Early-career researchers

In order to promote early-career researchers and to unite research and teaching, the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” runs a Graduate School with an interdisciplinary doctoral programme and special support for postdocs. This enables early-career researchers from the humanities and social sciences to participate independently in the interdisciplinary research of the Cluster of Excellence, and offers a focused and structured programme in which doctoral students and postdocs can write a thesis on an issue from the field of tension between religion and politics. Members of the Cluster of Excellence also feed their research into a wide range of interdisciplinary programmes of study.

The University of Münster has in recent years expanded its programmes of study in the subject areas of interdisciplinary research on religion, and will continue to do so in the future. A new interdisciplinary MA programme “Religion and Politics” is being planned, which will help prepare talented students for an academic career in the Cluster of Excellence or to train them for careers that are shaped by a growing cultural and religious diversity.

The Graduate School has since 2007 offered a focused and structured doctoral programme in which doctoral students from the humanities and social sciences can write a thesis on an issue from the field of tension between religion and politics. Doctoral students are supervised by a team of two professors and a doctoral mentor from the Cluster.

Since its foundation, the Cluster of Excellence has also made it its mission to offer postdoctoral researchers optimal working conditions for independent research and the opportunity to gain further academic qualifications. As independent project leaders in the research of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”, postdocs have the same status as professors.