WiHo editorial team: What is your central research project at the moment, and what social relevance does it have?
Pasternack: At the moment, I'm working on a total of ten projects. I've been involved in up to fifteen at once in the past – although a healthy workload would amount to three to four projects. While I couldn't call any of my current projects "central," several of them have to do with issues of the development of science, education and higher education institutions in regional contexts. In all of these efforts, there is an overarching focus on the question of how development of knowledge and science, which by nature is not regionally confined, can have a regional impact.

WiHo editorial team: How did you come to focus on research on higher education and science? Was your decision based on any central event or experience?
Pasternack: During my time as a student, I got involved in student politics and wound up with very little time to study. I had seminar papers to write, however. So I decided to write all of my papers on the one topic about which I thought I knew something and for which I would not require any extra study: issues pertaining to higher education. Not surprisingly, this strategy led me to choose a diploma-thesis topic, and then a dissertation topic, in that area. The most important lesson I learned from this was that researchers who study higher education need to cultivate a rather aloof affinity with their subject – perhaps just as researchers who study traffic accidents should "like" their subject and yet not develop any particular liking for traffic accidents per se.

WiHo editorial team: What thematic emphases do you apply in your teaching?
Pasternack: Mostly, I focus on organisational structures in the higher education sector. The students I teach study sociology, and not higher education research. I attract them by telling them that in my courses they will acquire skills that will enable them to analyse "difficult" organisations. After taking my courses, they can find it less difficult, and even very easy, to analyse – or, in practical contexts, to understand – (nearly) all other types of organisations.

WiHo editorial team: How do you develop new seminar content?
Pasternack: I do so by asking myself – in the context of our modular curricular architecture – what topic(s) I would like to study and have no time to study at the moment. The resulting course then forces me to find the time to study the topic(s) I came up with.

WiHo editorial team: Regarding the status quo of research on higher education and science in Germany: In what areas is such research especially strong? In what ways does it still need to improve?
Pasternack: The research tends to be about as good as its resources are. And its resources are rather modest. What we lack most keenly are institutionally secured perspectives for our young researchers. As long as nothing changes in this regard, we will continue to see high rates of turnover, high rates that hinder epistemic stabilisation of our research field.

WiHo editorial team: What topics do you think will be central in research on higher education and science in the coming years?
Pasternack: First of all, digitalisation – which is more than simply open educational resources (OER) and massive open online courses (MOOCs). This also involves knowledge production, including information procurement, information analysis and data administration and analysis (which calls especially for digital instruments developed from the user's point of view); communication of knowledge in the context of cooperation (including communication extending beyond the boundaries of the science sector); and interactive forms of publication. Second, the organisational structures in the science sector – i.e. the forms of institutionalisation seen in the sector, along with their technical resources – will play a central topical role. And this will have to be seen in connection with the question of how science can best help address the grand challenges facing us.