Diversity Policies and Cultures in European Higher Education – An International Comparison

📌 Project Lead: Lisa M. Rosen (M.A.)
📌 Primary Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Mechtild Gomolla
📌 Funding: Doctoral Scholarship of the Hans Böckler Foundation
📌 Duration: 01.04.2020 – 31.03.2023

Project Overview

This dissertation project examines the institutional changes in higher education driven by global education reforms in the context of policy-driven “Global Governance.” The research analyzes how these reforms affect national university regulations and their impact on political, legal, and cultural inclusion discourses within different education systems.

Using empirical case studies, the project investigates both connections and tensions between migration- and mobility-focused political strategies and university profiles designed to promote diversity. Additionally, it explores the collective experiences and learning orientations of university members engaged in diversity promotion.

This study applies discrimination-sensitive and intersectionally informed approaches from organizational research to transnational and (post-)national contexts. Eurocentric and nationalist constructions of difference are reflexively integrated into a heuristic model, making the interpretive struggles and tensions surrounding “diversity (promotion)” more visible.

Another key objective of the project is to bridge discourse-comparative and institutional multi-level analyses within the European education space. It particularly examines the heterogeneity and asymmetry of (post-)national inclusion and exclusion practices, aiming to further develop context-sensitive, reflective diversity research.

School Development and Teacher Professionalization in Migration Contexts

📌 Project Lead: Dr. Aysun Doğmuş
📌 Funding: Internal Research Funding of Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg (IFF)
📌 Duration: 01.07.2021 – 30.06.2023

Project Overview

This research project explores the intersections between teacher professionalization and school development in migration contexts, both from a theoretical and empirical perspective. The goal is to systematically link school development, professionalization, and migration-related educational research, while analyzing key empirical correlations such as recontextualization, persistence, and transformation.

During the IFF funding phase, the project focuses on teacher negotiations in discrimination-sensitive teacher education. Teachers act as facilitators of school development, initiating and supporting discrimination-sensitive change processes within their schools.

Parents with a Migration Background in the Educational Policy Discourse of the Federal Republic of Germany

📌 Project Lead: Mechtild Gomolla and Ellen Kollender

Project Description

In recent decades, enhancing parental involvement has been widely regarded as a key strategy for improving student learning outcomes—particularly in schools with a high proportion of children from migrant backgrounds and/or economically disadvantaged families. This involvement is often framed in terms of “partnership” and “cooperation”, but these concepts encompass various meanings and strategies that do not always align with social justice goals.

In reality, parental engagement initiatives can sometimes reinforce segregation, rather than promote inclusion, when they are based on paternalistic attitudes, deficit-oriented perspectives, or cultural stereotypes.

Research Approach

This study conducted a discourse analysis of educational and integration policy documents from the 1950s to the present, examining how the image of foreign parents or parents with a migration background has evolved in relation to schools in Germany.

Key aspects analyzed in this study include:
✔ Tensions, contradictions, and gaps in current parental involvement strategies
✔ Shifts in integration policy discourse
✔ The emergence of new post-welfare state forms of education governance
✔ Transformations in the public sphere in the context of schools