Integrative Research Institutes (IRI)
As cross-faculty institutes, the IRIs promote strong research collaborations within the university and thus make a decisive contribution to shaping the profile of the university as a whole. At the same time, the IRI are a place for tapping potential at the interfaces between university and non-university research and make a decisive contribution to the long-term development of collaborative research at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In addition to the high potential for scientific innovation, the IRIs also have an impact on the university's management structures and facilitate new models of scientific cooperation across disciplinary boundaries.
The IRIs work closely with the Humboldt Graduate School to promote early career researchers.
IRIS Adlershof
The Integrative Research Institute for the Sciences - IRIS Adlershof - was founded in 2009 as the first IRI at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. It conducts interdisciplinary research into novel hybrid materials and functional systems. Through bridging professorships, the establishment of a joint infrastructure ("Joint-Lab for Structural Research") and growing cooperation with industry, IRIS is providing important impetus for the development of Adlershof. Young scientists are supported through close cooperation with the Salsa graduate school, which is funded by the Excellence Initiative.
IRI THESys - The Great Transformations of Human-Environmental Systems
This IRI at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin is dedicated to the research field of Transformation of Human-Environment Systems (THESys). THESys focuses on the networking of several HU faculties in the field of sustainability research. Synergies are to be exploited through increased cooperation with non-university partners in the field of climate research. The promotion of excellent young researchers is supported by specially established junior research groups.
IRI Law & Society (LSI)
IRI Law & Society
The Law & Society Institute (LSI) Berlin is a place of interdisciplinary legal research at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. It was founded in 2008 by Prof. Dr. Susanne Baer and has been an Integrated Research Institute of the HU since 2019, funded by the Excellence Initiative.
The LSI offers a genuinely interdisciplinary place where questions about the function, governance and interdependencies of law are identified, methodologically reflected upon and historically and comparatively contextualized. By supplementing dogmatic legal research with the systematic inclusion of the social sciences, humanities and cultural studies, it questions knowledge formations that have coagulated in disciplines and provides institutional, personal and content-related impulses for integrative and reflective research into law and society. The LSI thus takes up traditions of research in the sociology and history of law and sees itself linked to the Law & Society movement that emerged from legal realism. As an Integrated Research Institute, the LSI aims to support cross-faculty cooperation and thus provide a framework for innovative approaches across disciplinary boundaries. In addition, the LSI cooperates with national and international partners, such as the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford.
The LSI's work is divided into thematic research focuses. In addition to the academic staff working on the research projects, the Institute's work is supported by a project group and enriched by visits from international guests.