Ulrike Deppe

Prof. Dr. Ulrike Deppe is a Professor of General Educational Science at the Institute for Pedagogy, Faculty of Philosophy, Chemnitz University of Technology. She assumed her W3 professorship in October 2022 after serving in various academic positions including as a Post-Doc at Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and temporary professorships at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and TU Dresden. Since October 2023, she has served as Managing Director of the Institute for Pedagogy.

Her research focuses on educational science with particular attention to educational inequality, qualitative research methods, biographical research, transnational education, and socialization processes in childhood and youth. Her work critically examines family and peer group dynamics, elite education, boarding schools, and educational transitions. She employs qualitative and biographical research methodologies to investigate how educational inequalities are produced and maintained within and outside educational institutions.

Prof. Deppe's recent publications demonstrate a consistent focus on the biographical trajectories of students from exclusive educational institutions, particularly boarding schools. Her research shows how educational inequalities are reproduced through complex interactions between family background, peer relationships, and institutional contexts. She has increasingly focused on transnational dimensions of education and how crises like the pandemic affect educational institutions. Her methodological approach emphasizes qualitative triangulation and biographical research to understand the nuanced processes of educational inequality.

As a principal investigator, she leads the BMFTR/ESF+ Project 'ImmEr' (2024-2027) focused on education for immigrant and refugee youth in child welfare services. She also directs the TUCculture project 'Europa im Klassenzimmer' examining European perspectives in educational materials before and after German reunification. Previously, she led a DFG project on biographical trajectories of German boarding school graduates (2017-2021).

Prof. Deppe has organized numerous academic events including the 'UnTiEd' workshop on unequal transnationalization in education (2024) and the 'At the Margins of Methods' lecture series (2023/2024). She serves on the Faculty Council of the Faculty of Philosophy and as Deputy Chair of the Examination Board for the Bachelor's program in Pedagogy.