education

A cornerstone of the HESCOR project is our commitment to education and outreach to university students, school children, and the general public.

At the university and schools: At the university, we are committed to education through open lectures, such as our Ringvorlesung series, and online lectures as Open Educational Resources. Through the university, we participated in KinderUni, a month of courses for children in 3rd to 6th grade. We are also creating comics to document the interdisciplinary scientific process for a broad audience.

For the public: Through social media, we will extend the outreach of our comics to the public. We will also post scientific, but digestible blogs to extend our research to a broader audience. In addition, towards the conclusion of our project, we will host an exhibition on our findings on human cultural evolution.

Educational Research: In the HESCOR project, data are critically important. We are therefore pursuing scientific research in collaboration with the Institute of Geography Education to assess the data competence of future teachers and create an educational framework that extends data awareness within the classroom. The guiding research questions are:

  1. What ideas do students have about data?
  2. How do students assess data quality?
  3. What skills do students have to critically assess data?
  4. What difficulties do students have in structuring and evaluating data?
  5. Which methods can be used to promote data literacy among students?

OUTREACH

A group of children gathered around microscopes on a library table, examining specimens while a female scientist explains the climate-research station.

KölnerKinderUni

HESCOR Team Members Verena Foerster, Elena Robakiewicz, and Isabell Schmidt along with multiple student workers across disciplines hosted a KinderUni course on interdisciplinary research. Students were able to become a scientist for an hour (archaeologist, paleoclimatologist, or chronologist) and learn the ins and outs of the research process!
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Lecture Series

Did you ever wonder how humans have shaped and were shaped by Earth throughout history? In a lecture series for cross-disciplinary bachelor's students, members of HESCOR will host lectures on their role in HESCOR's ultimate goal of comprehensive insight into the past, present, and future of human interrelations with changing climate and environments.
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OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

Comics

Scientific methods are often unclear and abstract to the general public. In HESCOR, we aim to breakdown barriers by documenting our interdisciplinary scientific process through easily digestible comics created by Dr. Frederik von Reumont aimed for the public ranging in age from school children to the young at heart!
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Open Online Lectures

HESCOR is committed to sharing our knowledge with university students to increase interest in scientific interdisciplinary work. To extend our outreach, we are creating relevant materials on the fundamentals of our work (such as what is a model? what are data?, etc.) as interactive Open Education Resources to share with any interested parties globally.
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LATEST BLOG POSTS

Interdisciplinary research is demanding, unsettling, and transformative – otherwise it fails
26.11.2025

Interdisciplinary research is demanding, unsettling, and transformative – otherwise it fails

Achieving true interdisciplinarity is hard! Dr. Shumon T. Hussain makes an argument for accepting the transformative nature of interdisciplinary research - even if that means researchers must revisit their standard methods and assumptions!
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What is a good model?
12.11.2025

What is a good model?

What's a (good) model? Dr. Annika Vogel highlights the questions that need to be answered and decisions that need to be made to appropriately model interdisciplinary phenomena - there are always tradeoffs!
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Unveiling the Past with Machine Learning
29.10.2025

Unveiling the Past with Machine Learning

How can machine learning be used in archaeology? Dr. Boqiang Huang lists the ways that archaeologists could use machine learning to revolutionize standard archaeological methods.
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LATEST STUDENT PERSPECTIVES

Lecture Series: A Journey Through Time and Scientific Disciplines
02.04.2025

Lecture Series: A Journey Through Time and Scientific Disciplines

HESCOR researchers present their interdisciplinary work on exploring deep-time human–environment interactions and the potential of computational modelling. The six-part series starts on April 14, 2025, and is open to all.
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CONTACT
Universität zu Köln
Weyertal 125
50931 Köln
Germany
Dr. Isabell Schmidt
Coordination
Phone: +49 221 470-3385
isabell.schmidt@uni-koeln.de
Mo.-Fr.: 9–15 Uhr
Funded by:

University of cologne