Hannelore Schwedes was the Vice-Rector for Teaching and Studies at the University of Bremen from 1995 to 1997. She was elected on July 12, 1995, and thus became the third member to join the team of rectors Jürgen Gutowski and Hagen Lichtenberg, who had already been appointed in April. She was the second woman, after Helga Gallas, to be elected Konrektor at the University of Bremen.

The professor served as a faculty member in the university's Faculty 1 - Physics/Electrical Engineering from Oct. 1, 1975, to July 31, 2003. Before coming to Bremen, she had been an assistant in the field of physics didactics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. From 1989 to 1991, she was the spokesperson for the newly established Central Commission for Women's Issues as well as the first Women's Representative at the University of Bremen.

Hannelore Schwedes dedicated her scientific work to the didactics of physics. She has contributed with great commitment to establishing the subject in research and teaching at the University of Bremen, with a particular focus on physics in science education. Her basic question: How can physics best be taught to children? Her learning research on the water circuit as a model of the electric circuit has focused on secondary level 1 (most recently grade 10) through several completed doctoral dissertations that she has supervised. The focus was on in-depth conceptualization of voltage, amperage and resistance based on experimental investigations of the water circuit, but also on didactic theory building on analogies and mental models.

Her work in the elementary school area related in particular to elementary optics (light/shadow), but also to other topics (substances and their properties). Hannelore Schwedes has supervised numerous final theses in elementary school teaching on student conceptions as well as doctoral projects in this area.