Leuphana University Lüneburg decides to retract a habilitation
2025-01-10 Lüneburg. 10 January 2024. In December 2024, the Faculty of Cultural Studies at Leuphana University Lüneburg decided to withdraw the habilitation of Professor Dr. Cornelia Koppetsch due to violations of academic honesty in her habilitation thesis ‘The Ethos of the Creative. From the bourgeois profession to the culture of the new capitalism. A study of the transformation of work and identity using the example of advertising professions’.
The scientist, who is currently working at the Technical University of Darmstadt, completed her habilitation at the then Department of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Lüneburg in 2006, thus obtaining authorisation to teach sociology. After a preliminary examination of the habilitation thesis revealed initial indications of violations of academic honesty, the Leuphana School of Culture and Society initiated an administrative procedure to review the work in 2022.
The procedure, which also involved external expertise, led to the conclusion that the habilitation thesis contained serious violations of academic honesty in the form of (literal) adoptions from texts by other authors that were not marked as such. These adoptions follow a pattern of improper separation between one's own and other people's formulations and thoughts. The violations of academic honesty characterise the submitted work as a whole.
The Faculty Council of the Leuphana School of Culture and Society has therefore unanimously followed the recommendation of the Standing Habilitation Commission, which was also previously unanimous, to withdraw the habilitation. The withdrawal means that Professor Dr. Koppetsch loses her authorisation to teach sociology. She can take legal action against the decision.