Job vacancies at the University of Bremen

Junior Research Group Leader

The University of Bremen, a mid-sized university with approximately 250 professorships and 19,000 students, offers a broad range of disciplines and competes internationally in top-level research. With its ambitious institutional strategy the university was successful in the
national Excellence Initiative as one of only eleven universities in Germany.

Cooperative Junior Research Groups funded by the Excellence Initiative strengthen the university’s capacity for innovation. They will be established in fields of close collaboration with our highly renowned research partners and thereby offer rewarding research opportunities and career prospects for excellent junior researchers.

Candidates exhibiting excellent doctorate credentials and the ability to successfully design and lead a cutting-edge research project are encouraged to apply. Group leaders will receive a competitive salary and a generous budget for research assistants and other costs directly incurred by the project. Junior group leaders at the University of Bremen can be temporarily granted the title of a professor and the right to independently supervise doctoral theses. Teaching (in English or German) is only required for two hours per week during terms, starting in the second year.


The University of Bremen is offering – conditional to the release of budgetary funds –
the following position for a

Junior Research Group Leader
“Coastal Development and Sea Level Change in Tropical Areas”

Salary group E14/15
(for three years with the option of an extension)

reference number: A30/13


Tropical coastlines and their ecosystems are highly vulnerable to sea level change. The overarching goal of the junior research group will be to evaluate modern and projected regional sea-level changes along tropical coasts within the framework of past natural variations. The focus should be on sea-level changes on timescales of societal relevance. Potential geoscientific methods to assess past sea-level variations include sedimentology, (pal)ecology, palynology, geochemistry, as well as numerical modelling and GIS. The group is expected to interact with working groups at MARUM and the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology to act as a bridge between the institutions.

For further inquiries please contact the Director of the MARUM, Professor Michael Schulz (mschulz@marum.de), phone +49-421-218-65500 or the Director of ZMT, Professor Hildegard Westphal (director.zmt@zmt-bremen.de), phone +49-421-23800-21.

The applicant is expected to readily cooperate with other research areas within and outside the University of Bremen and to acquire additional third-party funds.
Selection procedures and implementation of the junior research groups with an envisaged duration of five years are oriented on the model of Emmy Noether junior research groups of the German Research Foundation (DFG). Requirements are: excellent doctorate credentials, publications in peer-reviewed international journals or other comparable publications, and a minimum of one year postdoctoral experience. Candidates should ideally have gained some of their expertise while working abroad for several months during the doctoral or postdoctoral phase. Applications may only be submitted within five years after obtaining the doctorate. Family leave will be taken into consideration. The doctorate should not have been attained at the University of Bremen, otherwise at least two years of postdoctoral research at another institution are required.

Junior research group leaders may be assigned up to 2.5 additional research positions and will receive funds for equipment, consumables and student assistants.

Please send your application by email. Applications must include:

• a CV
• a short statement of research achievements
• a five-year project plan. The project plan should address the following points: State of the art, own preliminary work, objectives, work program (including time table and cost projection) and project requirements (maximum 10 pages).
• three of your key publications as pdf files
• contact details of at least three referees

The University of Bremen has received a number of awards for its gender and diversity policies and is particularly aiming to increase the number of female researchers. Applications from female candidates, international applications and applications of academics with a migration background are explicitly welcome.

Disabled persons with the same professional and personal qualifications will be given preference.

Please send your application (with reference number A30/13) not later than 2013-05-15 to mschulz@marum.de

www.uni-bremen.de/en/exzellent.html