More money for the humanities
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"Humanities and their expertise are of high value for the society," says Federal Minister Annette Schavan (Foto: CDU/CSU-Fraktion). Click here for a larger image.
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International research schools
"Freedom for research in the humanities" is the heading of new funding initiatives launched by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in 2007. One of these initiatives involves funding for "International Research Schools in the Humanities". These research schools will have three special characteristics: They will be run by a small team of experienced, recognised academics at a German university; the academics in charge will largely be released from university duties in order to be free to pursue their own research work. A fellowship programme will be an important feature of the school.
The internationality will be a focus of the academic issues that will be approached from an international perspective and tackled jointly with researchers from other countries (i.e. "research with" not "research on"). The director of the research school will decide who is to be invited, the number of fellows and the duration of their stay.
Each research school will receive funding of up to two million EUR per year from the BMBF. Funding is scheduled to last six years with an option to extend for another six years. Universities in Germany are eligible to apply. In the next three years, the BMBF wants to establish up to twelve International Research Schools. The first round of applications closed in March 2007, the next will probably open at the beginning of 2008.
Further information can be found at: www.eid.dlr.de/pt/bc/geist
BMBF supports application phase
Apart from the research schools, the BMBF is promoting international research in the humanities by providing financial support during the application phase for EU research projects, especially as topics and issues in the humanities have explicitly been announced across Europe for the very first time in the 7th Research Framework Programme. BMBF-funding is intended as an incentive to German academics to submit more applications to the EU and initiate international humanities networks.
Further information can be found at: www.eubuero.de/nks-swg
Funding Initiative for Humanities Research
Another important source of funding for humanities scholars is the German Research Foundation (DFG). It has set up a "Funding Initiative for Humanities Research" through which it supports, amongst other things, the establishment of "Research Training Groups". One significant difference between the BMBF and the DFG schools is that "Research Training Groups" are more open as they neither have a thematic nor an interdisciplinary bias. Through this announcement the DFG wants to contribute to putting the recommendations of the German Science Council into practice.
Further information can be found at: http://www.dfg.de/forschungsfoerderung
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