Research Profile

Sports science is a multidisciplinary science in which the phenomenon of movement, play and sport is viewed from the perspective of different scientific disciplines. At the Institute of Sport and Sports Science, the disciplines of sports medicine, exercise science and training science with a natural science orientation are represented on the one hand, and sports pedagogy, sports didactics, sports psychology and sports sociology with a humanities or social science focus on the other.

The research focus of the department "Performance and Health" (sports medicine) is sports immunology. The question is investigated whether and how acute athletic stress and training influence the immune functions of healthy people, as well as of people with cancer and multiple sclerosis, in order to optimize training recommendations for prevention and rehabilitation.

The department "Training and Movement" (training and movement science) deals on the one hand with phenomena of movement realization and motor learning as well as performance development and training from a holistic and applied perspective. Thereby, the biomechanical view of the movement process and its underlying control processes as well as their control is a main focus.

The research focus in the department "School and Teaching" (sports didactics) lies on the one hand in the further development of theoretical foundations for school sports (e.g. in the area of the professional competence of sports teachers, the development of teaching, the students' perspectives on school sports, the development of school sports) and on the other hand in their empirical examination by means of qualitative and quantitative research methods.

The research focus in the department "Education and Training" (sports pedagogy) lies in the further development of theoretical foundations for selected sports pedagogical topics (e.g. informal sports engagement, digitalization) and their empirical verification by means of mostly interpretative research methods.

In the department "Culture and Society" (Sociology of Sport), questions of the connection between the development of modern societies and sport are researched, with a particular focus on the phenomenon of analyzing modern physicality in its many facets.

A special research profile of the Dortmund Sports Institute lies in theoretical and empirical school sports research. These research activities are bundled in the Dortmunder Center for School Sports Researchwhich pursues the goal of establishing and systematically expanding school sports research as an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary, independent branch of sports science.