IEG Fellowship

👋 Goodbye for Now, Facebook Friends!

After many years of connecting with you here on Facebook, we’ve decided to shift our main focus to Instagram where we’ll be sharing more frequent updates, behind-the-scenes moments, stories, and visual content about our fellowship and alumni activities.

This doesn’t mean we’re disappearing - just moving where our community of fellows and alumni is most active. You can still find us on Instagram ! ✨

Thank you for all the likes, comments, shares, and messages over the years. We hope you’ll follow along on Instagram to stay in the loop and continue this journey with us!

Your IEG Fellowship Team ❤

https://www.instagram.com/leibniz_ieg_mainz

📢IEG Fellowships for Doctoral Students – Apply now!

🎓We are once again awarding fellowships for doctoral students from Germany and abroad. The IEG Fellowship provides you with a unique opportunity to pursue and finalize individual PhD projects while living and working at the Institute in Mainz for 6 to12 months.

🌍Funded research projects:
From the early modern period to contemporary history – We fund research projects that:

📌deal with intellectual, religious or environmental history
📌focus on Europe in its relation to the wider world
📌use a comparative or cross-border approach or
📌apply digital tools and methods

📍 Where: Mainz, Germany
📆 Start: from March 2027
⏳ Duration: 6-12 months
📝 Application deadline: 15 August 2026

Are you interested in an inspiring academic environment and international exchange to support your PhD project?
Apply now! We look forward to meeting you!

Application & more information on funding requirements here: https://bewerbung.ieg-mainz.de/84zn1 (English)
https://bewerbung.ieg-mainz.de/yzsam (German)

🎓Alumni Spotlight: Uladzimir Valodzin

Many thanks to our alumnus Uladzimir Valodzin for sharing his insights and experiences as a PhD Fellow of the IEG Fellowship programme in 2023!

As a PhD student from the European University Institute, he worked at the IEG on his thesis on “Misbehaving Under Socialism: University Non-conformity in the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Thaw Period (1953-1968)” and successfully defended it in March 2025.

We are glad that “the spirit of collaboration and mutual trust” and connecting with other Fellows are such appreciated memories of Uladzimir Valodzin’s time as a PhD Fellow at the IEG.

For his future research projects, we wish him all the best!

📣 Save-the-Date Alumni Meeting 2026!

🌍 Connect – exchange – network: After our successful Alumni Meeting last year, we look forward to welcoming our alumni from all over the world back to the IEG in 2026 and connecting them with each other andour current Fellows.

The Alumni Meeting 2026 will take place from 12 to 13 November at the Domus Universitatis, Alte Universitätsstraße 19 in Mainz.

All our former and current fellows are cordially invited to register by emailing the address [email protected] by 14 September 2026.

🎓 We look forward to meeting you all for this year’s Alumni Meeting to remember past times at our institute in Mainz, reconnect and discuss new research projects!

📧 Contact: [email protected]

📍 Place: Domus Universitatis, Alte Universitätsstraße 19, 55116 Mainz (Germany)

For more information on IEG Alumni:
https://www.ieg-mainz.de/en/fellows/alumni/

Part two of exploring Mainz in spring!☀🌷
This time: Foodie edition – Discover all the culinary highlights, upcoming food & wine festivals and hidden food gems in Mainz.
Whether you want to try a new ice cream flavour, new regional delights on a sunny spring morning at the Mainz market breakfast or enjoy the evening with some pizza and an aperitif – we have lots of recommendations for all foodies who want to explore beautiful Mainz in spring!🍹🍕🍇

The IEG wishes all Fellows a wonderful, sunny spring with lots of new culinary highlights!🍓🌸

Congratulations to our alumna Iza Mrzygłód on being awarded the Marian Turski Prize for her dissertation, on which she worked as part of the IEG Fellowship Programme from September 2018 to March 2019 at the IEG in Mainz!🎓🎉
Iza Mrzygłód’s dissertation on the topic “Universitäten im Schatten der Krise. Politische Radikalisierung von StudentInnen an den Universitäten Warschau und Wien in den 1930er Jahren” has been recognised by the Warsaw journal Polityka as a “groundbreaking” academic work and has been awarded the Marian Turski Prize for Historical Literature in the category “Debut” for the year 2025.
The IEG warmly congratulates Izabela Mrzygłód on this reward and recognition of her research!🎓📚

For more information look here:
https://ieg.hypotheses.org/6206

Read the full article here:
https://www.polityka.pl/tygodnikpolityka/historia/2342321,1,znamy-laureatow-nagrod-historycznych-polityki-naprawde-bylo-co-czytac.read

Spring has arrived in Mainz, and offers you a lot of cultural and culinary highlights to explore the most beautiful city on the Rhine!

For example, you could take a stroll along the Rhine in the sunshine, try regional wines and culinary delights at this year’s Mainzer WeinUfer, or learn more about the market history of Mainz on a guided city tour.

The IEG wishes all fellows a sunny spring in Mainz! 🌷☀

⛪️ Historic Mainz: St. Stephans Church
In the Catholic church of St Stephan you can see something that's unique in Germany...

The Catholic parish church of St Stephan in Mainz was founded in 990 by Archbishop Willigis on the highest point in the city. The patron behind St Stephen’s Church was most likely the Empress Dowager Theophanu.

🟦 The windows of St Stephen’s Church, designed by Marc Chagall from 1978 onwards, are unique in Germany. He intended them to be seen as a contribution to Jewish-German reconciliation. The then parish priest of St Stephen’s, Monsignor Klaus Mayer, succeeded in securing him as the artist. Until his death in 1985, Chagall created a total of nine windows for the front section of the church. Set against a background of various luminous shades of blue, they depict biblical figures and events. One of the most famous scenes depicts the temptation of Adam and Eve in Paradise. Chagall designed the stained-glass paintings and also executed the black leadwork himself. These are the last church windows he ever created.

For more information and opening hours, visit the website via the link.
📍 Adress: Reichklarastraße 1 und 10, 55116 Mainz
🔗 https://buff.ly/ZeWSVEA

Historic Mainz: The Roman Theatre

Did you ever wonder why the railway station in the old part of Mainz is called "Römisches Theater"?

The Roman Theater in Mainz is one of the largest ancient stage buildings north of the Alps. Built presumably in the 1st century AD, it was located on the southern slope of the Kästrich, below the present-day citadel.

With a stage width of about 42 meters and an audience diameter of 116 meters, the theater could accommodate around 10,000 visitors – an impressive scale that clearly illustrates the importance of Mogontiacum, Roman Mainz. Theaters of this kind were central places of public life in the Roman Empire and reflected the urban culture.

After antiquity, the traces of the theater largely fell into oblivion. Initial hints appeared as early as the 19th century, but its existence was only confirmed at the beginning of the 20th century. The systematic uncovering of the site began later. Today, parts of the Roman Theater are visible and open to the public. Since 2006, the nearby train station has been named "Mainz – Roman Theater".

Through guided tours, information offerings, and civic engagement, the theater continues to be integrated into the urban landscape – as an impressive testimony to a time when Mainz was a significant garrison and administrative city of the Roman Empire.

📍Adress: Zitadellenweg, 55131 Mainz
🔗 More Information: https://buff.ly/4EYxljt

Bildrechte:
Luftbild des römischen Theaters: Generaldirektion Kulturelles Erbe Rheinland-Pfalz, Landesarchäologie Mainz
Römisches Theater: R. Gogräfe

🎓️ Alumni Spotlight: Yuki Ikari

Yuki Ikari is an associate professor at Kokugakuin University in Tokyo and was an IEG Fellow in 2005, where she worked on her dissertation.

As a Bonner doctoral student, she “dealt with the questions of historical changes and continuities of pilgrimages and pilgrims' confraternities in Cologne from the late medieval period till 18th century, focusing on the institutions and the practices.”

Reflecting on her time at the IEG, she “was simply happy to have a good opportunity and enough time to focus on writing without doing any side-job.”

Her highlight at the IEG was the library. As she tells us, “every library with rare books in Europe was (and is!) a treasury for a foreigner, especially from the Far East.”

We are glad that Yuki Ikari looks back on her time at the IEG with such fond memories.

We wish her all the best for her future.