2026–2032The Future of UWA Has Many New Faces

22 January 2026

Photo: CSMC

New UWA researchers – and a few veterans – gathered in the garden of the the cluster's building in Hamburg.

The Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts (UWA) is the backbone of the CSMC. Following its success in the DFG’s Excellence Competition in 2025, it will continue for at least another seven years. With numerous new colleagues, UWA has now entered its second phase.

The beginning of 2026 marks a new chapter for the Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts. The turn of the year officially signalled the transition from the first to the second funding period, which will run until the end of 2032. This is much more than a mere formality: While UWA’s research orientation and thematic profile remain the same, and many researchers who led projects during the first phase are continuing their work within the cluster, the new period also brings substantial changes.

One major development is UWA’s new internal structure. The former Research Fields, which grouped individual research projects thematically during the first funding period, are now replaced by so‑called Concept & Method Units (CMUs) and Project Groups. The latter are small, versatile, interdisciplinary teams of professors, postdoctoral researchers, and doctoral candidates. They work on specific case studies and on new topics and materials that emerge in particular as a result of bottom-up cross-disciplinary interaction. The CMUs, in turn, undertake primarily overarching conceptual and methodological tasks in order to advance UWA’s aim of developing a global and holistic framework. To this end, they will produce programmatic outputs, such as co‑authored articles and Occasional Papers.

The most significant change, however, concerns personnel. At the start of the month, numerous new researchers, including postdocs and doctoral candidates, took up their positions within the cluster. Their diverse disciplinary backgrounds reflect the breadth characteristic of both UWA and the CSMC as a whole. The new researchers include specialists in fields as varied as Archaeometry, Chemistry, Computer Science, Egyptology, and Japanese studies, to name just a few.

Over the first two weeks of the year, the new cohort takes part in intensive introductory seminars in which they familiarise themselves with the cluster’s research agenda and organisational structure. Among other things, they present their research ideas to each other and to the veteran UWA researchers who were already part of the cluster in the first phase, using selected written artefacts or other objects.

In the weeks ahead, each new colleague will begin working on their own Individual Research Project within the cluster; the CMUs and Project Groups are still in the process of being constituted. During this period, our website will be updated continuously. General overviews of the CMUs and Project Groups are already available, as are descriptions of all projects from the first funding period that will be continued in the new phase.