International Profile

The faculty has established – and seeks to expand and intensify – a sizable number of international research collaborations. As all units of the faculty publish their research on a very high international level, often joining forces with partners from cooperating institutions, our research is highly visible internationally. This allows us to bring in visiting scholars from around the world to interact with academics and students alike. Our distinguished visiting professor program, for example, supports long-term international research collaborations as well as international course offerings in all departments. We also offer additional support for graduate students and early-career researchers through summer schools, mentoring programs and internationally coordinated graduate programs. As a result, we are able to continuously increase the number of international academics joining our academic staff, both on the junior and senior level.

Since we believe internationalization to be of vital importance to the quality of education we offer, we place a particular emphasis on internationalization at home. Thus, in addition to offering our students the option of spending one or two semesters abroad at one of our excellent partner institutions, we have significantly increased the number of courses taught in English. This has helped us attract talented international exchange students and has led to record numbers in student exchange in recent years. Building on this, the faculty has introduced several postgraduate programs that are exclusively taught in English and which have proved to be immensely popular with both national and international students. Several programs include an integrated stay abroad at selected partner universities, some of which offer students the option to earn a double degree. Our internationally competitive doctoral programs, which attract highly motivated PhD students from all over the world, complete our portfolio and ensure that all students of our faculty, national or international, degree-seeking or exchange students, can benefit from an international learning experience.

Our commitment to internationalization also shows in the appointment of an international coordinator who, together with the Associate Dean International, manages and facilitates the faculty’s efforts in all areas of internationalization. The faculty is delighted to be in a position to offer a variety of international experiences to its students and its staff as we believe the social sciences carry a particular responsibility for demonstrating the immense value of international experience. Consequently, the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences continues to develop and expand its internationalization strategy to support and extend international cooperation across the board.