The University of Oldenburg was successful in the tenure-track programme of the federal and state governments: all professorships applied for were approved.
Success across the board: the University of Oldenburg has received funding for ten tenure-track professorships. The selection committee of the federal and state programme for the promotion of young academics has thus found all professorships applied for at the University of Oldenburg to be eligible for funding. The results were presented today in Berlin. The funding programme is aimed at outstanding young academics who are to be given a predictable and transparent path to professorship. After a successful probationary phase, a professorship initially limited to six years will be converted into a tenure-track professorship.
"Today's decision recognises the path already taken by the university to strongly promote young academics. The tenure-track model enables us to further improve the career prospects of young academics. As a university, this gives us new options to support the transition to a tenure-track professorship on an individual and quality-oriented basis," emphasises Prof. Dr Esther Ruigendijk, Vice President for Early Career Researchers and International Affairs.
Focus on digitalisation, sustainability and diversity
The ten new professorships fit into the existing focus areas of digitalisation, sustainability and diversity. The topics range from the ethics of digitalisation, gender medicine and German as a foreign language to business informatics in relation to the environment and sustainability. In the "Digitalisation" focus area, four new tenure-track professorships will expand the existing focus on "Cooperative safety-critical systems" in the direction of the social sciences and humanities. The university's "Environment and Sustainability" profile will be strengthened by two new professorships. Four tenure-track professorships will be established in the area of "Diversity and Participation". They will focus on globalisation processes and cultural mobility as well as new research approaches in gender studies.
The Junior Researcher Pact is one of three successor programmes to the former Excellence Initiative - alongside the "Innovative University" funding initiative and the so-called Excellence Strategy, which funds clusters of excellence and universities of excellence. With the current approval in the Young Talent Pact, the University of Oldenburg has now also been successful in the third of the three programmes.
In the tenure-track programme, the federal and state governments are funding a total of one thousand additional professorships nationwide until 2032. In the first round in 2017, 468 professorships were approved; the current total is 532, for which the federal government is providing up to one billion euros. The federal states have pledged to fund the new professorships in the long term.
