The German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Council of Science and Humanities (WR) have administered the Excellence Initiative since 2006 until October 2019. The goal was to promote top-level research and to strengthen Germany as an internationally competitive research location. The goal of the Excellence Strategy, the follow-up programme, is to continue to develop and enhance Germany as an international research location and to strengthen its international competitiveness. Furthermore, successful projects initiated during the Excellence Initiative are to be provided a long-term perspective.
Excellence Initiative
The University of Konstanz has been funded in all three funding lines (Graduate schools, Clusters of Excellence and Institutional strategies) of the Excellence Initiative starting in 2007 and ending on 31 October 2019, when the programme expired. It was successful as early as 2006, when its Cluster of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Social Integration” was recognized. In 2007, the university was able to reassert its claim to excellence when the Konstanz Research School Chemical Biology and the Institutional Strategy to Promote Top-Level Research, “Modell Konstanz – Towards a Culture of Creativity”, were approved. In the second round of the Excellence Initiative in 2012, the university could extend all previously accepted programmes, including its Institutional Strategy, and even add another graduate school, the Graduate School of Decision Sciences, thus further strengthening its position as a top-level research institution.
Excellence Strategy
With its overall concept “University of Konstanz – creative.together” and with its two new Clusters of Excellence “Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour” and “The Politics of Inequality: Perceptions, Participation and Policies“, it is successful in both funding lines (Clusters of Excellence and Universities of Excellence) of the Excellence Strategy. The two clusters were approved on 27 September 2018 and have been funded since 1 January 2019. On 10 December 2018, an application based on the concept “University of Konstanz - creative.together” was submitted and subsequently approved by the Excellence Commission on 19 July 2019. Funding started 1 November 2019.