PhD Scholarships in Political Science

The newly established Leuphana Transformation Lab offers six fully funded PhD scholarships (including research funding) for research projects examining democratic resilience in the fields of Political Science, Legal Studies, and Economics. 

Deadline for application: 1 October 2025

Democracy's Sustainability in the Global Multi-Crises Era

In the face of multiple crises (pandemic, mass migration, climate change, terrorism and war), attacks from outside and challenges from within, democracies must prove to be robust and capable of performing and developing. Leuphana researchers investigate the question of whether democracies are inherently more resilient than alternative, autocratic counter-concepts. Through analyses on an individual, social, systemic and international level, they examine the resilience conditions of social models of order and develop transformation knowledge about how western liberal democracies can continue to generate legitimacy and support their resilience.

Here you can find more information about the connected PhD programme and scholarships Embracing Transformation.

Spokespersons

• Prof. Dr. Jens Newig
• Prof. Dr. Astrid Séville
• Prof. Dr. Christian Welzel 

Potential Research Areas 

• Making democracy resilient: Parties and Elections
• International Relations, Peace and Security and democratic resilience
• Making private law resilient: The role of private litigation in a democracy
• Democratic Resilience and the Transformative Power of Democratic Innovations for Sustainability
• Making citizens resilient: Individual Cognition and decision making
• Making judicial institutions and constitutions resilient