Chair of Pedagogics

In 1991 Professor Dr. Eva Matthes defended her dissertation entiteld “From Liberal Arts to Critically-Constructive Pedagogics and Didactics. Wolfgang Klafkis’s Contribution towards the Development of Pedagogics as a Science”. In 1997 Prof Matthes wrote her post-doctorate entitled “The Political and Pedagogical Positions of Leading Representatives of University Pedagogics of Post- War Western Germany under the Perspective of Their (retrospective) Attitude Towards National Socialism”. In 2000 she took over the Chair of Pedagogics at the University of Augsburg.

The Chair employs three scientific assistants one of whom is financed with student fees, and carries out research on the following subjects: the history of German science of education and pedagogical discourse, the history of child development and education, the theory of child development and education, the history of adult education as well as international research on school textbooks. Since 2001 Eva Matthes has directed the International Society for Historical and Systematic Research on School Textbooks and since October 2005 she has been Deputy Chairwoman of the Section for Research on the History of Education of the German Society of Educational Science (DGfE).

A current research project, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and staffed with two research assistants, focuses on the pedagogical (crisis) discourse on big cities in the period from 1890 to 1930.

Professor Matthes received an extensive and positive response as coordinator of the project “Stories and Perspectives of a City”, which was carried out in autumn of 2007, and by which a link was created between the research activities of Augsburg University and the people of Augsburg.