Endangered female scientists receive scholarships for research stay in Kassel

At the University of North Hesse, the two researchers work respectively at the School of Art and the Department of Social Sciences. The scholarship holder from the Department of Social Sciences is researching in particular the politics of the current Turkish government. At the University of the Arts, the fellow there is an artist working on the boundaries and connections between art and science.

Grants are awarded to a total of 56 researchers who are seeking protection in Germany because they are threatened by war or persecution in their home countries. Forty-one host institutions were selected from 68 universities and research institutes wishing to host one or more endangered researchers and had applied for this purpose with concepts for the personal and scientific integration of the researchers. The Secretary General of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Enno Aufderheide said: "The fact that we received more applications than ever before shows how great the pressure is on critical and independent minds in many countries. Germany is already benefiting from the Philipp Schwartz Fellows. I am sure: This will be even more the case in the future."

The Philipp Schwartz Initiative was launched by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation with the support of the Federal Foreign Office and enables universities, universities of applied sciences and non-university research institutions in Germany to award fellowships for research stays to researchers at risk. It is financially supported by the Federal Foreign Office, the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, the American Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Klaus Tschira Foundation, the Robert Bosch Foundation, the Stifterverband, and the Mercator Foundation. The initiative was named after Philipp Schwartz, a pathologist of Jewish descent who had to flee Germany in 1933 to escape the Nazis.