Family oriented Completion Grant

Application deadlines January 15th and June 15th

The Goettingen Graduate School of Social Sciences (GGG) is offering stipends for PhD students of Social Sciences, who are in need of financial support for finalizing their PhD because of taking care of children or other person within the family contexts.

PhD students that are members of the GGG and are taking care of at least one child or a person within the family context, for whom you do care work, can apply. Financial funds can be granted for a period of up to 6 months offering 1.200,00 Euro (plus 400 Euro for one child or one person, you do care work for, plus 100 Euro for each other child, minus "Elterngeld") per month. These stipends are granted according to the Guidelines for Granting Stipends of the Georg-August-University ("Richtlinie zur Vergabe von Stipendien der Georg-August-Universität").

Please consider the award criteria for scholarships given by the GGG.
The application needs to initially handed in at your faculty (Social Sciences at the Equal Opportunity Commissioner of the faculty, Business and Economics at your department or otherwise at the dean, Law at the dean or dean of studies).
If your faculty confirms a) that no other funding opportunities are available for you and b) no other reasons than childcare or care responsibilities yielded a prolonged dissertation process, your application will be proceeeded to the GGG.


The Completion Grant can be awarded either until you submit your thesis at the faculty or until the disputation. If you want to be supported until the disputation your application has to include a letter of intent from all your reviewers stating that the review will be submitted within 2 months or prompt enough to realistically schedule the disputation within the funding period.

Requirements are:

  • Position as PhD student at one of the member faculties of the GGG and enrollment at the Georg-August-University
  • The PhD thesis has to be close to finalization. It has to be realistic to complete the thesis within the period of the grant (submission or disputation).
  • Participants of other programs that offer financial support for parents or care workers may only apply in case their program cannot support them (please include statement). Partial funding can be offered and is possible.
  • Funding ends when the thesis is submitted or at the day of the disputation.
  • Application is possible for the next 9 month. Deadlines are 15th January and 15th June (receive date).


Application (German or English) must include:

  • statement of your faculty about both question mentioned above in passage four
  • Application form for this grant as word or pdf
  • Questionnaire of GGG to update your data
  • Resume and diplomas achieved so far (copy)
  • statement of need (3 pages max) including the following information:
    • beginning and development of your thesis until now, state of supervision, financing until now
    • family situation (number of children, daycare, your activity within the child care or other kind of care / who is helping?)
    • income of the family and financial support as parents
    • if any: description of additional reasons (like social background, disability or illness, residence permit status, need of assistance)
    • additional scientific reasons for receiving the grant (e.g. Cotutelle)
  • table of contents of the dissertation that shows the current state of the working progress (finished parts, parts who need to be revised, parts that are missing?)
  • work schedule for the period of financial funding (if appropriate: date of disputation)
  • statement of your supervision, including information on the need and the priority of the GGG-Support. It also should tell us in a realistic manner, if and until when the dissertation will be finished and give us an evaluation of how the PhD project would profit from this funding
  • If you are looking for support until the disputation: Letters of intent from all reviewers with exact time schedule stating that the review will be done max. 2 month after the submission or prompt enough to realistically schedule the disputation within the funding period.
  • confirmation as PhD student from your faculty or the students office (copy)



Each PhD student that is a member of the GGG can apply for this funding option. Application is possible via mail or e-mail (in pdf) to: Goettingen Graduate School of Social Sciences (GGG), Historische Sternwarte, Geismar Landstraße 11, 37083 Göttingen, ggg@uni-goettingen.de.