weber (Dean of the Faculty of Medicine), Professor Walter Witke (Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences), Lenja Rosa Koch (student) and Jan Linhart (Senior Research Associate at the Center for Life Ethics).
Welcoming speeches will be made by Hendrik Wüst (state premier of NRW), Katja Dörner (Mayor of Bonn), Rector Professor Michael Hoch, Professor Thomas Dohmen (Speaker of the Individuals and Societies TRA) and Professor Volker Kronenberg (Dean of the Faculty of Arts).
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