Results of the new round of the German excellence initiative have been published on June 15, with the Graduate School ranking among the top applicants.

The highly competitive selection procedure run by the DFG and the German Council of Science and Humanities has placed “Human Development in Landscapes” as a top level graduate school among 63 applications in this funding line. Graduate school initiatives had been invited to submit proposals and renewal proposals last year, of which will be funded from autumn on for a period of five years. Next to Clusters of Excellence and Institutional Strategies the Graduate Schools particularly aim at promoting young scientists and researchers by providing them with excellent conditions and thus at raising the research profile. The excellent ranking provides the GS with funding of and thus empowers the GS to fully realize structural and scientific plans formulated in our proposal, and to successfully continue and to expand graduate research in a truly interdisciplinary perspective. The positive evaluation also marks a milestone on the way to the Johanna-Mestorf-Academy, last year still a rather vague vision of a sustainable research center.

More information is available in a special issue of the Graduate School newsletter.