ZefiS (Center for interdisciplinary language research)

The ZefiS (Center for interdisciplinary language research) bundles the manifold language-related interdisciplinary activities of the BUW.

It consists of 39 members of the following 6 faculties at BUW:

Faculty 1: School of Humanities,

Faculty 2: School of Human and Social Sciences

Faculty 3: Schumpeter School of Buiness and Economics

Faculty 4: School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences

Faculty 6: School of Electrical, Information and Media Engineering

School of Education.

The ZefiS is active within the following Teaching and Research Profiles of the BUW: mainly within the profile (d) LANGUAGE, NARRATION AND EDITING and (b) EDUCATION AND KNOWLEDGE IN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS. Also important for us are (c) HEALTH, ILLNESS PREVENTION AND MOVEMENT, (e) ENGINEERING and (f) BUSINESS, INOVATION AND ECONOMIC CHANGE.

Our aims are:

1. Acquisition of external funding. Our members apply for an external funding of their research at organizations (DFG, EU, BMBF, business).

2. Organization of conferencess. The ZefiS organizes major international conferences and workshops in Wuppertal. The first large conference of this kind was the Autumn School of DSRI (German Legal Informatics Foundation) in September 2012.

3. Training early-stage researchers. The ZefiS offers training to its members who are early-stage researchers, i.e. who are gratuating or within their postdoc time. To this purpose, mentoring days take place on a regular basis.

4. Initiate cooperations. Members of the ZefiS establish long-term cooperations with European and international universities to exchange students and staff.

5. Public Colloquia. Each semester, the ZefiS organizes a public colloquium.

The ZefiS' rules of procedure are published here.