ABSTRACT
The University of Duisburg-Essen, with around 30,000 students and 3400 academic
and non-academic employees, was founded on 1 January 2003 through the merger
of the University of Duisburg and the University of Essen (https://www.uni-duisburg-
essen.de). Both universities had been founded in 1972 with a distinct regional
mission. Primarily out of financial considerations, the state government of North
Rhine-Westphalia had decided to merge the two universities and passed the relevant
law. This decision concerning higher education policy led to considerable turbulence,
not only in the two affected universities, but also within the region.
