Research with wide horizons – connecting the North

The Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg was founded in 2004 by the Parliament of Hamburg with the goal of intensifying interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research and raising the visibility of Northern Germany as a science region.

"An Academy of a new kind"

“Shortly before Christmas 2004 the Members of the Hamburg Parliament voted for the establishment of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg. With the announcement in the Official Gazette on 28 December  2004, the Academy was founded. A decade-long phase of preparations and efforts by many people to create an Academy of Sciences in Northern Germany was finally successful. The Academy was to pursue interdisciplinary investigation of topics of fundamental scientific and societal importance, to promote dialogue between academia, public debate, and political advices, to offer an independent forum for topics relevant to the future and so to give science an institutional voice in the metropolitan region of Hamburg. Furthermore, the Academy  would support and include junior researchers and provide a home for long-term scientific and scholarly projects. The Academy was not to be organised in classes but in Working Groups and so form an Academy of a new kind.”

Researching – debating – advising

The Academy includes as its members prominent scholars and scientists from northern Germany. It is conceived as a working academy: in Working Groups and Project Groups its members develop interdisciplinary research projects that address questions of importance to future society and problems of fundamental science. Furthermore, the Academy takes as its special task the promotion of exchange between academia and public debate on these topics.

Support for junior researchers by integrating young scientists and scholars into the Working Groups advances dialogue between generations and enriches scientific and public discourse.

Interdisciplinary. Independent. Relevant.

The Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg promotes independent, free research and reflection, an exchange, driven by curiosity and research enthusiasm, among the best minds across the boundaries of scientific disciplines and generations, as well as communication between academia and society, established through countless events, publications and position papers. In this way the Academy, as an independent mediator in the North, supports societal debates, both in times of stability and of crisis, with reliable knowledge and information – the foundation for smart solutions, productive economics and new perspectives.

Recording – preserving – communicating

Scientific and scholarly academies in Germany always also have a function as memory: they record and preserve countless treasures of human culture in research projects that demand much time and meticulous research. The public funding instrument – the so-called Academies Programme – that makes possible such long-term research on cultural heritage in Germany, including in Hamburg, is unique worldwide and enriches the international research landscape. The Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg makes the results of these researches available to society and brings to the public the excitement of lively research in the humanities.

The basic funding of the Academy is financed from resources of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. The initial funding of the Academy from 2005 to 2007 was made possible by grants from the Foundation “Hamburgische Stiftung für Wissenschaften, Entwicklung und Kultur Helmut und Hannelore Greve”.

Contact

Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg
​​​​​​​Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Ostflügel, 2. OG.
20146 Hamburg
Tel.: +49 40 42948669-0
Telefax: +49 40 42948669-25
Email: Sekretariat(at)awhamburg.de

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Jubilee Brochure 2020

“Weitsichtig forschen – den Norden verbinden.
15 Jahre Akademie der Wissenschaften in Hamburg” (“Research with wide horizons – connecting the North. 15 years of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg”, in German)

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The Academy is a member of the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities, the association uniting eight
Academies of Sciences in Germany.