New faculty heads at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar

The newly formed Faculty Board of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism approved Professor Bernd Rudolf as the Dean. Professor Rudolf, Professor of Building Morphology, has represented the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism as Dean since 2004 and was thus re-elected for the sixth time. He also performed key duties in his many years as a member of the Senate. He is currently President of the Council of German Deans of Architecture, Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture (DARL). Further members of the faculty leadership are Vice Dean Professor Jörg Springer (Professor of Design and Complex Theory of Buildings) and Dean of Studies Professor Sigrun Langner (Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning).

At the constituent meeting of the Faculty Board of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Professor Uwe Plank-Wiedenbeck was unanimously approved as Dean. Together with the two Vice Deans Professor Horst Michael Ludwig (Professor of Construction Materials) and Professor Conrad Völker (Professor of Building Physics), he will be heading the Faculty of Civil Engineering for the next three years. He holds a PhD in civil engineering and has been Professor of Transport System Planning at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar since January 2015.  In this short time, Plank-Wiedenbeck has boosted the Faculty of Civil Engineering’s profile in environmental engineering, gained extensive third-party-funded projects in the fields of mobility and digitalisation, dedicated himself to the university’s internationalisation, and established a broad network of partners in politics, business and research. Plank-Wiedenbeck took on the role of Dean from his predecessor Professor Alfen in August 2018. In the future, the Dean’s office plans to further develop the faculty’s degree programme and implement interdisciplinary projects in research and teaching.

Professor Wolfgang Kissel was elected the new Dean of the Faculty of Art and Design by a large majority at the constituent meeting of the Faculty Board. His work as a university instructor is closely linked to the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar: in 1993, he supported the development of the new Faculty of Design as an artistic staff member on the ‘Visuelle Kommunikation’ degree programme. As a university lecturer, he was part of the team that founded the Media Art and Design degree programme at the Faculty of Media in 1997, before being appointed Professor of Digital Moving Images at Harz University of Applied Sciences. He returned to the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar in the summer semester of 2000 when he was appointed Professor of Media Events. Since 2009, Wolfgang Kissel has run the interdisciplinary Bauhaus Film Institute (BFI), which will be repositioning itself during the 2019/20 winter semester as part of the ‘Backup & Beyond’ student festival.

The Faculty of Media saw a rotation of jobs between the faculty management: the new Dean is Professor Henning Schmidgen. As a professor from the field of Media Studies, he has already spent two terms of office as the Dean of Studies. He will be supported by his predecessor Professor Volker Rodehorst as Vice Dean, and by the former Vice Dean Professor Björn Kuchinke who has appointed Dean of Studies. Professor Schmidgen has been working at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar’s Faculty of Media since the summer semester of 2014, where he holds the professorship in the Theory of Media Worlds. This trained psychologist and philosopher initially worked as Professor of Media Aesthetics at the University of Regensburg, where he was appointed in 2011. In the same year he completed postdoctoral studies in Weimar, where he was awarded a teaching qualification for Media Studies and the History of Science. He was subsequently appointed to the Faculty of Media.