DAAD Faculty

DAAD Guest Professorship and Lektoren Program

In support of the increasingly recognized objective of universities in the United States and Canada to enhance the international dimension of the curriculum, and guided by mutual interest in strengthening the longstanding tradition of transatlantic academic cooperation, DAAD New York has established a cooperative program to place German senior academics in longer-term guest professorships with North American host institutions. More recently, the program was expanded to also include Lectureships for German as a Foreign Language (DaF).

The jointly funded guest professorship program - the German share of the financing is derived from the Foreign Office - was inaugurated in 1984 at the University of Minnesota. It was initially designed with a view to fostering curriculum innovation in the field of German Studies and to supporting a multi-faceted approach to the study of things German in US and Canadian higher education. Over the years, some 100 German guest professors in a variety of disciplines have contributed an authentic and up-to-date perspective from a contemporary German point of view to the study of Germany, its recent history and its current political, social and economic reality.

The DAAD guest professorships are geared towards the following objectives:
  • Provide instruction on recent historical, political, social, economic, legal, and cultural developments in Germany/Germany in Europe;
  • Foster an international dimension in the curriculum of the discipline concerned by way of enhancing possibilities for student exchanges, staff mobility, joint curriculum development with universities in Germany, and joint scholarly projects.
There are currently 21 German scholars in the North American Dozentenprogramm as well as two Chairs for German and European Studies. Candidates for these positions are selected by a bi-national academic committee in an open and rigorous multi-step recruiting process. The Dozentenprogramm was evaluated in 2008, the results of which are available here (document in German).

Separate but equally rigorous selection criteria apply to the short-term lectureship program, which is based on a direct invitation scheme between the host department and the scholar.