Profile
In 1973, Willi Esser was the first Professor to be appointed for the Department of Sport Psychology at the University of Münster. After his retirement in 1998, he was followed by Bernd Strauss as head of the department.
In 2005, Bernd Strauss refused the call for a full professorship of sport psychology at the University of Tuebingen, in 2008 he refused a full professorship of sport psychology at the University of Heidelberg.
Different members of the Department of Sport Psychology succeded in applying for projects which are financed externally like the DFG-Project: Differences in perception-action coupling between expert and novice, the DFG-Project: Visual information pick-up and attention in sport, the BISp-Project 2002-2003: Expertise in Badminton, and the GUVV-Project 2003-2005: Accidents in school sport. You can find more informations about current research projects here.
The Department of Sport Psychology deals in particular with the social-psychological aspects of sport like the self-concepts of athletes and spectators, perception of risk during physical education in school or even at the university, impact of spectators on performance, and home field advantage. Furthermore, we deal with expertise in sport i.e. cognitive strategies of athletes and coaches, perception and motor control and investigate questions concerning diagnostics and research methodoloy of sport psychology.
Bernd Strauss is the author of several monographs and academic journal articles. In addition, he is acting as editor-in-chief of the series "Psychology of Sport and Exercise“ (Elsevier) since 2004 and editor-in-chief of the series "sportwissenschaft" (Springer) since 2010.
Members of the department are active within as well as beyond the university. From 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2010, Bernd Strauss has been the dean of the Faculty of Psychology and Sport Science. Moreover, he served as the President of the German Association of Sport Science (Deutsche Vereinigung für Sportwissenschaft, dvs) from 2003 to 2009. From 2001 to 2004 he was the editor-in-chief of German the Journal of Sport Psychology (Zeitschrift für Sportpsychologie). Since 2009 he is the representative of elite sports at the University of Muenster.
From 2001 to 2005 Maike Tietjens has served as the equal opportunity commissioner at the Institute of Psychology and Sport Science and from 1999 to 2005 she has been a council member of the German Society of Sport Psychology. Since 2007 she is vice-president of finances of the German Association of Sport Science (dvs). Since 2009 she is vice-president of staff development, equal treatment and women of the German Association of exercise and gymnastics (DTB).
