A New Collaboratory Feature: “Grants, Fellowships, Internships & Teaching Assistantships in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland for Undergraduate & Graduate Students in North America”

On March 13, 2020, I received the surreal news that Macalester College would move the 2020 study away program in Berlin & Vienna online. As the 2020 program director, I had been busy for several weeks in Vienna, reconnecting with old colleagues and meeting new ones, planning the theater course I would soon teach, and keeping one eye on the spread of COVID, particularly just over the border in Italy. Students had arrived in Vienna on March 1st and were settling into their dorms and their courses, figuring out how to navigate the sprawling Uni Wien campus and the wider city. But within a week of their arrival, the university moved classes online, stores and theaters closed, masks appeared, toilet paper disappeared, and everyone struggled to try to maintain two-meter distance in the Öffis. My students and I returned hastily to the U.S. or other homelands. The students’ dreams of a 6-month intensive study experience overseas, fluency in German, travel adventures, and becoming true Weltbürger were at an end. 

Many other students and recent graduates experienced this same loss over the last year and a half–loss of academic opportunities, but also numerous other personal, experiential, and financial losses as they were forced to abandon in-person study at home and all activities overseas. Some were able to postpone study away, fellowships, and internships; many were not. And with borders closed and academic institutions world wide shuttered, all of us in German Studies and other culture studies disciplines found ourselves in a strange twice-removed situation: We were not just teaching about geographically or historically distant cultures, as most of us usually do, but suddenly, we were doing so in a digital space, entirely removed from the physical materiality and the lived experience of those cultures. I expect I’m preaching to the choir, but let it be said: Personal, live experience of and engagement with cultures outside of one’s national borders is essential to a liberal education, to being an informed and empathetic world citizen, and certainly to competence in a cultural area and linguistic proficiency. And the prospect of just such an extended, quality, overseas experience is arguably the most powerful motivation for undergraduates majoring and minoring in German Studies disciplines; the absence of this option has negatively impacted already struggling German language enrollments over the past year. 

But now, cautiously and haltingly, the world is opening up, and in addition to study abroad programs, many stipends, fellowships, and internships are available again. For most of us reading this post, study, research, teaching, or internship experiences in a German-speaking country have been life-changing. We probably encourage our undergrads to do foreign study in a general way and perhaps build study or research abroad into our graduate curricula. Maybe we point the occasional talented senior toward a Fulbright Fellowship or a Ph.D. student toward a DAAD summer stipend for archive research. But many of us aren’t aware of the breadth of opportunities outside of our home institutions for undergrads, graduating seniors, and graduate students. To fill that need, the Collaboratory has launched a list of “Grants, Fellowships, Internships & Teaching Assistantships in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland for Undergraduate & Graduate Students in North America.” We hope this is useful to you, your students, and your institutions. Do let us know of any recurring opportunities we might have missed, and please share the list widely and reach out to rising seniors soon; the application deadlines for several post-graduate opportunities are in September!

Rachael Huener, Macalester College

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