As a graduate of the Master of Comparative Literature, please leave us your new e-mail address so that we can contact you with information about alumni events. Contributions to our "Alumni introduce themselves" section are warmly welcomed. We look forward to hearing from you!

• General Information

  General information on doctorates at the University of Cologne can be found on the website of the Student Secretariat. The central contact point for doctorates at the Faculty of Humanities is the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne.

• Topic agreement and planning phase

  Before you apply for admission to the doctoral programme, you must first contact a possible first supervisor. You are welcome to contact Prof. Harst, Dr. Zehschnetzler or other lecturers of the programme with a (rough) idea of the topic. Participation in a Master's or doctoral colloquium is also recommended. In addition to the Research Master, the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne offers a Predoc scholarship for the doctoral preparation phase. Under certain conditions and provided that adequate supervision is found, it may be possible to do a doctorate in a subject at the Faculty of Humanities that is not identical to the subject of the degree (cf. Q and A (uni-koeln.de)).

• Admission and doctoral programme

  On the website of the Doctoral Office of the Faculty of Humanities you will find information on the formal procedure for admission to doctoral studies. The a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne offers a structured doctoral programme in the so-called Integrated Track. In addition, an individual doctorate with a self-organised doctoral phase is possible in the Regular Track. Information on the two doctoral models can be found here.

• Special offers

  The a.r.t.e.s. Mercator scholarship offers funding for doctorates in the humanities and cultural sciences that are related to practice and professional fields. In addition, the Cotutela doctorate offered by a.r.t.e.s. makes it possible to do a doctorate in two countries with a supervisor at the UzK and a supervisor at a foreign university.

• Finances

  Financing is possible through scholarships, among other things. An overview of the funding possibilities through the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne can be found here. The website of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research provides a list of the 13 funding organisations for doctoral funding, most of which have different ideological, political, denominational or economic orientations. Many foundations expect the application to be accompanied by a report from the supervisor or proof of admission to the doctoral programme from the university, so you should consult with the possible supervisor at the Junior Professorship in Comparative Literature before applying for a scholarship. Furthermore, it is possible to apply for research training groups (thematically bound) or for teaching/assistant jobs (usually not thematically bound) as well as private funding.

"After my Master's degree in Comparative Literature, I started working in a PR agency. There, in addition to standard public relations work, I am also responsible for the social media support of numerous medium-sized companies. From my comparative literature studies, I took with me how to work critically and analytically with different text forms, which is an important part of my job. The intermedial aspects of comparative literature also accompany me in my everyday professional life: PR often follows multimedia approaches, i.e. topics have to be developed and elaborated for different communication channels."

"Since I have finished my 2-subject Master's degree in Comparative Literature and English Studies at the University of Cologne, I am working in a digital agency as a content manager. As a content manager, I am responsible for creating the content on our clients' websites. This means that I write texts and coordinate the creation of other content, such as images, videos or infographics. I also communicate a lot with our partners to make sure the content fits their vision, contains the important information for users and is also easy to understand and interesting. Many of the skills I learned during my comparative literature studies help me in my job today. For example, studying comparative literature helped me to take different perspectives and to be able to look at them side by side and classify them. This is especially helpful in my job, because it allows me to bring together the wishes of the partners and clients and the needs of the users. The comparative literature degree also trained my analytical skills, which is important for my job because I often write about very different content and I can quickly familiarise myself with new topics. The IT certificate for humanities students from the University of Cologne also enabled me to understand the technical side of digital communication."

"It was clear to me early on that I wanted to work as an editor. During my Bachelor's degree, I did two internships in publishing houses and got my first insights into editing. Alongside my Master's degree, I worked as an assistant for a freelance editor for two and a half years and also did some editing and proofreading myself. During the last year of my studies, I also completed the three-part certificate course "Freelance Editing" at the Academy of German Media. After graduating, I then set up my own business as an editor. One of my main focuses is editing children's and young adult books, but I also edit other fiction texts - or sometimes game instructions. So it doesn't get boring. Above all, comparative literature has given me an even greater openness to a wide variety of texts and media. Moreover, my studies have taught me to work in a structured way and to organise myself." 

"During my master's degree, I worked in an intercultural center, an open institution for political education, social work with children and young adults as well as integration. In this context, I worked with young people on their professional perspectives and on guided learning structures and organization. After my studies I started working at a media agency. Here I am in two teams; on the one hand in the youth department of the FUNKE media group. We create online and print content for young people between the ages of 14 and 24. My activities mainly consist of the page construction, editing texts by youth reporters and other editorial activities (e.g. writing articles). With the other team, I work on media education projects for various newspapers and newspaper publishers. We create teaching material and give teachers tips and ideas for the very latest topics that the newspapers pick up on (cyber attacks, World Cup, China protests, etc.) so that classes and schools can work with their current daily newspaper and other media in the classroom to strengthen their media skills."

"During my master's degree in music education and comparative literature, I did not plan on doing a doctorate. However, after I had completed my degree with excellent results, this opportunity suddenly arose. Since April 2022 I have been doing my doctorate at the Institute for Musicology in the a.r.t.e.s. program of the Faculty of Philosophy University of Cologne with the topic "Sounds and music as design elements in computer game culture" and was able to take part in doctoral training at Cambridge University as part of the AHRC DTP program in my first year of doctoral studies. During my studies, especially in my area of ​​specialization "mediality", my mind was opened to new perspectives and the joy of scientific work was immensely increased. The excellent education at the University of Cologne also benefits me in my job as a music and culture manager, because here I also deal with different approaches and ways of thinking of those involved in the projects. Today I can accept and classify them much better and I am also much more open to new ideas. I would highly recommend Comparative Studies as a modern and forward-looking programme!"