The Gutenberg Council for Academic Careers (GCC) advises the JGU Executive University Board on strategic issues and helps to create ideal conditions for academics and artists in the early stages of their careers. The body is made up of leading JGU experts from various disciplines and with various qualification levels. By involving excellent academics in university governance, the university benefits from the broad expertise of all members who play an active role in shaping the higher education institution.
On its 10th anniversary the Gutenberg Council for Young Researchers (GYR), founded in 2014, was renamed Gutenberg Council for Academic Careers (GCC). The GCC is part of the Mainz college structure alongside the Gutenberg Research College (GRC) and the Gutenberg Teaching Council (GTC).
The GCC is funded by the Rhineland-Palatinate Research Initiative.
As a strategic advisory body to the university management board, the Gutenberg Council for Academic Careers (GCC) prepares recommendations for forward-looking improvements to research and working conditions for academics and artists in the early stages of their careers at JGU.
The Gutenberg Council for Academic Careers (GCC) receives funding from the Rhineland-Palatinate Research Initiative. This is used to implement sustainable funding measures to support scientists and artists in the early stages of their careers.
Every year at DIES Academicus, JGU honors outstanding scientists in the early stages of their careers as well as artistic talents who have received an award for special achievements. Prizes are awarded at DIES Academicus by external companies, funding organizations and foundations as well as awards from JGU trust foundations.
The GCC has developed guiding principles for JGU that represent JGU’s self-image for dealing with its early career researchers. Adopted by the (University) Senate in 2018, the guiding principles provide employees with guidance for their day-to-day work and research.
In order to support and promote early academic independence, the GCC has recommended that externally evaluated junior research group leaders be given the opportunity to independently and autonomously supervise and examine the doctorates and master’s theses of the employees they supervise. This recommendation was endorsed by the (University) Senate in 2016.
In 2021, the GCC proposed quality standards for doctorates at JGU in order to implement Higher Education Act Rhineland-Palatine requirements. Some of these were incorporated into the quality assurance concept for the approval of regulations and procedures regarding doctorates and habilitations at JGU.
The GCC has developed a comprehensive concept for a graduate institution in the humanities, cultural and social sciences at JGU. The Graduate School of the Humanities and Social Sciences (GSHS) was officially opened on December 3, 2020.
Building on this, the GCC was involved in developing the concept for an interdisciplinary graduate institution, which was officially opened as the Gutenberg Academy (GA) on April 29, 2025. The Gutenberg Academy acts as a central contact point for early career researchers at JGU. As such, it also takes on tasks e.g. in the area of information management that were previously performed by the GCC. At the request of the Vice President for Research and Early Career Academics, the GCC currently supports the further development of the Gutenberg Academy in an advisory capacity.
As early as 2017, the GCC advocated making JGU doctoral candidates visible in the Higher Education Act Rhineland-Palatine as a distinct group, at the same time keeping in mind the very different academic cultures and individual paths to a doctorate.
Meanwhile, the Higher Education Act Rhineland-Palatine provides for a doctoral student representation, which was constituted at JGU in 2022. Since then, the GCC has supported the doctoral student representation in administrative matters.
The aim of supervision agreements is to create an individual, transparent, and reliable basis for cooperation during the doctoral phase for both doctoral candidates and supervisors. The exchange with regards to mutual expectations and the joint development of a consensual agreement helps to prevent disappointments and to avoid misunderstandings for the parties involved.
In 2017, the JGU Senate recommended that all faculties and schools of JGU conclude a written supervision agreement for all doctoral projects based on the guiding principles drawn up by the GCC.
Section 34 (5) of the Higher Education Act Rhineland-Palatine now makes it mandatory for doctoral candidates and supervisors to conclude a written supervision agreement after the acceptance to the doctorate in a timely manner (max. 6 months).
The essential topics of this supervision agreement have been binding since 2022 and laid down in the quality assurance concept for the approval of regulations and procedures governing the doctorate and habilitation at JGU. The GCC guiding principles and the GCC template for the supervision agreement have therefore been updated accordingly. Fortunately, the supervision agreements of many faculties are based on this template.
With the “10 Years GYR – Making Good Supervision Better!” event, the GCC gave supervisors and doctoral candidates at JGU the opportunity to discuss the changing role of supervisors and institutional support options. A special feature of the event was that the topic was viewed primarily from the perspective of committed supervisors.
As part of a GCC pilot project from 2016 to 2020, support services for supervisors were developed, among them guidelines for career discussions with postdocs.
In order to improve the research and working conditions for employees with a doctoral degree at JGU, the GCC conducted a survey of this group in 2022 with the support of the Center for Quality Assurance and Development (ZQ). Based on the results, which were presented internally at JGU, the GCC mapped out recommendations to the Executive University Board.
To support the career orientation of postdocs, the GCC funded the pilot project “Career prospects for postdocs” from 2016 to the end of 2020. The aim was to develop a target group-specific portfolio of information, counseling, and coaching services that combines existing and new offers. In addition to academic career options, the project also looked at alternative career paths. After the end of the project, key components of the program were integrated into JGU’s Human Resources Development service.
Since the beginning, the GCC has focused on the diversity of academic career paths and taken a closer look at non-academic career paths and the permeability between the two spheres. It supports the Executive University Board in developing concepts for academic career paths that fit JGU’s profile and that at the same time are attractive to the target group of academics and artists in the early stages of their careers.
In 2015, the GCC made recommendations for a tenure track professorship.
Through a pilot project in 2016-2020, the GCC promoted individual career counseling for doctoral candidates and postdocs.
From 2019 to 2021, the GCC funded two series of events that provided information on various professional fields for doctoral graduates and thus supported targeted career planning. Topics included science management, career development for life scientists, business start-ups and self-employment as well as literature mediation.
In 2021, the GCC issued a call for proposals inviting faculties and institutes to organize events or series of events for students in a higher semester of study or doctoral candidates in the early phase of their doctorate in order to promote the professorship as a career prospect.
At present, the GCC is involved in the discussion about new job profiles for an academic career / permanent positions beyond the professorship.
Together with key players at JGU, the GCC is developing proposals for measures to better reconcile family concerns with the demands of everyday teaching and research in the medium to long term. To this end, we are in contact with the family services center on campus and at the University Medical Center and are advising the Executive University Board on the further development and optimization of support and funding measures.
With the so-called “Minigraduiertenkollegs” (mini graduate training groups, MGRK), the GCC has been working successfully for several years at establishing sustainable structures to supply support for academics in early career phases in the humanities and social sciences. The aim is to identify promising research approaches at JGU, support promising collaborations and offer doctoral candidates good framework conditions for their research projects. To date, 16 mini research training groups have been approved with a total of over EUR 4.2 million (as of 01/2025).
In the current funding period 2024-2027, four mini-graduate programs are being funded with a total of 1.3 million euros.
Precise measurement is a hallmark of empirical scientific practice. Inspired by economics’ strong emphasis on individual choice behavior as main object of investigation, recent years have seen rapid developments in the design and application of novel measurement protocols based on experimental economic methods, capturing differences in individual characteristics, and applied to better understand differences in economically relevant domains.
As an apparently independent development, quantitative social science research and specifically economics have by now broadly adopted the experimental approach for the identification of causal effects. In recent years experimentation has also increasingly moved outside the laboratory and is regularly applied to field settings, having become a common tool to evaluate policy and understand behavior of individuals, firms, and organizations.
While randomized experiments have classically focused on estimating average treatment effects, attention is now shifting towards also analyzing their heterogeneity. This is particularly relevant for the application of research findings to practice as it allows for tailoring programs to individual characteristics and overcome “one-size-fits-all” approaches.
By starting this mini graduate training group we aim to lay the grounds for building and institutionalizing an active early career researcher community, systematically fostering and advancing the development and utilization of behavioral measurement tools and its application to field experiments in empirical social science research. Notably, the group will not only focus on the application of these two methodological paradigms in isolation but also utilize their synergies: If behavioral measures are helpful in detecting individual heterogeneity, embedding them within randomized control trials in the field constitutes a promising approach to systematically analyze systematic heterogeneity of treatment effects.
The aim of the mini graduate training group is to approach the fluid and heterogeneous genre of symphonic poetry from several cultural-historical perspectives. In order to take account of the diversity of the genre and to go beyond looking at the works of individual composers, various subject categories, reception attitudes and compositional methods will be examined with the help of intra- and interdisciplinary approaches, for example with regard to their cultural interpretation in the long 19th century.
To this end, previous knowledge of the genre needs to be put into perspective through new hermeneutic approaches by focusing on three sets of questions: Firstly, it will be examined how ideas about the ‘content’ of music, which were major points of contention in music aesthetics and theory in the first half of the century, are reflected in the aesthetics of composition within the genre.
Secondly, it is important to discuss questions of subject choice analogous to the established studies in the context of 19th century opera and thus to focus on the relationship of symphonic poetry to other genres.
Thirdly, the genre is to be contextualized as part of a formation of national identification patterns that often extends far into cultural production and thus, in the interweaving of cultural-historical perspectives with those of compositional practice, the extent to which national identities also manifest themselves in compositional technique and aesthetics is to be examined.
The interdisciplinary exchange between Musicology and Music Theory is particularly suitable for these questions, as it is only through interdisciplinary exchange that questions of cultural and compositional theory practices can be examined in the context of the narrative structure of musical works. A multidimensional supervision concept has been developed for this purpose, which will also be tested with regard to its transferability to other subjects.
The MGRK conducts diachronic case studies on diversity and social boundaries in cities and metropolitan areas from antiquity to the 19th century from a historical and material science perspective. The starting point is the observation that in different historical constellations, key moments can be identified in which previously latent or implicit differentiation potentials within urban societies are condensed, solidified or dissolved again in such a way that they become visible and explicable both for the normative instances in urban space and for the actors themselves.
Joint access through the lens of being foreign / feeling foreign opens up comparative perspectives and spaces for an overarching discussion of these factors from a multidisciplinary perspective: together we ask about the dynamics, catalysts, speeds and turning points of the differentiation processes at work here, as well as about the written and material traces that these constellations have left behind.
The MGRK is dedicated to connections between ecology and aesthetics between 1750 and 1850 by analyzing ecological problems in aesthetic contexts before the gap between different scientific cultures became manifest in the 19th century and the term Ecology was defined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866. The aim is to work out the significance of aesthetics in the emergence of a variety of Ecologies around 1800. The arts around 1800 aim to raise awareness of the interactions between culture and nature in the environment, social relationships, and human subjectivity. The arts develop an understanding in which nature becomes a space of aesthetic experience and the interweavement of man and nature becomes visible.
In the musical aesthetics of the time, perspectives can be found that unite all things in the world in the sense of a symphonic ‘world sound’, while the listening self dissolves in these sounds. In the visual arts, landscape painting became the new leading genre. Literary Romanticism also appears as a complex field of aesthetic experimentation. While British Studies focus on reactions to the Industrial Revolution, which produced artistic positions between nostalgia and class struggle, German Studies focus on the natural philosophy of German Idealism. This transforms traditional macrocosm-microcosm relations via a poeticization of the sciences into more-than-human interrelationships between the inorganic and the organic.
As part of the MGRK, the ecological dimensions of the concept of landscape, which is equally virulent in literature, the arts, and music, will be profiled and the associated crisis reflections of modernity around 1800 and the increasingly precarious human-environment relationships will be highlighted. The planned project aims to establish an Environmental Humanities research platform at JGU through the interdisciplinary combination of arts, literature, and Musicology using the method of Ecocriticism, which is to be linked to already existing initiatives and sees itself as a contribution to the JGU initiative “Sustainability and Sustainable Development”.
Educational processes in anti-discriminatory university teaching
Main applicant: Junior Professor Dr. Constantin Wagner
Co-applicants: Prof. Dr. Karin Bräu, Prof. Dr. Alexandra Klein, Prof. Dr. Carmen Mörsch
Digital Information Landscape and its Impact on Students’ Online Learning – A Cross-Domain Analysis in Medicine and Economics (DIAPSON)
Main applicant: Prof. Dr. Olga Zlatkin-Troitschanskaja
Co-applicants: Prof. Dr. Mita Barnjee, Prof. Dr. Walter Bisang, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Marcus Maurer, Prof. Dr. Christian Schemer, Prof. Dr. Jochen Roeper
Resilient Institutions
Main applicant: Prof. Dr. Claudia Landwehr
Co-applicants: Prof. Dr. Kai Arzheimer, Prof. Dr. Phillip Harms, Prof. Dr. Sascha Huber, Prof. Dr. Otte Gunnar
Simply complex! A multimodal and interdisciplinary approach to the study of linguistic complexity in easy language
Main applicant: Prof. Dr. Arne Nagels
Co-applicants: Prof. Dr. Silvia Hansen-Schirra, Prof. Dr. Walter Bisang
Ethnographies of the self in the present. Optimizations – Sacralizations – Standardizations
Main applicant: Prof. Dr. Barbara Thums
Co-applicants: Prof. Dr. Michael Roth, Junior Prof. Dr. Mirko Uhlig
Witnessing. Episodes of a media and cultural practice
Main applicant: Prof. Dr. Alexandra Schneider
Co-applicants: Prof. Dr. Friedemann Kreuder, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Kristina Köhler, Prof. Dr. Gabriele Schabacher, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Sarah Scholl-Schneider, Prof. Dr. Michael Simon, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Julia Stenzel, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Mirko Uhlig, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Benjamin Wihstutz
The dimensions of time in the justification of ethics
Main applicant: Prof. Dr. Ruben Zimmermann
Co-applicants: Prof. Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Horn, PD Dr. Dorothea Erbele-Küster
Dynamics of workloads and stress
Main applicant: Prof. Dr. Christian Dormann
Co-applicants: Junior Prof. Dr. Verena Haun, Prof. Dr. Thomas Rigotti, Prof. Dr. Klaus Wälde
Integrated teaching research in subject didactics and educational science
Main applicant: Prof. Dr. Margarete lmhof
Co-applicants: Prof. Dr. Daniel Dreesmann, Prof. Dr. Oliver Meyer, Prof. Dr. Sylvia Thiele
Materiality and sociality in culture and society
Main applicant: Prof. Dr. Herbert Kalthoff
Co-applicants: Prof. Dr. Jörg Rogge, Prof. Dr. Gregor Wedekind
Life in transitions. Young adults between continuity and discontinuity in education, appointments and family life
Main applicant: Prof. Dr. Heide von Felden
Co-applicants: Prof. Dr. Marina Hennig, Prof. Dr. Peter Preisendörfer, Prof. Dr. Stefan Weyers
Politics of Linguistics, Translation and Cultural Studies
Main applicant: Prof. Dr. Dilek Dizdar
Co-applicants: Prof. Dr. Andreas Gipper, Prof. Dr. Dr. Andreas Kelletat, Prof. Dr. Birgit Menzel, Prof. Dr. Michael Schreiber
Every year at DIES Academicus, JGU honors outstanding scientists in early career phases as well as artistic talents who have received an award for their special achievements. The event has been organized by the GCC since 2017.
Prizes are awarded at DIES Academicus by external companies, funding organizations and foundations as well as awards from JGU trust foundations.
The next DIES Academicus will take place on July 01, 2026 at 5:15 pm at Alte Mensa.
In connection with the DIES Academicus, the brochure “Verzeichnis ausgezeichneter Leistungen” is published annually which presents the award winners with a brief profile.
The Gutenberg Council for Academic Careers (GCC) is led by an interdisciplinary executive committee. The body is made up of members of JGU who have distinguished themselves through special commitment and outstanding achievements in supporting scientists and artists in early phases of their careers. In addition to professors, other academics from various faculties and career phases, from doctorate to advanced postdoctoral researcher, are also represented. The body is complemented by excellent students.
GCC’s executive committee is appointed by the JGU Executive University Board in agreement with the Senate. From among its members, the executive committee elects a director and a vice-director.
The Vice President for Research and Early Career Academics participates in the meetings of the executive committee in an advisory capacity.
The GCC office provides adminstrative support for all GCC projects.
Director: Prof. Dr. med. Julia Weinmann-Menke, FB 04, University Medical Center
Vice-Director: Prof. Dr. Florian Hett, FB 03, Professor of Digital Economics
“I very much welcome that an institution such as the GCC exists. New motivational approaches are important so that we can continue to motivate enough young people to choose a career in science in the future. I would like to contribute to this.”
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“The complex demands placed on early career researchers require framework conditions that specifically promote their development. At the same time, it is important to ensure that the university fulfills its social tasks with the highest quality. In the GCC, I would like to contribute to creating an environment that takes both into account: the best possible support for young researchers and the strengthening of the university through excellence in research and teaching.”
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“I believe that consciously shaping and helping to shape the opportunities and conditions for early career researchers at a university is relevant in the context of higher education policy. I am therefore all the more pleased to be able to actively contribute to this task by working together on the GCC executive committee.”
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“Modern research is characterized by an increasing breadth of scientific methodologies used. The promotion of interdisciplinary networking among young scientists stimulates enthusiasm, exchange of ideas, and quality in science and medicine. I work with the aim of establishing these structures within the framework of new family and working models.”
“It is also important to include the perspectives of students in the promotion of early career researchers – both as future academics and as a current part of the university. I am therefore looking forward to being able to contribute my experience and perspectives from my previous programs of study in Mainz and Oxford and am always open to suggestions from the student body.”
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“Due to various subjective experiences during the early phase of my doctorate, I developed the desire to get involved in higher education policy. The (structural) hurdles here need to be reduced, especially for those with children or those without funding. As a representative of doctoral students, I would like to bring their perspective to the committee’s work.”
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“As a member of the GCC at JGU Mainz, I appreciate the opportunity to consciously help shape the framework conditions and opportunities for up-and-coming academics. My active participation enables me to make a relevant contribution to the higher education policy task of promoting and mentoring young research talents.”
“The dynamic development of the training of early career researchers is a constant challenge to which the GCC must respond with adequate advising and support measures. I hope this succeeds in such a way that the enthusiasm of doctoral students and postdocs for science is in an ideal way combined with an increase in independence and confidence in the feasibility of different career paths. This also benefits the science system as a whole.”
“For me, the GCC is an important body for helping to shape academic training. By representing various subjects and groups at JGU it skillfully makes use of the strengths of a campus university.
As a doctoral candidate in computer science with a fellowship, I am pleased to be able to contribute my perspective as an early career scientist at JGU.”
“The phase in which one is considered a “early career researcher” is perhaps the most creative and the most important phase for one’s future career, even if it is accompanied by professional uncertainty. In this area of tension, I consider it an important task of the Gutenberg Council for Academic Careers to create ideal conditions for early career researchers.”
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