Who we are
As PhD candidates, we are faced with many problems, be it financing and planning our own project or coordinating our careers and private lives. It is therefore all the more surprising that PhD candidates are not a status group in their own right in Hesse and accordingly have no officially elected representatives on university committees. At the same time, doctoral candidates make up a large part of the university's mid-level faculty and are thus indispensable for university operations. For this purpose, the PhD Candidates Initiative was founded. This initiative, with the support of GRADE, managed to initiate a university-wide representation of PhD candidates: The PhD Candidates Association came together and was officially elected into office on November 13, 2019 in a plenary meeting.
The PhD Candidates Association is the network of doctoral candidates at Goethe University. Each faculty is invited to establish their own faculty convention and elect their respective spokespersons. These spokespersons represent the doctoral candidates at the faculty level and are now often represented in the faculty councils and doctoral committees either as guests or voting members. Faculty representatives are automatically part of the PhD Candidates Council, the body that represents all faculties collectively and discusses university-wide issues. The PhD Candidates Council elects several members from among its members who form the Executive Board. The board represents the doctoral candidates on various committees, such as the GRADE Board of Directors, or the Goethe University Senate, and coordinates the PhD candidates’ meetings. In addition to these elected bodies, all PhD candidates can contact the PhD Candidates Council with topics or problems in order to propose and collaborate on working groups.
Organisation chart of the PhD Candidates Association
Deutsche Version
