German-Ethiopian Scholarship Initiative

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The Centre for Transcultural Studies / Perthes Collection is participating in the Gerda Henkel Foundation's funding initiative for early-career researchers at the University of Mekelle in Northern Ethiopia (ResScholarGE), which was approved in Autumn 2021. In view of the ongoing difficulties in Ethiopia, this will enable us to continue our long-standing cooperation as well as our joint research activities, especially regarding the holdings of the Perthes Collection.

Thanks to the generous support of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Ethiopian scholarship holders were able to continue working on their dissertations at the Centre for Transcultural Studies between 2021 and 2025. Samuel Kidane Haile (Mekelle University) and Zegeye Woldemariam Ambo (Mekelle University/Bonga Teacher's College) were able to successfully complete their doctorates at the University of Erfurt within this framework. In Autumn 2022, Fesseha Berhe Gebregergis (Mekelle University) also returned to Gotha to complete his ethnohistorical dissertation on the "Dobᶜa of Ethiopia". They are all former scholarship holders of the Gotha Herzog Ernst Scholarship Programme. With the support of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Bereket Hasen Beddecha (Mekelle University) is also associated with the Centre for Transcultural Studies as a visiting scholar. His dissertation is based at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Erfurt in the field of media and communication studies. Since March 2024, Yohannes Gebreselassie Shane has also been a scholarship holder at the Centre for Transcultural Studies, where he is completing his dissertation on “Kaleb, King of Aksum (6th Century AD): Construction of his Image in Ethiopian Written and Oral Traditions” at the University of Erfurt.

The initiative of the new scholarship programme goes back to Wolbert Smidt (Friedrich Schiller University Jena/ Mekelle University), a former Herzog Ernst Fellow . It aims to support early-career researchers and research assistants working within existing German-Ethiopian cooperation projects. At the same time, the programme also has an impact on research and teaching at the University of Erfurt through involvement in ongoing cooperation projects that began with an initial Memorandum of Understanding in 2014. Accordingly, the scholarship holders are actively involved in joint research activities of the Centre for Transcultural Studies / Perthes Collection.

_{Pictures: Summer party of the GothAdua e.V. association. © Otto Eismann; Ethiopian coffee ceremony at the Centre for Transcultural Studies; opening plenary of the 1st annual conference of the German-Ethiopian Scholarship Initiative in Gotha.}