The doctoral program in Social and Economic Sciences at WU (Doktoratsstudium der Sozial-​ und Wirtschaftswissenschaften) is a high-quality, challenging program designed to develop the ability to conduct independent research and to train young researchers. Students are familiarized with scientific theoretical foundations, theories of the field/paradigms, data sources or methods of collection and analysis, research methods and publication strategies, and receive a research-oriented education.

The PhD program in Business, Economics and Social Sciences is aimed at people who are employed at WU (e.g. as research assistants, externally funded, or project staff) and are therefore verifiably and closely involved in the academic discourse via the supervising academic units. The curriculum offers a flexible framework that allows for interdisciplinarity and individual focus. The concrete curricular as well as research portfolio is defined within the given framework each year in dissertation agreements between the doctoral candidate and the supervisor.

Our institute is involved in these programs in the form of dissertation supervision and research seminars.

Dissertations

Doctoral theses serve to demonstrate the ability to independently deal with scientific questions and meet the requirement of originality and innovativeness. The answer to the research questions and the solutions of the identified problem must therefore represent a decisive innovation and close a research gap that has existed up to now. The process of answering the research questions must meet high scientific standards with respect to literature review, data collection and analysis, interpretation, and reporting.

Dissertations at our institute are supervised by Prof. Dr. Jurgen Willems within the framework of research projects. If you are interested in dissertation supervision, please contact us directly.

Please also note the basic information on doctoral studies/PhD at WU.

Research Seminar on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Public Administration, Governance, and Policy

In this seminar – which is open to all WU PhD/doctorate students – we collectively reflect on studies in the broad and interdisciplinary field of public administration, governance, and policy. In this collective reflection, will discuss concrete studies and research ideas from PhD students and staff. Research projects in all possible stages are open to be submitted for discussion: Initial ideas, work in progress, almost finished papers, and/or drafting Revise & Resubmit letters.

On request, the participating faculty gives particular impulses on theory, research designs, data collection, qualitative and quantitative analysis. This makes the seminar as adjusted as possible to the needs of the participating PhD/Doctorate students.

Moreover, for this seminar, external guest professors in the fields of public management and governance are often invited, and will also join in the active feedback, discussion, and brainstorm processes.

Research Seminar of the Management Department

This department seminar offers young scientists from different institutes of the Department of Management a forum for interdisciplinary discussion of current research contributions with renowned researchers.