About

The graduate program “Collective Decision-Making” is concerned with fundamental research on a topic of major significance for democratic societies: decision-making by a group of individuals. In modern societies many important decisions are regularly made by groups of individuals and not by single individuals themselves. These groups may be democratic polities choosing a government, a parliament passing a new law, a court passing a judgment, a group of creditors accepting the re-organization of an insolvent company, a committee of economic experts evaluating and forming a monetary policy, a set of cancer specialists deciding on a treatment plan, a military command deciding on a strategy, a management team or a governing board leading a public or private organization, and even a loose and informal group of individuals voluntarily engaged in “collective action”.

Despite the significant role of collective decision-making, its study is generally considered a specialist sub-field of economic, social and behavioral sciences and insights into its workings are hardly ever shared across different disciplines. The graduate program aims to work towards unifying a fragmented field and at the same time generating new impetus for research in this area by integrating separate strands of theoretical and empirical research and methods in economics, philosophy and political science. In addition to contributions to fundamental research, the research program will have practical implications for institutional design.

The research program seeks to advance our knowledge of collective decision-making by going beyond the traditional methodological frameworks of one discipline. It conceptualizes collective decision-making as a more complex and interactive process. The outcomes of collective decisions are the result of an interplay of individual preferences, epistemic and normative beliefs, and decision-making procedures; moreover, the procedures themselves are the result of an interplay of initial preferences, beliefs, and possible outcomes.

Why do a doctorate in a DFG graduate program?

Graduate programs are established by universities to promote early career researchers. They are funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for a period of up to nine years. Their key emphasis is on the qualification of doctoral researchers within the framework of a focused research program and a structured training strategy.

DFG Graduate Programs are generously financed and provide ample resources for developing early research careers.

Your doctoral degree

Although the program is in a highly interdisciplinary research environment, you will do a doctorate in one of the three disciplines of Economics, Philosophy or Political Science. A hallmark of the program is that doctoral researchers will be assigned to a disciplinary track and receive training that is tailored to research on collective decision-making and based on the individual background of the researcher.

What we offer

The graduate program "Collective Decision-Making" offers very attractive conditions for undertaking doctoral research. We are searching for international talents who are interested in pushing the boundaries of knowledge.

As a member of the graduate program you will be undertaking research at Universität Hamburg, one of Germany’s top 10 universities. You will be living in one of the most dynamic and international cities in Europe with one of the highest quality of life worldwide. We will offer you:

Excellent preparation for undertaking doctoral research in collective decision-making under the supervision of internationally recognized and networked faculty in Economics, Philosophy and Political Science.
A competitive salary with social security and healthcare contributions (0.75 TV-L 13) for three years.
Office space, equipment, research funding and generous travel grants for attending international conferences and workshops and for research visits.

You can find out more about living and researching at Universität Hamburg here.

Applying to the graduate program

Detailed information about the application process can be found under Application.