Professor Dr Umut Akkuş

Dr Umut Akkuş has been appointed to the professorial appointment for Youth and Youth Work in the Department of Social Work at Fulda University of Applied Sciences. The 39-year-old studied social sciences and sociology at the universities of Duisburg-Essen and Bielefeld. He then worked as a project staff member in a migrant organisation and further education institution and as a school social worker at a primary and secondary school. He later moved to a youth welfare centre for young refugees as an education specialist and worked as a youth education officer at an education centre.

In 2017, he took up a position as an academic participation at the Department of Applied Social Sciences at Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts. In 2022, he obtained his doctorate in philosophy (Dr phil.) from the Faculty of Education at Bielefeld University. Most recently, he worked as a talent scout at TU Dortmund University.

Dr Umut Akkuş specialises in youth research, radicalisation and extremism research and political education work with children and young people.

He is in favour of an interactive approach to teaching, in which topics are not only developed together, but space is also created for thematic discourse and digressions and topics are made tangible, which is why he integrates methodological elements into his courses in addition to the theoretical teaching of the course content.

His most recently published book "Radikal religiös: Eine Jugendkultur zwischen Moderne und Tradition?" (Radically religious: A youth culture between modernity and tradition?) examines the motives and factors behind the religious radicalisation of young people as well as the constitution of youth culture in contemporary German society. The focus is on the perspectives, experiences, appointments and world views of radicalised and radicalising young people who, in their search for meaning, orientation and stability in their lives, become more deeply rooted in the religion of Islam and radical religious milieus and structures.