About

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University Alliance Halle-Jena-Leipzig

The cooperation agreement between the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the University of Leipzig was signed in July 1995 and pursues the goal of expanding existing cooperation and developing new joint projects. Since then, the University Alliance has set itself the task of developing new perspectives in teaching and research and promoting greater interdisciplinary cooperation between the three universities.
Students are offered the opportunity to make their studies more individualized and interesting by supporting attendance at joint courses, the acquisition of cross-university credits, the use of libraries and other university facilities, and the crediting of course and examination credits. Another goal is to strengthen the „small subjects“ at the three universities through closer cooperation.

One of the most successful research projects of the Unibund is the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), which was launched in 2012 and is operated in cooperation with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ). In addition, four non-university research institutions are involved. In the decade since its founding, iDiv has grown into a world-leading research center, which in both 2016 and 2020 received a funding commitment from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for another four years.

In 2016, the competence cluster „nutriCARD“ started its work. It was initiated by the three central German universities in order to better understand the links between nutrition and cardiovascular diseases and to develop new foods and nutritional strategies that will improve the health of the population in the long term. In addition, the Central German Archive Network contributes successfully to the close collaboration between the three universities especially in the field of historical data.

On December 1, 2016, the University Alliance established the the „Forum for the Study of the Global Condition“ brings together scholars from numerous disciplines who study global entanglements of contemporary societies and their historical roots. In addition to the universities, the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography Leipzig, the Max Planck Institute for Ethnology Halle, the Leibniz- Institute for Jewish History and Culture Simon Dubnow Leipzig and the Leibniz-Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) Leipzig are participating. Since 2016, all these institutions together with the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO) have run the Leibniz Science Campus Eastern Europe – Global Area as a special format of research and knowledge transfer.

In addition to the aforementioned trilateral relationship, there are also relevant bilateral partnership activities such as Aleksander-Brückner-Center for Polish Studies, the Transregio 102 or the Collaborative Research Center 1423 or the initiative for a cluster of excellence New Global Dynamics Leipzig-Halle. Thus, the Central German University Association is strongly committed to excellent, interdisciplinary research for almost 30 years, which will be consolidated and further developed in the coming years.