The Tenure Track Professorship - Impulses for the German Science System

Young researchers are of outstanding importance for every university. They make a significant contribution to scientific performance and are indispensable for the innovation and renewal capacity of science. For this reason, German universities have been focusing for some time now on identifying, promoting and developing talented young researchers. They want to create attractive conditions for individual career development and offer promising perspectives.

One such perspective is the tenure-track professorship. It provides a clearly structured career path that is based on binding quality criteria, follows transparent procedural steps and clearly favors the age of appointment. The tenure-track professorship creates reliable career prospects for young researchers and thus enhances the international attractiveness of the German science system. The aim is to establish it on a broad basis and to anchor it permanently in the academic career path system.

In order to establish the tenure-track professorship on a permanent basis, a nationwide exchange about the tenure-track professorship and the further development of career structures in the German science system is important. Many questions are still open: How widespread and accepted has the tenure-track professorship been so far? What are the current challenges and opportunities for further development? What impulses does it provide to establish a modern, efficient and socially just personnel structure at German universities? What "catalytic effect" does it have on the science system as a whole and how attractive is it in international comparison?

We would like to create a forum for the exchange of ideas on these and other questions and invite you to the conference: "The Tenure Track Professorship - Impulses for the German Science System" on September 29-30, 2020. The conference is a joint initiative of the Goethe University Frankfurt, the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University Hannover, the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz and the German U15 e.V.

The conference will be held in German. Further information about registration and the programme can be found hereExternal link.