Information Science

The history of Information Science in Regensburg dates back to 1976, when Jürgen Krause was appointed professor of Linguistic Information Science. For more than 20 years Linguistic Information Science was part of the Chair of General Linguistics. It became a self-contained subject in 1999, when Rainer Hammwöhner was appointed Chair of Information Science. The number of students had been increasing ever since: As of summer semester 2013, 350 students were enroled in Information Science. Accordingly, the number of staff members increased as well, now comprising 12 people doing research and teaching.

The Chair of Information Science is part of largest department of its faculty. The Department of Information, Media, Language, and Culture incorporates five Chairs, serving an overall number of 2200 students. The  Faculty of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies as a whole comprises 5100 students and is the largest faculty of Regensburg university.

Multidisciplinarity if of major importance to IS, which is reflected by the variety of Chairs the department comprises of, as well. It is fostered by the students' responsibility to combine IS with a second subject, at least. I.e., students, who enrol for IS, must either choose a second subject or may go for second and a third subject. Often combined courses of study are Information Science and the closely related Media Informatics, which evolved from the Chair of Information Science. However, a diverse range of other subjects is studied by IS students, including mathematics, economics or philosophy.

Two full professors, one associate professor as well as one assistant professor and a post-doctoral researcher allow for many possibilities to combine both, teaching and research. Enable students to participate in ongoing research is the key idea lectures and seminars are based on at the Chair of IS in Regensburg. More information on up-to-date research topics at the Chair of IS may be found here.