Scholarships for PhD students

With the Orientation Scholarship and the Dialogue Scholarship, the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory offers two different funding lines for PhD students, depending on whether they are in the early or later stages of their dissertation project and taken into account personal interests and needs.

Orientation Scholarship (2–6 months)

You have completed your degree in law or another humanities discipline with above-average success and are intending to pursue a PhD in the area of legal history? You have already started your PhD but are in the early stages of research? An Orientation Scholarship offers you the opportunity to spend two to six months at the Institute in order to work on your project in an international research environment and discuss it with the members of our scholarly community.  The pre-requisite for a successful application is that your PhD project fits thematically into one of the current Research Fields of our Institute’s  Department Marietta Auer - Multidisziplinary Theory of Law, Department Thomas Duve - Historical Regimes of Normativity, Department Stefan Vogenauer - European and Comparative Legal History or the Max Planck Research Groups.

Applications can be submitted at any time but should reach us no less than six months before your intended research stay. Please submit your application via our online application system.

Your application (in English) for an Orientation Scholarship needs to contain the following documents:

  • Research proposal (up to 10,000 characters), which shows how the project matches at least one of the Institute’s main Research Fields
  • CV
  • The name and address (postal and email) of scholar whom the Institute can contact should a letter of reference be considered necessary
  • Scan of the completed and signed form ‘Additional Application Details’

Dialogue Scholarships (1–3 months)

You are currently working on a PhD project in legal history that matches one of our Institute’s Research Fields? Your dissertation is close to completion, but you would like to discuss your findings and clear up some final questions with an expert in your particular area of research? Our Dialogue Scholarship offers you the opportunity to do so during a one- to three-month research visit at our Institute. A pre-requisite is that you contact a researcher of the Institute prior to your application in order to discuss your project, and that he or she agrees to act as your mentor during your time at the Institute.

Applications can be submitted at any time but should reach us no less than six months before your intended research stay. Please submit your application via our online application system.

Your application (in English) for a Dialogue Scholarship needs to contain the following documents:

  • Research proposal (up to 10,000 characters), which shows how the project matches at least one of the Institute’s main Research Fields
  • CV
  • A favourable evaluation of the project by one of the MPI for Legal History and Legal Theory’s researchers
  • Scan of the completed and signed form ‘Additional Application Details’

Please note that these scholarships are explicitly not intended as writing-up scholarships.

Decisions regarding the award of Scholarships are made by the Institute’s scholarship committee at its quarterly sessions (January/April/July/October).

PhD funding

PhD students who would like to pursue their doctoral project at the Institute can be awarded a funding contract, usually for three years. Further information on this and on currently open PhD positions can be found under Careers.  

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