General Information
Starter Scholarships

The Graduate School welcomes applications from the following:

• Highly qualified graduates in the fields of Sociology, Psychology, Education, Political Science, Labour and Educational Economics and Demography. Qualified graduates of related subjects with a strong Social Science background are also encouraged to apply.
• Candidates holding a Master's degree (or equivalent) in one of the aforementioned subjects or being very close to completion. (The degree must be completed by the time of admission to BAGSS).
• Candidates with an excellent command of English. If English is not your native tongue, you will need to provide proof of English language proficiency.
• Candidates whose proposed doctoral research topic fits thematically with at least one of the four academic pillars of BAGSS.

The Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences is firmly committed to the goal of diversity and equal opportunities. We emphatically encourage applications from all backgrounds. The University of Bamberg is a certified family-friendly University, which offers comprehensive advice on reconciling family and work life. Learn more about our Code of Conduct.

The selection procedure for the Starter Scholarships is a highly competitive process with appropriate consideration for diversity and equal opportunities. The two main criteria are the candidate's proven record of academic excellence on the one hand, and the School's ability to ensure competent, research-led supervision on the other.

We are interested in projects that fit with at least one of our School's four Pillars. Proposals cutting across two (or more) Pillars are equally welcomed. We also take into account proposals that do not exactly fit with the Pillar profiles, but are very closely related. An overview of the topics that can be supervised by our faculty can be found here(699.9 KB, 8 pages).

Criteria applied in the selection procedure for a Starter Scholarship are as follows:

• A complete, formally correct application has been submitted by the advertised deadline and in the required fashion.
• The statutory criteria for admission to doctoral studies at Bavarian universities are met.
• The research topic for the doctoral thesis, as proposed in the application, matches the academic profile of the Graduate School (the Four Pillars).
• At least one faculty member of the Graduate School agrees to supervise the suggested thesis topic.
• The complete application has been judged as excellent by a panel of academic assessors from the Graduate School in competition with other applications.

Disabilities
Should one of the above-mentioned criteria not be met due to a disability eligible under the provision of the relevant German legislation (the IX. Sozialgesetzbuch), candidates may apply to have their special circumstances considered.
Should you require advice on the statutory rules, please contact office.bagss(at)uni-bamberg.de. In your email, please include the reference – ‘Statutory rules – disabilities’ or ‘Statutory Criteria – Admission to doctoral studies’ (bullet point #2 above) in the subject line.