Doctoral Studies in Hamburg

The application process varies depending on the citizenship of the applicant. The information is, therefore, organized according to citizenship.

1. German or foreigners from EU countries
   

Currently enrolled as a student at the University of Hamburg - re-enrollment (German: “Umschreibung”)

It seems that the process is easy for students who are already enrolled at the University of Hamburg. If you are a student at the university and want to continue your PhD study, you need to submit an application to “Campus Center” within a month after completing your study. If you would like to have a complete address, here it is.

Campus Center

Alsterterasse 1

20354 Hamburg

Do you have still some questions? You can ask the responsible person for registration and re-enrollment at the university. Well, if you would also like to know how to reach that person, here is the ServicePoint/ ServiceTelefon and the office hours:

Tel. 040/42838-4208

Office hours: Monday-Wednesday 09-10

Thursday 17-18

For the official information, please check this website.

Currently not enrolled as a student at the University of Hamburg.

If you are not currently enrolled as a student at the University of Hamburg but still want to conduct your PhD here, you need to submit your documents to “Service für Studierende”.

Service für Studierende- Team Bewrbubg und Zulassung

Alsterterrasse 1

20354 Hamburg

"Office hours & Tel.Nr. of Campus Center"

In addition, if you receive your degrees from abroad, your degree has to be recognized by the faculty in which you are going to conduct a PhD study. Look here for how to do this.

Please read more from the official website of the University of Hamburg.

2. Foreigners from non-EU countries

If you are living currently outside Germany, the most important thing for you to think about is how you will finance your stay in Germany. Before telling you how to apply, here are several ways to finance your PhD study (we do not comment on how to apply for these financing possibilities):

1. you might get a position to work in a project or as a co-worker (“Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter”) and have the possibility to conduct your PhD study in parallel.

2. you may join a PhD program/school (“Graduiertenkolleg”) in your area .

3. you might apply to the founding organizations.

In the first case, every process related to your PhD may be done after you come to Germany. For you, as you will have closer contact with professors (at least in the area in which you are working), identifying a dissertation topic and finding a supervisor won’t be difficult. Once you did these steps, you can enroll as a PhD student following the procedure which will be described below.

The second case is even easier than the first, because in this case you do not to bother about a dissertation topic and supervisor.

In the third case, you have to first identify a dissertation topic of your interest, prepare a proposal and identify professors (in Hamburg) who have common research interest with you so as to get a supervisor. Most of the time, these things are required to apply for founding. Once you did these, you need to apply to one of the founding organizations in Germany. You have to carefully select a funding organization that is specifically applicable for your situation. What I want to say is that, some of the organizations are limited to a certain field of study, some of them give scholarship only for people coming from some countries, some require you to be at your home country at the time of application (for instance, DAAD), etc. Even some may require you to be admitted to one of the Universities in Germany. Thus, be careful and try to identify such information before you apply! The following sources help you to identify the founding organizations:

http://www.daad.de/deutschland/foerderung/stipendiendatenbank/00462.en.html

http://www.efors.eu/germany-scholarships/

If you succeed to win a scholarship from a founding organization that does not require university admission, you can enroll as a PhD student at the University of Hamburg after coming to Hamburg following the procedure given under the title How to apply.

Actually, it is also possible (following the same procedure) to register as a PhD student being at your home country. This is particularly helpful if you intend to apply to founding organizations that require university admission. But, the process will be easier for you if you do it being in Hamburg.

How to apply

Information is available here.

To use the online application system, however, you need to have an account (“Bewerberaccount”) which you can get by registering on STINE starting from 01.12 and 01.06, for summer and winter semester, respectively under the menu “Bewerberaccount anlegen”. Immediately after the registration, you will receive an email that indicates a user name and password that enables you to use the online application.

If you have question about the content of the online application form and if you could not get the answer from the application information booklet, which is a general booklet for online application you can ask the admission team of the University of Hamburg using this form.

If you have/face technical questions/problems about/with the online application, you can contact the technical team by filling this form or by writing email to uhh.bewerbung-technik@rrz.uni-hamburg.de.

Finally, you need to send the printed version of the online application and the confirmation letter from the health insurance company to the Campus center to the following address.

Service für Studierende- Team Bewerbung und Zulassung

Alsterterrasse 1

20354 Hamburg

From there you should receive a written confirmation and be able to formally enrolled (“immatirikulieren”) to the University.

At the moment (January 2011) at the University of Hamburg, PhD students are not supposed to pay a tuition fee, which undergraduate students have to. But if you want to have a student id-card and a public transportation ticket for a semester with a reduced price, you have to pay a semester fee (which is totally different from the tuition fee). Please check here to get more information about the semester fee.