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The Graduate School of BACCARA was established on 1 July 2020. A programme covers the fields of materials science, (macro-)molecular chemistry, electrochemistry, catalysis and battery cell research for energy storage as well as life cycle analysis and recycling. In their guest contributions, two doctoral students present the importance that interdisciplinarity has in their everyday research.

Student exchanges, staff mobility, university projects: for over 35 years now, these have been part of the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme. Starting as a European exchange programme for students, Erasmus today offers numerous cross-border opportunities. These include cooperation and partnership programmes which assist exchanges between universities in Europe and all over the world.

The master’s course “Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies” combines the subjects of History, Philosophy and Philology. Anyone enrolling for this course learns a lot, from several angles, about textual scholarship, oral and written traditions, history and cultural history in the period from 500 to 1500 CE.

Uncovering the secrets of the universe: this is one of many aims which CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in Geneva has. Prof. Christian Klein-Bösing from the Institute of Nuclear Physics at Münster University has been working on the ALICE project there for many years. In an interview, he explains what the project is about and what collaboration is like in a large team.

The Center for Soft Nanoscience is a research building for the nano-sciences. Here, 32 teams from the physics, chemistry, biology and medicine do their work using high-precision nano-analytical methods. The special thing: Together under one roof, scientists are researching how nanomaterials with complex properties are created in nature in order to produce nanomaterials based on this model.

It is an unwritten law: scientific exchanges and interdisciplinarity are the basis for excellent research. How does interdisciplinary collaboration increase the gain in knowledge? What obstacles have to be overcome in everyday work? We take a closer look at these and other questions by presenting two research projects from the Humanities and the Social Sciences.

At the nanoscale, the laws of quantum mechanics apply and the boundaries between chemistry and physics become blurred. Three scientists provide insights into their research in this border area.

The Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Legal Unity and Pluralism” at the University of Münster is committed to interdisciplinary exchanges. One project is the Münster Glossary on Legal Unity and Pluralism, which has now been published in its second edition. In this interview ditor-in-chief Dr. Benjamin Seebröker describes the challenges which have to be overcome in interdisciplinary understanding.

Research is not possible without interdisciplinary working. But, even within one discipline, collaborations crossing the barriers between research areas can lead to new approaches. Mathematics is an example of this. Prof. Hendrik Weber and Prof. Raimar Wulkenhaar work together at the Cluster of Excellence “Mathematics Münster” and talk about the opportunities which exchanging ideas presents.

Irrespective of whether the issue is the general security situation, the rule of law, or political influence on academic and scientific work – instability is on the increase worldwide. The consequence is that scientific cooperation is at risk or has even been forbidden by law. Here we present how the University of Münster deals with "challenging" partner countries and dictatorships.

The German scholar Prof. Dr Susanne Günthner, the biologist Prof. Dr Eva Liebau, the Islamic scholar Prof. Dr Mouhanad Khorchide and the archaeologist Prof. Dr Angelika Lohwasser work with non-democratic partners. In their guest contributions, the academics from the University of Münster give an insight into their everyday work.

International exchange is a matter of course for universities. Only through cooperation can global challenges be solved. However, the field of tension between one's own set of values and divergent value systems in partner countries is constantly growing. In an interview, DFG Secretary-General Heide Ahrens talks about diplomacy in science.