Frequently Asked Questions

As a rule, the faculty does not support the organisation of symposia and conferences. In exceptional cases, in the case of large international conferences, support may be granted on application if the following conditions are met: (a) third-party funds could be raised to finance the conference (e.g. DFG, Thyssen), (b) there is a substantial financial contribution of the professorships (co-financing) for the application for financial support by the faculty and (c) the conference programme provides for adequate participation of female scientists.

Please address your questions, if possible already adding your preliminary budget calculation, to the colleagues of the external funding management. You will find the right contact person for your department and the planned funding agency via the indicated priorities in this list.

Please contact us at forschung.wiso@uni-hamburg.de( forschung.wiso"AT"uni-hamburg.de) to obtain an employer's declaration ("Arbeitgebererklärung"). For this purpose, we require a completed and signed notification for an externally funded project ("Drittmittelanzeige"), your application text according to the current status, as well as the pre-completed "Overview of qualification positions and employment relationships". Please submit the documents in good time before the planned submission or application deadline, as the check by the personnel department can take up to four weeks.

In most cases, two-stage procedures require a declaration by the faculty. Please contact the office of the Vice Dean for Research in good time and arrange an individual schedule. As a rule, a two-week lead time is required to discuss the application project with the Dean's Office and to draft a statement. A prefinal version of the application text is required from you. In general, the earlier you get in touch, the better.

In principle, we would like to ask you to inform us about your plans at an early stage when applying for collaborative projects. Since the preparation of a statement of the Executive University Board requires a statement of the Dean's Office as well as a discussion of your application in the Executive University Board, sufficient time must be scheduled for the completion of such a statement as the scheduled dates of the committee meetings must be taken into account. Please contact the Dean's Office with your plans for a collaborative project as early as possible.

Please contact the colleagues from the contract management in good time. You can find further information here (in German).

In addition to granting appointment and retention bonuses, the law provides for special performance pay to be granted pursuant to Section 34 HmbBesG. The Executive University Board has decided that special performance-related bonuses will be awarded to professors with W2 and W3 salaries in recognition of academic successes that are of outstanding importance to the University. More Information here. 

On receipt of the letter of approval, a cost centre will be set up by the external funding management of the central administration and an information mail will be sent to you with contact persons for questions of financial management and personnel matters.

For all financial questions, please contact the external funding management (Department 4, Unit 45) and for questions regarding the organization of your employment or the organization of personnel positions in the externally funded project, please contact the personnel department (Department 6) of the UHH. Please note that applications for employment must be submitted in the original via the office of your department and from there will be forwarded to the central administration via the faculty administration. The contact details of the offices of the departments at WiSo are linked below:

• Office of the Deparment of Socioeconomics
• Office of the Department of Social Sciences
• Office of the Deparment of Economics

It is best if you publish the information on the homepage of your professorship or, if applicable, on the homepage of the project. It is possible to place a short summary with a link to more detailed information in the faculty newsletter or in the news section of the faculty website. For this purpose, please contact Britta Lissel, at Redaktion.WiSo@uni-hamburg.de( Redaktion.WiSo"AT"uni-hamburg.de). If you wish to distribute the information via  the University-wide channels, you can contact the Department 2: Communication and Public Relations of the Presidential Administration at medien@uni-hamburg.de( medien"AT"uni-hamburg.de).

Of course it is a pity that your application was rejected! However, please be aware that even a very good funding rate of 30% from the funding agency means that the majority of applications submitted will be rejected - so your application is in good company. A rejected application does not necessarily mean that your project is bad or ineligible for funding and there are many factors that may have contributed to a rejection (limited available funding from the funding agency, very good other submissions, etc.).

A rejected application should not disappear in a drawer. Although a positive funding decision would be desirable in any case, rejections can provide a number of useful pieces of information for revision and re-submission to the same or another funding body. Feel free to contact us and we will consider together how your project could be further developed.

Click here for an inspiring article in the Nature Career Feature about how to deal with the rejection of an application ("Failed funding applications are inevitable, but perseverance can pay dividends").

Stefanie Preuß recommends the following four steps in her book "Drittmittel für die Forschung":

1. gain emotional distance
2. analyse the reasons for the rejection of the application
3. decide how you want to proceed
4. learn from the rejection and do better next time.

Source: Preuß, S. (2017): Drittmittel für die Forschung. Grundlagen, Erfolgsfaktoren und Praxistipps für das Schreiben von Förderanträgen. Wiesbaden: Springer.

According to the statutes of the University of Hamburg on the implementation of third-party funded projects (you can find more information in the UHH intranet here, in German), a planned third-party funded project must be registered with the Dean's Office in good time. In practice, the notification of an externally funded project ("Drittmittelanzeige") guarantees that the office space and equipment requirements for your third-party funded project will be planned in good time. In addition, the notification of externally funded projects is a prerequisite for many administrative processes in the presidential administration and the faculty (e.g. employer's declaration, declarations/statements). In addition, the notification of an externally funded project often initiates consultation with the research managers of WISO and the Research Department of the Presidential Administration.

Please contact the colleagues from the IT at IT-Bestellung.WiSo@uni-hamburg.de with the notification for an externally funded project signed by the faculty and the number of the PSP-element created for your project in order to coordinate your requirements. Please note that a allocation can take up to 6 weeks (if IT is provided for more than 4 workstations, the allocation can take up to three months). Please note that student assistants are not entitled to the allocation of IT equipment. Please ask the colleagues in the IT department about the possibility of providing temporary equipment ("Leihgeräte").

Usually, after eight semesters of teaching activity, a research sabbatical can be applied for. Please contact the office of the Vice Dean for Research at forschung.wiso@uni-hamburg.de( forschung.wiso"AT"uni-hamburg.de) if you are unclear about the counting or have further questions. The application form for a research sabbatical at the WISO Faculty can be found here.