02 PhD Scholarships: BerGSAS Program (Languages and Cultures of the Silk Road) 1043 views

The Graduate School Scholarship Program (GSSP) of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) offers two doctoral scholarships to research a doctorate within the “Languages and Cultures of the Silk Road” program at the Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies (BerGSAS).

About the program:

• The program covers Central Asia essentially in the period from the beginning of the present era up to the arrival of Islam in the area and therefore concentrates on the broad range of attested languages and literatures of Buddhist, Manichaean, Zoroastrian, and Christian communities, and on a lesser quantity of secular documents.
• The Turfan Collection in Berlin provides a unique opportunity to study original materials. A wealth of recently excavated sites and find materials in Central and Eastern Asia allow new approaches to a number of old questions concerning the complex cultural history along the Silk Roads.
• Candidates are free to choose own topics, and it is important to remember that artifacts and texts that have already been published often have a lot more to reveal than has already been discovered. The following is an indication of the kind of topics possible and is not intended to exhaust or limit the possibilities.

Duration: The scholarship is available from October 2020 for three years and possibly for a fourth year.

Scholarship value: € 1,200 per month; a travel allowance; payments toward health, accident and personal liability insurance cover; a research allowance of € 460 per year; preliminary German language course; a material resource and supervision allowance of € 1,000 per year (which is paid upon application to the host university.

Eligibility:

• Applications are open to candidates who are not German citizens and who have not resided in Germany continuously for more than 12 months prior to the application deadline
• Whose last final exam (M.A.) should have taken place no longer than 2014, January 31th.
• Applications are welcome from highly qualified graduates (M.A.) from the fields of Central and East Asian Archaeology, Central Asian studies, Iranian studies, and Turkic studies.

Applications:

Submit application as a single pdf document to application@berliner-antike-kolleg.org and application should include the following:

• an application form
• a research proposal (5 pages)
• a work plan and schedule for three years, including information about possible field studies/stays abroad
• CV/resume
• a letter that explains motivation for applying to the doctoral program
• a writing sample (15-20 pages)
• a list of publications
• any documents certifying completed practical work (internship etc.)
• letters of recommendation by two professors from home university.
• copies of certificates and copies of translated documents
• copies of certificates of annual examinations taken at your home university
• copies of certificates of any academic degrees (e.g. B.A., M.A., diploma and certificates of annual examinations taken at the home university), including grades and explaining the home university’s grading system (description of grade scale)
• copies of English Language certificates (please note that at Freie Universität C1-Level is mandatory)