University of Erfurt

Overview

University of Erfurt

University of Erfurt (Universität Erfurt in German) is a public research university located in Erfurt, Germany. It was initially founded in 1379 before closing in 1816 and getting reestablished in 1994, putting the institution in the unique position of being one of the youngest and also the oldest universities in the country. University of Erfurt is acknowledged as one of the best educational institutions in Germany with contributions in psychology, mathematics, and statistics.

University of Erfurt Key Statistics

The university is composed of four faculties, namely the Faculty of Education, Faculty of Catholic Theology, Faculty of Philosophy, and the Faculty of Economics, Law, and Social Sciences. There is also the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies that functions as both a graduate school and an Institute for Advanced Study. There is a wide variety of undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs on offer.

University of Erfurt has 5,715 students, 358 academic staff, and 287 administrative staff. The university’s campus offers facilities including dormitories, child care facilities, cafeteria, school garden, bicycle repair station, language center, and sports hall.

Other University of Erfurt key statistics include its libraries namely the Erfurt University Library and the Gotha Research Library containing 1.1 million publications, 27,000 ebooks, 905 magazine subscriptions, 334,000 microforms, and 10,000 audiovisual materials.

University of Erfurt Research

The university conducts research on three cross-sectional foci namely religion, society, and world relations, knowledge, spaces, and media, and education, school, and behavior. Support for its research projects comes from national and international funding sources such as the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the German Research Foundation, and the European Commission.

Psychology, mathematics, and statistics are the top fields of University of Erfurt research. Their work output has been presented at conferences such as the International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance in 2010, Language, Data and Knowledge conference in 2017, and the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences also in 2017.

The most cited article from the university is Schermelleh-Engel et al.’s (2002) “Evaluating the fit of structural equation models: Tests of significance and descriptive goodness-of-fit measures” which appeared in Methods of Psychological Research Online and has more than 9,600 citations to date. The second most cited publication is Aarts et al.’s (2015) “Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science” featured in Science and has over 6,300 citations. In addition, the third most cited work is Fehr et al.’s (2008) “Egalitarianism in young children” published in Nature with above 1,500 citations so far.

Research centers at Erfurt University include the Erfurt Laboratory for Empirical Research containing 15 rooms for laboratory experiments and data collection through surveys and interviews and the Center for Transcultural Studies that studies the Gotha collection with a particular focus on the Perthes Collection.

There is also the Gotha Research Center for research on knowledge in modern times and the history of culture, and the William Brandt School of Public Policy for studying the complex political world of today. The university also has the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies that practices a comparative and interdisciplinary research program.