Doctorate and habilitation

Requirements for admission to a doctoral programme are in general

• a minimum of eight semesters of university studies in the doctoral subject, completed with at least the grade "good" (2.5); two semesters of these must have been completed at the University of Bamberg; the doctoral committee decides on any exceptions.
• supervision by a professor or a private lecturer at the University of Bamberg with whom you have agreed on the topic.

Please also check whether your doctoral project requires an application for approval of a special case (see below).

Enrolment in the doctoral degree programme takes place with the required documents via the Student Office.

Students who are enrolled in a doctoral programme are not required to pay tuition fees. After completion of the 6th semester, students are automatically exmatriculated. However, enrolment is not mandatory, not even for the submission of the dissertation and the oral examination (disputation or viva voce).

After you have found a supervisor for your dissertation and a supervisory relationship has been agreed, you should apply to the doctoral committee for admission as a doctoral candidate (cf. § 6 PromO).

The application for admission to the doctoral procedure is usually submitted to the doctoral office at the beginning of the work on the dissertation together with the relevant documents. Acceptance as a doctoral candidate requires that the applicant fulfils the requirements for doctoral studies according to § 4 of the doctoral regulations.

The application must be accompanied by

• Proof of the required previous education according to § 4 (1) 1 (university entrance qualification, i.e. Abitur certificate)
• Certificate of study history (available in the Student Office)
• Examination certificates and other evidence according to § 4 (1) 2, 3 as well as (2) in certified copy or simple copy with presentation of the original
• Curriculum vitae in tabular form, giving information about your educational background
• Official certificate of good conduct, if you are not in a public office
• Supervision agreement with the supervisor of the dissertation or confirmation of supervision by the supervisor of the dissertation

Candidates with a foreign university degree can also enrol for doctoral studies, but various additional regulations apply to them:

• Candidates with a foreign university degree who wish to study for a doctorate at the University of Bamberg must first apply to the International Office for admission to doctoral studies.
• The International Office of the University of Bamberg decides in each individual case on the equivalence of the foreign university degree as a requirement for the doctorate (equivalence determination).
• If the International Office has made the equivalence determination, it is necessary to additionally apply for admission to doctoral studies at the University of Bamberg to the doctoral committee of the faculties of Humanities and Humanities and Cultural Studies. The following documents must be submitted for this purpose:

• English Application for Nostrification

• Admission to doctoral studies, issued by the International Office

• officially certified copy of the foreign university degree certificate

• Curriculum vitae with details of previous education (schools, studies, etc.)

If the certificates are not issued in German, English or French, a corresponding translation prepared by a sworn translator. In any case, please fulfil these requirements before you start your dissertation so that you can be sure that you are admitted to doctoral studies at the University of Bamberg.

Before starting your doctoral studies, please find out whether your project constitutes one of the following special cases. If this is the case, an application for special case approval is necessary in the case of:

• a change of subject according to § 4 (1) 2, i.e. if you want to do your doctorate in a subject other than your former major subject.
• As a rule, a change of major subject is approved if the subject combination of the degree submitted indicates sufficient proximity to the intended doctoral procedure an exception to the grade requirement according to § 4 (1) 3
• This may be approved in particular if the degree was obtained in a subject in which only a few students achieve the grades "good" or "very good".
• an exception to the proof requirement of at least two semesters of study at the University of Bamberg according to § 4 (1) 2 or 4 (2)
• If the applicant is a member of a structured doctoral programme or a member of the university for other reasons (research assistant), this requirement is waived. No application needs to be submitted.
• Admission of an external reviewer and/or examiner according to § 11 (1) 2 or § 10 (1)

This application has a good chance of success if there is no professor or private lecturer at the University of Bamberg who teaches the same or a similar subject area, or if the applicant has already worked with the external professor for a long time.
In any case, however, a declaration of consent should be obtained from the subject representative teaching at the University of Bamberg. The supervising professor should therefore contact his/her colleague and obtain his/her consent. In principle, it is not necessary for this to be done by the doctoral candidate.

In special cases, the doctoral committee decides on recognition. Therefore, the application including all required documents must be submitted in good time before its meetings.

At the time of completion of the dissertation, three identical copies of the dissertation as well as an additional three electronic data carriers, each with identical contents, are handed in to the doctoral office together with the Dissertation Submission Form.

On the form, you indicate that you have chosen the disputation as the form of the oral examination. If you would like to choose the viva voce, please contact the doctoral office directly.

It is absolutely necessary to contact the desired examiners in advance and to obtain their willingness to take the examination and to prove this by signing the form. For the disputation, it is required that either the 1st further examiner (usually the 2nd reviewer of the dissertation) or the 2nd further examiner comes from a different subject group (see Annex 1 PromO) than the supervisor.

The chairperson of the examination committee can be proposed by the doctoral candidate and is appointed by the chairperson of the doctoral committee. It is therefore advisable to contact the doctoral office in advance.

Please observe the formal requirements for the cover sheet and the declaration of independence for your dissertation.

Information for doctoral candidates with dissertations in languages other than German or English

If the doctoral committee has granted an exemption from the requirement to write the dissertation in German or English pursuant to § 8 (8) 2, a detailed summary in German or English must be attached to the submitted thesis pursuant to § 8 (8) 3. The summary must formally cover all parts of the thesis and reflect the main contents and main results of the study. The summary must be mentioned in the table of contents and included in the dissertation as a separate section or chapter. This applies to the copies to be prepared for review and display. Other arrangements may be made for the publication of the dissertation.

All candidates who write their dissertation in a language other than German or English are asked to discuss the question of the layout and scope of the summary with their supervisor at an early stage.

In preparation for your disputation, please observe theInformation in our guide.

Furthermore, it is important to pay attention to various deadlines in the examination procedure. For example, it is stipulated that the reviews should be available three months after the notification of admission has been sent to the doctoral candidate.

After the reviews have been submitted, the dissertation is available for inspection by the full-time university lecturers for a full fourteen days during the lecture period. If no objection is raised here, the dissertation is deemed to be accepted and the candidate and the members of the examination committee are invited to the oral examination. This must be done at least one week in advance. In order to meet these deadlines, there should therefore be at least three weeks between the start of the display and the date of the disputation.

The examination date should be during the lecture period. At the latest after receipt of the reports, you should determine the examination date, a suitable room and a recorder for your disputation in agreement with your examiners and inform the doctoral office as early as possible. 

After you have successfully completed your oral examination, the next step is to look for a publication opportunity. Here, after § 15 (2) PromO drei unterschiedliche Varianten an, wobei insbesondere auf die Publikationsfrist von zunächst zwei, spätestens jedoch vier Jahren, zu achten ist.

First, the two reviewers must confirm that they consider the dissertation to be ready for printing in its present form or that the conditions imposed have been fulfilled. Once both confirmations have been received, the chair of the doctoral committee grants permission to print, and only then may the publication go to press. Please also note that the reviewers must give their consent if the title of the dissertation is changed for publication.

The final stage of the doctoral procedure consists of the delivery of the deposit copies to the university library, which clears the way for the issuing of the certificate and thus for the award of the doctoral degree. The title may not be used before the doctoral certificate is issued, but the early issue of the certificate can be requested from the doctoral committee.

If you have questions about financing your doctorate or other non-subject-related questions about the doctoral process, you can contact the Doctoral Advisory Service of the TRAc as the central service point for doctoral students at the University of Bamberg.