Keywords like „Information Society“; „Media Society“; „Lifelong Learning“ are under public discussion. Universities are a specific interface here, as a university produces knowledge via its research efforts, it teaches knowledge via the academic education; it maintains knowledge via archives and libraries and reflects on how knowledge is gained, utilized and modified. Furthermore, under the conditions of globilization, it became obvious how much cultural specifics impact on the acquisition of and dealing with knowledge. At the same time, the different faculties of a university demonstrate how differently the single subjects maintain knowledge and that each of them provides different instructions on how to understand the world.

Within the framework of the department „Knowledge – Culture – Transformation“, these topics shall be investigated from an interdisciplinary perspective. As, for instance, research on how knowledge transfer via (old and new) media modifies the understanding of what is worth knowing on the one side and how the right to use knowledge impacts on media and their development on the other side is implemented under the keyword „Knowledge and Mentality“.
The question how knowledge is determined by power structures, in politics, public media but also by religions can be raised under the headline „Knowledge and Power“. The cultural imprint and conditioning of knowledge is a subject of discussion as much as the long-term changes of sciences or the changes of conception of the world initiated by scientific findings. Extensive preparations on these questions have already been made by the university. Accordingly, the individual modules are based on organisations like postgraduate programs or institutes dedicated to certain topics.