About Us
The Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (GS OSESLMU) offers a structured doctoral programme in East and Southeast European area studies. It closely collaborates with the Graduate School at Universität Regensburg (GS OSESUR) and with five academic institutions in Munich with relevant expertise in studying East and Southeast Europe.
GS OSESLMU continues the doctoral training programme that was established and jointly organized in Munich and Regensburg from November 2012 to October 2019 as a part of the German Federal and State Excellence Initiative, funded by the German Research Association (DFG). The final report details our activities in this period.
Our primary goal is to create an environment for innovative research and for successfully completing outstanding doctoral projects in the research field of East and Southeast European Studies. Therefore, our doctoral programme combines a structured and interdisciplinary course with intensive supervision.
The Graduate School pursues the concept of integrated area studies and, thus, collaborates with related disciplines as well as other area studies. We support the claim that East and Southeast Europe cannot be understood isolated but only in their interrelations with other world regions, enabling a differentiated and decentralised perspective on the processes around globalisation.
In addition to our academic impact, our public impact is very important to us. Thirty years have passed since the fall of the Iron Curtain, but prejudices towards East and Southeast Europe are still deeply rooted in ‘Western’ societies. We are committed to the transfer of knowledge to the general public by offering public lectures, workshops, the book series "Schnittstellen" or our research blog Erinnerungskulturen [Memory Cultures].
We cooperate closely with the interdisciplinary Elite Graduate Program for East European Studies run jointly by Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München and Universität Regensburg. Alumni of the Elite Graduate Program and the Graduate School founded the alumni association AMUROst e.V.