In order to attract excellent researchers, it is becoming increasingly important to provide reliable career paths leading to permanent appointments. A family-friendly environment is one key element in improving equal opportunities.
Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH) regards the announcement and filling of tenure-track professorships as a necessary step towards retaining highly qualified early-career researchers in academia, enabling them to gain early scientific independence. Particularly in promising research fields, the new tenure-track professorships should raise the university's research and teaching profile in a sustainable way.
In support of this, an increase in the number of permanent positions and a concept for filling them according to predetermined performance criteria will also improve the planning of scientific careers below the professorial level.
Early-career researchers at all stages of their scientific career, from the doctoral and postdoctoral phases to the Habilitation or the tenure-track professorship, will benefit from the planned expansion of our broad personnel development programmes into a structured advisory and qualifications system. The acquisition of key academic skills and interdisciplinary qualifications, and the facilitation of early career path decisions should further improve the competitiveness of LUH’s early-career researchers on the job market.
Scientific monitoring will be provided by the Leibniz Research Centre for Science and Society (LCSS) and the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW), who will investigate the change in staffing structure and the attitude of researchers towards tenure-track professorships. The planned evaluations will thus create a basis for a continuous development of the procedures and measures required.