Doctoral Scholarships

The Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies currently grants four full doctoral scholarships per year from funds of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, and through the Graduate School Scholarship Programme of the DAAD. Two pre-doc scholarships are granted for 10 months with the aim to support the writing for scholarship applications with funds from the Einstein Foundation Berlin DAAD. The admission committee decides on the award of scholarships as part of the regular annual application procedure. The full doctoral scholarships are for a period of three years and amount to approximately 1450,- € per month.

Doctoral fellows who cannot be offered a scholarship from the Graduate School can join our program with an external scholarship. It is also possible to join our program as an affiliated doctoral candidate if you have a position as a research assistant in a research project at one of our partner institutes in Berlin. Doctoral fellows with an external fellowship and affiliate doctoral fellows are full members of our program and are entitled to the appropriate professional and material support.

Predoc Scholarships

The Predoc scholarships support doctoral researchers developing their doctoral project and writing an application for an external doctoral scholarship.

The Predoc scholarship holders receive a 9-month scholarship of EUR 1,103 per month. In addition to the financial support that enables them to stay in Berlin and concentrate on project development, the Predoc-Scholarship holders are professionally supported by a team of supervisors. A series of workshops specially designed for the predoc scholarship funding format also offers targeted information on funding opportunities in Germany, coaching, presentation training and forums for critical discussion of one's own exposé at the various stages of its development. The workshop series is organized together with the Friedrich Schlegel School for Literary Studies. 

Funding is available to doctoral researchers who have completed their Master's degree by the start of funding in June (the thesis must be submitted at the time of the interview) and are planning to complete a doctorate at the Freie Universität Berlin or at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with a supervisor from BGSMCS. There are high language requirements for the Predoc Scholarships: German and English language skills at the level C1 CFER.

The Predoc-Scholarship holders, who successfully apply for external doctoral funding, will receive a place at the Graduate School. This enables them to participate in the curriculum of our structured doctoral program.