Press release: University of Göttingen achieves success with draft proposal

Nr. 37/2011 - 29.03.2011

The University of Göttingen will be participating in the final stage of the German federal and state governments’ Excellence Initiative, second phase, with a new undertaking. The Joint Commission of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Council of Science and Humanities has invited the University of Göttingen to submit by September 1, 2011, a full proposal for a new Graduate School (Funding Line 1) on the basis of the draft proposal put forward last year. The University is also preparing renewal proposals for the Graduate School, the Cluster of Excellence and the Institutional Strategy funded in the first round of the Excellence Initiative. In all, therefore, it will be submitting to the Joint Commission of the DFG and the German Council of Science and Humanities a total of four full proposals across all three funding lines. “We are delighted about the success of our draft proposal for the Graduate School. This is a further step along our path towards yet more excellence in research and teaching at the Göttingen location of science and scholarship. Together with the other institutions that make up the Göttingen Research Campus, we will now be concentrating on preparation of this full proposal and of the Institutional Strategy and the other renewal proposals”, said Prof. Dr. Ulrike Beisiegel, President of the University.

The Joint Commission of the DFG and German Council of Science and Humanities has invited the University of Göttingen to submit a full proposal for the Göttingen Academy for Young Researchers in the Humanities (GEWINA). The University seeks to provide targeted support for outstanding young researchers in the humanities to enable them to develop their own individual scholarly profile already at the early-career doctoral stage. To this end, the Graduate School of Humanities Göttingen (GSGG) is planning an extension: the Göttingen Academy for Young Researchers (GEWINA) for highly qualified young academics who show a particularly strong research orientation. As members of GEWINA these young academics are to be integrated into on-going scholarly discourses at an early stage. GEWINA embraces four focus areas of the humanities at Göttingen University: empirical research in linguistics, cultural-theoretical studies, the ancient world and philology, and philosophical-theological studies and historical research. The GSGG is hosted by the Faculties of Humanities and Theology.

Currently receiving funding support from the Excellence Initiative are the Göttingen Graduate School for Neurosciences and Molecular Biosciences (GGNB), the Cluster of Excellence ‘Microscopy at the Nanometer Range’ and the Institutional Strategy ‘Tradition – Innovation – Autonomy’. The Institutional Strategy focuses particularly on the provision of targeted promotion of young researchers and forging close cooperation with the other research institutions on the Göttingen Research Campus. The enhancement of international contacts and cooperation abroad is a further important feature. These focus areas are to be taken forward in the second Institutional Strategy. Together with its partners on the Göttingen Research Campus, the University of Göttingen is currently preparing proposals towards the further realisation of these aims.