Tenure-Track Professorships

The University of Bremen provides outstanding scientists with ideal conditions for research and teaching - at all career levels.

By offering professorships with tenure option, the university gives early-career researchers the chance of foreseable career tracks and thereby wants to foster potential as well as encourage early-career researchers.

It is of great importance to the university that procedures are transparent, continously reflected upon and improved. Our Tenure Board is responsible for monitoring and developing these procedures.

The Executive Board of the University of Bremen has adopted a set of guiding principles for the conceptualization of tenure-track professorships in 2018, in order to create university-wide standards and transparent conditions, also for early-stage researchers who are about to apply at University of Bremen.

These guiding principles clearly define the target group of professorships with tenure option, framework conditions for appointment as well as endowment negotiations and evaluation preocedures. Tenure-track professors are endowed with all the rights and duties of a full professor.

The university's aim is to conceptualize 30 percent of all advertized (newly created and/or vacant) professorships with tenure option. Most of the current tenure-track professorships are funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

In order to ensure that the evaluation processes are transparent, criteria and expectations are formally agreed upon in an evaluation agreement. In the individual evaluation agreement, the "General Criteria for Evaluation Agreements of the Tenure Board" are specified by taking subject-specific and internationally customary evaluation standards into account. The transition to a tenured professorship requires a successful evaluation according to the evaluation agreement. The Tenure Board has also developed and adopted a mandatory evaluation guideline.

Since 2018, the Tenure Board has been a standing committee established by the Academic Senate of the University of Bremen and is responsible for all professorship with tenure option at the university. It is an independent committee, in which all of the twelve faculties of the university are represented, in order to prevent conflicts of interest and dependencies within the faculties as well as biases.

The Tenure Board develops guidelines and templates for the evaluation processes to ensure cosistent quality standards, transparency and reliable procedures. Furthermore, the Tenure Board decides on granting tenure to the evaluated professors at the end of the individual evaluations based on external assessments and the results of an internal evaluation commission by the respective faculty.

Further information on the university's Tenure Board as well as helpful documents accompanying evaluation procedure, e.g. the Evaluation Guide and templates. can be found here (log-in to internal area):

Information on tenure track procedures (internal area with log-in)

All of the twelve faculties are represented on the Tenure-Board by one professor each. The members are elected for a period of four years by the Academic Senate. Additionally, the Vice President for Research and Transfer (KON1) is permanent and voting member. The university's Gender Equality Officer is an advisory member of the Tenure Board.

Faculty 01: Prof. Dr. Björn Lüssem
Faculty 02: Prof. Dr. Jan-Hendrik Hehemann
Faculty 03: Prof. Dr. Nicole Megow
Faculty 04: Prof. Dr. Sven Kerzenmacher (Vice Chairperson)
Faculty 05: Prof. Dr. Dierk Hebbeln
Faculty 06: Prof. Dr. Patrick Leyens
Faculty 07: Prof. Dr. Martin Möhrle
Faculty 08: Prof. Dr. Arndt Wonka
Faculty 09: Prof. Dr. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler (Chairperson)
Faculty 10: Prof. Dr. Kerstin Knopf
Faculty 11: Prof. Dr. Wolf Rogowski
Faculty 12: Prof. Dr. Anne Levin
Vice President for Research and Transfer: Prof. Dr. Michal Kucera
Gender Equality Officer: Kathrin Sebastian

The faculties may consult their respective member of the Tenure Board already before and during the establishment of a tenure track professorship, e.g. for questions regarding the development of evaluation criteria, and regarding all of the later steps of evaluation processes.

The members of the Tenure Board have – amongst other activities – developed the „General Criteria“ as a basis for the inividualized evaluation criteria as well as guidelines, manuals and templates. These documents support a university-wide quality standard for tenure track evaluations, from calls for applications to final evaluations.

Based on the individual evaluation agreement, the report of the respective tenure track professor, a recommendation by the faculty’s evaluation commission and external assessments, the Tenure Board decides, if tenure is granted to the evaluated professor.