Further PhD studies

Once you have done a MSc here (or if you have done so elsewhere) you may be interested in further PhD studies.
In Tübingen there are manifold options for pursuing a PhD in any area of Stone Age archaeology, with the potential to work in close connections with colleagues from paleoanthropology, paleogenetics, archaeobotany, geoarchaeology, archaeometry and zooarchaeology. In the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology we currently have approximately 20 PhD students, >20 Postdocs and 10 staff and associated members working on a wide range of research topics on a global scale, spanning the entirety of the Paleolithic and Stone Age in Eurasia and Africa. For ongoing research projects and excavations at the department please follow this browse the staff. In any of these projects and topics – plus further ones – writing a PhD dissertation is possible and the department is always looking for new and enthusiastic candidates. Usually you will find and develop your PhD topic together with your supervisor(s), ideally already during your M.Sc. studies in Tübingen.

Process and formalities: In Germany, a PhD student will normally have finished a Master degree of 2 years and then continue into a separate PhD which commonly does not include any coursework but exclusively research. You will first have to find two supervisors for your thesis after which you can apply to become an official PhD student via the Faculty of Natural Sciences. This way you get or keep all the benefits of an enrolled student at the University. The application needs to be signed by two supervisors: at least one who has to be a full professor at the University of Tübingen. The secondary supervisor can be a habilitated researcher at Tübingen, indicated by a “PD” before his or her name. A list of potential supervisors that you can directly contact can be found below. A PhD in Germany usually takes ~3 years and can be done in either German or English. For the completion of your PhD you can either write a monograph (book) on your research topic or do it as a cumulative dissertation (thesis by multiple papers).

Supervisors: The following people can currently be contacted about supervising a thesis in Stone Age archaeology, though the number of these supervisors at Tübingen is steadily increasing.

Finances: For pursuing a PhD in Germany you do not have to pay any tuition and only low university fees (ca. 300 Euro per year). There are in principal four ways of obtaining funding for your PhD for ~2-3 years that will be more than enough to pay for you accommodation and living cost without incurring large debts.

1. An internal personal scholarship from our department (contact Prof. N. Conard)
2. An external personal scholarship for which many opportunities exist in Germany but for which you will have to apply yourself (e.g. Gerda-Henkel, DAAD)
3. A 3-year employment contract working in a research project (e.g. DFG grants) and pursuing your PhD in parallel
4. A structured PhD program that gives you a 3-year contract working in a large collaborative research project (e.g. SFB; ERC) and pursuing your PhD in parallel