Call for Interest: Teaching Your Research – Talking about Your Dissertation

We are looking for doctoral candidates and recent PhDs who would like to collaborate with ZOERR to create Open Educational Resources (OER) – based on the research conducted in their dissertations. The goal is to make your work accessible to a broader audience, from early-stage students to the interested public.

Compensation

€2,800 (payment in November 2025)

Application deadline

7 September 2025

Submission deadline

7 November 2025

More Details

By participating in Teaching Your Research, you will work with ZOERR to create open educational materials that make your research accessible to a broader audience, such as early-stage students or the general public. The materials will be published in the ZOERR repository and receive a persistent handle, ensuring they are permanently available and citable.
Your contribution will be compensated with €2800 (paid in November 2025). The materials should be completed by 7 November 2025.
The program focuses primarily on the humanities, social sciences, and behavioral sciences, as well as research conducted at universities in Baden-Württemberg. However, we also welcome applications that fall outside this focus.
The application deadline is 7 September 2025.

Purpose

Our goal is to make the research results produced as part of doctoral projects accessible to a wider audience. Your OER should target at least one of the following groups:

Students

in your or a related field at the early stage of their studies, e.g. in the first years of a bachelor’s program

Researchers

from other disciplines and/or graduates from other programs seeking a well-founded introduction to your topic

Interested members of the public

who want to explore the topic in a scientifically informed way.

Not every dissertation topic is suitable for this. This is one reason for the focus on the humanities, social sciences, and behavioral sciences. However, we are open to suitable ideas from other disciplines if they fit this format and if we have the capacity to support production.

Your Topic

You can present a topic of your choice, which should connect to the research you conducted for your dissertation. This could be a thesis you want to argue for, or a research result you want to explain and contextualize. How the topic relates to your dissertation as a whole can be mentioned, but it is not the focus of the OER. Instead, the OER should concentrate on a topic that is of interest to one of the target audiences. In presenting the topic and the related research (arguing for a claim, etc.), the OER should:

• Clearly demonstrate the relevance of the topic
• Show what is consensus and what remains contested in the field
• Offer a balanced and honest presentation – while still clearly expressing your own position

What Will You Create?

As part of Teaching Your Research, two materials will be produced under a CC license:

1. Together with you, we will create a presentation video with an interview format, in which you present a scientific thesis or research result in 10–15 minutes. (The video can be longer than 15 minutes if you like, but additional effort cannot be compensated.)
   We will also produce a transcript of the interview (AI-generated with manual editing by us), which you can review and adjust before publication. Additionally, an audio version of the presentation/interview will be created as a podcast.
2. With our support, you will create a follow-up material as an entry point for those who want to explore the topic in more depth after the presentation video. The format of the follow-up material can be any format mutually agreed upon (e.g. video, audio, or written text). Two suggestions what this could look like:
   1. A 5–10 minutes video presentation explaining how to dive deeper into the topic. The video must itself be under an OER license, but may reference other materials that are not — e.g., journal articles and monographs. This should not be a simple reading list; the texts should be commented on and contextualized. Together with you, we will produce a transcript with a reading/material list to facilitate access.
   2. A 5–10 minutes video presentation providing additional details on the topic. This is especially useful if it is difficult to explore the topic more deeply through existing publications.

Both the presentation video with an interview format and the follow-up material can be created in either German or English.

How to Apply

Please submit a brief statement of interest by 7 September via e-mail with the subject line “Teaching Your Research: Application.” Your email should include

1. Your name and contact information,
2. The university where you are/were completing your doctorate, and any other universities where you have conducted research/been employed at,
3. Your field and dissertation title/topic,
4. The topic you would like to present. If you are unsure or have multiple ideas, you may list several.

We will respond promptly, by 15 September at the latest.

Further Information and Questions

More information can be found in the FAQ for Teaching Your Research.
If you have questions about Teaching Your Research, you can also e-mail us informally with the subject line "Teaching Your Research: Questions". Alternatively, you can attend our online information sessions on Zoom (no prior registration necessary):

• Monday, 1 September, 16:00
• Friday, 5 September, 14:00

Both sessions take place via this link.