Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg

In the context of the WISNA program, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) pursues a double objective: Firstly, the university strives to sustainably establish tenure-track professorships across all its faculties to bring about a genuine cultural shift towards more reliable prospects of tenured professorships for a larger number of junior researchers at an earlier stage of their careers. Secondly, JMU aims to purposefully deploy these professorships to strengthen its overall research profile.

In order to achieve these goals, JMU's University Board and all faculties jointly developed a long-term strategy which exceeds the funding term and allows to permanently fill about 30 % of all professorial vacancies via tenure-track procedures. Within the scope of the WISNA-program, JMU decided to exclusively apply for W1 professorships in order to address promising young scholars shortly after finishing their doctorate. While a good two-thirds of all funded professorships will be assigned to one of JMU’s faculties, the remaining vacancies will be advertised in a thematically open way so as to strengthen the university’s interdisciplinary priority areas.

JMU's tenure-track statutes define transparent and binding standards for all tenure-track procedures, such as, for instance, the agreement on a personal development plan for each candidate, regular status talks, as well as the optional participation in mentoring programs. Tenure-track professors at JMU additionally benefit from comprehensive trainings and advisory services, which are pooled by the JMU Research Academy and tailored to career stage- and user group-specific needs. In order to foster equal opportunities and improve the compatibility of work and family life, the university takes into account specific life situations as well as career phases and links them within an integrated support framework on an individual and customized basis.