KU successful in competition for tenure track professorships

The KU has achieved a great success in connection with the joint federal states and government program for promoting young researchers: Following intensive scientific evaluations, the KU was selected as one of 75 German universities that will receive funding for their implementation concepts for so-called tenure track professorships. All seven professorships for which the KU had submitted an application were approved and will receive funding in a total amount of approx. 5 million euros over a period of six years. In the second approval round, Prof. Dr. Konrad Wolf (science minister in Rhineland-Palatinate and chair of the Joint Science Conference) and federal minister of research Anja Karliczek published the successful grant recipients in Berlin on Thursday.

“A central element of the future appointment strategy at the KU will guarantee a stronger focus on young academics at a relatively early stage after their doctoral degree.” By implementing the tenure track concept, the KU will expand on its recruitment opportunities for permanent professorships and will be able to offer young researchers the possibility to combine their qualification phase with prospects for a long-term employment”, says KU Vice President for Research, Prof. Dr. Jens Hogreve.

The aim of the program, which is funded jointly by the German government and federal states, is to make career paths of young researchers more transparent and predictable. This type of professorship envisages that particularly talented young researchers can progress into a permanent professorship immediately which gives them a feeling of security early on in their careers. With this funding program, government and federal states intend to establish the tenure track professorship across German universities as an independent career path in addition to the traditional appointment procedure for a professorship in the long term.

In the context of the application procedure, applicants were required to develop a detailed HR development concept for promoting young researchers. The application submitted by the KU also convinced the jury with its connection to a conceptual framework taking up digitalization as a scientific cross-cutting issue in its title “Für eine am Menschen orientierte digitale Gesellschaft” (for a human-centered digital society). The KU intends to establish a relationship between technological progress and social change, uncover possible tension fields, risks and challenges and contribute to the formation of a human-centered digital society from an academic perspective.

On this basis, the thematic focus of the tenure track professorships for which the KU submitted applications was developed in a university-wide dialog. The new professorships at the KU will be established in the fields of sociology, mathematics, psychology, journalism, linguistics and business administration. The early-career professorships will complement each other and will be connected across faculties and subjects in order to mutually enrich each other’s scientific focus areas.

This also includes giving as many KU students as possible the opportunity to acquire a fundamental understanding of the operating modes and interrelationships between use and impact of new digital technologies. This aim shall not only enable students to develop a reflected approach to digital technologies but also wants to increase competitiveness of KU graduates – both for career paths in research and science contexts and beyond.

Further information on the tenure track program funded by the German government and federal states is available at:
https://www.bmbf.de/de/wissenschaftlicher-nachwuchs-144.html