Interdisziplinäre Lehre: Meeting Global Challenges
Democracy in Crisis
Registration
Registration takes place via RWTHonline and is possible from 15 March 2026 to 6 April 2026. Further information on the registration process can be found in the FAQs.
All students can register for one course. You can specify two preferences. To do so, please use the ‘high’ priority and the one directly below it. For instructions, please click here. If you have not been allocated a place at the end of the allocation process and are still interested in participating in a course, please contact sibel.yildirim@ipw.rwth-aachen.de.
(If you have any problems with registration, please contact Ms Sibel Yildirim (IPW) at sibel.yildirim@ipw.rwth-aachen.de, stating your matriculation number. If you have any general questions about the course, please contact the person listed below.)
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Academic Responsibility
Chair of Philosophy of Science and Technology and Institute of Philosophy, RWTH Aachen University
Gender and Diversity in Engineering Research Group
Gender and Diversity in Engineering Research Group
Contact Person
Alina Meyer M.a,
Schedulue
Start
05.05.2026
Zeit
Tuesday, 18:30 – 20:00 h
Ort
HO7 im C.A.R.L.
Description
The module “Democracy in Crisis” in the summer semester 2026, will focus on selected challenges that democratic societies have faced in recent times and (in some cases) continue to face.
Through a joint examination of philosophical and political science perspectives on topics such as ‘extremism’, ‘migration’, and ‘(anti-)feminism’, as well as incorporating legal philosophy, legal theory, and political epistemology, we will discuss how individual moments of crisis can contribute to social polarisation, the impairment of democratic discourse, and a decline in trust in democratic processes and institutions.
The aim is to develop critical and analytical awareness, in the spirit of promoting democracy, to provide impetus for discussion on how democracies can be led out of crisis.
Learning Outcomes
- Raising awareness of threats and crises to democracy, its institutional deliberation and decision-making processes, and its rule of law.
- Recognising the beginnings of threats and the onset of functional impairments (historical, intellectual and social).
- Classifying potential dangers to the democratic order.
- Recognising the connections between sources of danger, worldviews, and ideologies.
- Ability to critically analyse corresponding threats and situations and knowledge of decisive counterarguments against worldviews and ideologies that endanger democracy by approving of such threats, spreading them and attempting to portray them as legitimate.
Program
05.05.2026
Introduction
Wulf Kellerwessel & Sebastian Bernhard
12.05.2026
Philosophy of law & legal theory,
Susanne Beck
19.05.2026
Democratic practice in crisis,
Carmen Krämer
26.05.2026
Between experts and populists – democracy in the knowledge crisis
David Terwiel & Caner Dogan
02.06.2026
(Anti-)feminism
Franziska Martinsen
16.06.2026
Migration
Frank Dietrich
23.06.2026
Extremism
Armin Pfahl-Traughber
30.06.2026
Lies
Pascale Willemsen
07.07.2026
Examination date
Procedure/Working method
Depending on the course of studies, module and examination, credit points can be achieved through participation. If you would like to take an exam, please make sure beforehand how you can get credit for it in your degree program. Of course, you can also take exams without receiving curricular credit for them. Visit our FAQs for more information.
Certificate
Protocol with reflection (2 CP, not graded), questionnaire (4 CP, graded)
