Selection Criteria

Each candidate is evaluated on the basis of his or her individual achievements. With individual applications, this means research achievements already made, the quality of the submitted project suggestion, and the applicant’s ability to engage in multidisciplinary discussion.

Discipline-specific evaluation criteria are essential for judging a candidate’s prior research career. In the humanities and in all disciplines in which a monograph plays an important role, these major publications will be intensively evaluated.

The evaluation criteria are adjusted to the respective career stage: for young researchers in the humanities and legal sciences, the quality of their first major publications plays an important role; for already established researchers, their current or past influence in their respective field is more important. Here, the international reception of prior research work is also considered.

Independent of the stage of the applicant’s career, the project is judged by whether it seeks to take new directions.

The reflected suggestion of new hypotheses or theoretical approaches is welcomed in contrast to the reproduction and application of fashionable theories; here, there should also always be scope for untimely ideas.

If two applications have the same quality, preference will be given to the research project that is still at its beginning and can consequently profit more from a phase of open-ended research. But the description of the research project should provide indications of how and in accordance with what criteria the project will proceed.

The interest of the Wissenschaftskolleg is to put together an intellectually diverse group with representatives of different disciplines and cultures of knowledge. This means that researchers will be invited also from countries and universities that are less visible internationally. The criterion of selection here is the applicant’s position within his or her national research landscape.

Researchers whose applications are rejected and who want to apply again must wait five years before a fellowship will be considered anew. This restriction does not apply to applications that are submitted in response to a call for applications.

Second fellowships are not possible.

The decision of the Wissenschaftskolleg is final.