Former Graduate Center for Humanities and Social Sciences

The Graduate Center for Humanities and Social Sciences (formerly the Office for Doctoral Programs in the Humanities and Social Sciences) was initiated by representatives from seven departments and commenced its work in July 2005. Its first statute came into force in spring 2006. Since the founding of the MArburg University Research Academy (MARA) in 2009, the Center had been part of MARA. The Graduate Center's services were geared toward doctoral candidates and their advisors from the humanities and social science departments and the structured doctoral programs involving these departments. In 2015, the Graduate Center for Humanities and Social Sciences was integrated into MARA.

The goals of the Center included:

• Providing and coordinating subject-specific and cross-disciplinary options of complimentary studies for doctoral candidates in the humanities and social sciences.
• Promoting and enabling interdisciplinary contacts among doctoral candidates with the goal of improving their work situation as junior scholars.
• Providing a framework for involving doctoral candidates in national and international research discourses.
• Helping to ensure that the doctoral examination process proceed within the time limits stipulated in the doctoral degree regulations.

The Graduate Center's structure included its members, that is, upon application, all professors of the humanities and social sciences at Philipps-Universität, all other scholars who oversee dissertation work independently, and all doctoral candidates from the humanities and social sciences at Philipps-Universität. Members automatically became members of MARA.

Responsibility in matters of fundamental importance was with a Board of Directors, comprised of professorial representatives from the ten humanities and social science departments and five doctoral representatives from these departments. The Center's Managing Director participated in an advisory capacity. The Graduate Center was headed by an Executive Director and her/his deputy.

Many of the doctoral members of the Center formed working groups tailored to the purpose of providing a context for discussing their specific dissertation projects. The Graduate Center also provided financial support for the activities of its doctoral members where possible. The working groups continue to exist in the new, integrated MARA structure established in 2015.

The Center offered a cross-disciplinary program for continuing education (as part of the MARA course catalogue), its own funding opportunities for doctoral candidates (travel assistance, conference funding), and a biennial international Summer School.