The Herzog-Ernst-Scholarship Programme at the Research Library Gotha and the Gotha Research Centre of the University of Erfurt aims to promote academic research by providing access to the resources of the Research Library and of the associated historic collection of the Justus Perthes Gotha Publishing House as well as collections held in the Gotha Friedenstein Castle.

Senior scholars are invited to apply for a 2019 Hiob Ludolf-Fellowship to help cover travel and boarding expenses. Grants are awarded for one or two months. Fellows are provided with a fully equipped office and access to the infrastructure of the Research Centre.

Applications should align with the interests of the Gotha Research Centre and collections of the Research Library:

• The ducal court in Gotha as an example for European court culture
• History of publishing and book trade
• History of science and cultures of knowledge as global history, history of transfer, and entangled history, 16th to 20th century
• History of European literature, particularly 16th to early 19th century
• Early Modern and 19th-century study of Classical religions, history of Protestantism, and Islam
• Philosophy and history of the German and European Enlightenment
• Heterodoxy, dissidence, and subversion
• History of the humanities, e.g. numismatics, oriental studies, philology
• History of natural science, e.g. alchemy, astronomy, physics and botany
• History of spatially oriented disciplines, 16th to 20th century, e.g. ethnology, geology, geography and statistics
• History of cartography and imperial history
• Cartography and “critical geopolitics”
• History of objects and the historical study of material culture