Equal Opportunity Structures

The following measures have enabled us to partly redress power imbalances within our community:

• many of our doctoral researchers and all our postdoctoral researchers are PI of their projects;
• more than half of our Research Fields are led by postdocs;
• postdocs are represented in our Steering Committee both by Research Field leaders and by a postdoc spokesperson;
• 60% of our Advisory Board is female; 30% of our Advisory Board is based at institutions in the Global South.

Staff and students’ perceptions of UWA as a work environment are surveyed biyearly and in anonymous form. Survey reports are accessible in UWA's Intranet.

Our Equal Opportunity Coordinator supports staff and students by providing advice on and practical assistance with, among others, immigration and visa issues, care services, mental health services, language and professionalisation courses, and requesting workplace accommodations. Our Equal Opportunity Coordinator is also the first point of contact for our staff and students who are experiencing challenging working conditions, including due to discrimination or harassment. Besides providing advice, our Equal Opportunity Coordinator also connects staff and students to relevant agencies and services within UHH and in Hamburg.

Thanks to our MA Fellowship Programme we can offer admission to our MA Programme ‘Manuscript Cultures’ also to economically disadvantaged students, including many students from both the Global North and the Global South who are the first in their families to attend university.

To combat the effects of precarity in academia, we offer our doctoral and postdoctoral researchers stable (fixed-term) 75% or full positions.

We fund sabbaticals for our junior professors and female professors.

We ask our staff to abide by the following rules when planning their work:

• provided all required meetings are attended, daily work schedules can be organised as best fits individual needs, including through a combination of work on CSMC premises and work at home;
• all UWA meetings and events should be held Monday - Friday, 9 am - 6 pm (unless all involved prefer otherwise);
• events involving a limited number of participants should be scheduled at times that work for all participants, including particularly those with care responsibilities;
• events are to be held in hybrid format whenever suitable and feasible.