Thomas Wrona is a professor and director of the Institute for Strategic & International Management at the Hamburg University of Technology. In his research, he examines the strategic processes and practices through which organizations interpret change, develop visions of the future, negotiate identities and meanings, and give rise to new forms of organization. Together with Jo Reichertz, he teaches the course Qualitative Research Methods, and with Clara Scheve, he teaches the course Wissenschaftstheorie (Philosophy of Science).

Science often seeks to provide unambiguous answers. What fascinates me about the philosophy of science and qualitative research methods is that both remind us to treat such unambiguity with caution. The philosophy of science shows that research is based on different ‘ways of seeing the world’, and that these help shape our questions, concepts, and methods. Qualitative research methods take different constructions of reality seriously—which always implies that alternative constructions may also exist.

Academia offers an extraordinary amount of freedom, but it also brings extreme stress and uncertainty, especially at the beginning. This makes it all the more important to have spaces where people can experiment, ask questions, and even fail. For me, perhaps the greatest opportunity lies in developing one’s own academic style—together with others and, certainly, even in defiance of established conventions.

On the one hand, things that don’t quite fit together at first or seem unrelated at first glance. Research becomes particularly interesting to me when something doesn’t fit into existing categories and you start to frame the question differently. And over time, I’ve realized that people often inspire me—simply because of the way they look at things.

53° 33′ N, 9° 59′ E

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