At the closing ceremony of the Teacher Education Days on 14 July 2026, the University of Münster was formally presented with the “Award for Excellence in Teacher Education”. Axel Stepken of the TÜV SÜD Foundation and Gudula Merchert-Werhahn of the Stifterverband presented the award, which comes with €100,000 in prize money.

The University of Münster had already impressed the jury in late 2025 with its strategy for forward-looking, practice-oriented and situated teacher education. The award ceremony once again highlighted just how many people contribute to this shared endeavour: dedicated students and teaching staff work alongside partners from schools and other professional settings to shape teacher education in Münster. Their commitment, perspectives and collaboration provide the foundation for its sustainable, long-term development.

 

From 6 to 8 July 2026, a delegation from the University of Münster visited Université Côte d'Azur (UniCA) in Nice to advance bilateral research cooperation within the Ulysseus European University Alliance. The delegation was led by Johannes Wessels and Monika Stoll, and hosted by Prof. Stéphane Ngo Mai, Vice-President for Ulysseus and International Partnerships.
 

With its new funding line IDEAS, the University of Münster supports innovative projects at an early stage that cannot yet be funded through established internal or external funding schemes. 

From 11 to 12 June 2026, the partner universities of the Ulysseus European University Alliance gathered for this year's Annual Summit, hosted by the Management Center Innsbruck (MCI). The University of Münster was represented by a delegation and actively contributed to the thematic working sessions.

The University of Münster is set to receive around three million euros from the Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre for the project “Taking responsibility through co-creation: participation as a key to fostering cross-cutting competences in teacher education” (MIT-PART). The project will begin in July 2026 and run for four years.

With IDEAS, START and ADVANCED, the University of Münster is launching a new portfolio of internal funding schemes designed to support researchers at different stages of research development — from early-stage exploratory ideas and the establishment of new collaborations to the preparation of competitive collaborative funding proposals.

The new funding schemes aim to provide targeted support for excellent research, further sharpen the University’s research profile in its Profile Areas and Emerging Fields, and expand national and international collaborations. At the same time, the new portfolio brings together existing instruments of internal research funding, streamlines them and adapts them to the changing funding logics of external third-party funders.
 

The Rectorate of the University of Münster has included the joint project “Artificial Intelligence and Complexity” in its strategic funding line Topical Programmes. The project, which is based at the Center for Data Science and Complexity, is led by Prof. Dr Uwe Thiele (Faculty 11, CDSC) and Dr Oliver Kamps (CDSC).

The aim is to bring together research in machine learning and the theory of complex systems and to systematically integrate artificial intelligence into experiment, simulation and theory.