Fellowship Information

Fellows' expertise may be in any of the philologies relevant to the magical text traditions of West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean in antiquity; historians of religion, ethnologists, or archaeologists who specialize in the study of magic and wish to engage with ancient textual traditions are equally welcome. Fellows will have made contributions in their work to the study of magic, ritual, or divination in at least one of the ancient cultures and languages that fall within the scope of the MagEIA Centre, or will be experts in the comparative research on magic.

MagEIA does not prescribe research designs and will consider different methodological approaches (e.g. textual, thematic, linguistic, disciplinary or comparative). To maximize the scope for collaboration and cross-fertilization, Fellows are expected to be open to comparative research designs and to address questions relevant to their cohort's annual focus topic.

Usually four Fellows work at the MagEIA Centre at any given time. MagEIA distinguishes between Senior Fellows (typically colleagues with permanent positions in academia) and Junior Fellows (typically colleagues at post-doctoral stage).

Fellows usually work at the MagEIA Centre for 6–12 months.

Stays for a full year are particularly suitable for Junior Fellows. Shorter stays are possible if there are important reasons that prevent a Fellow from staying longer. Repeated fellowships are possible in case of lasting, intensive collaborations between Fellows and the Würzburg core teams.

Typically, a Fellowship includes at least one semester period (winter term: October–February; summer term: April–July).

The financial remuneration of a MagEIA Fellowship is within the range of the usual rates in Germany for professorial positions (Senior Fellows) and postdoctoral positions (Junior Fellows); in the case of fellows employed elsewhere, the salary at the home institution also serves as a guideline. Fellows should be completely released from their home institutions for the duration of their stay in Würzburg. Contractual specificities will require individual arrangements and should be clarified between the prospective Fellow, the PIs, and the institutions involved at an early stage in the process of initiating a Fellowship.

Fellows work on their own research project during their stay at MagEIA. They determine the scope, questions, methods, and objectives of their project in advance of their stay. As a rule, the PI closest to the subject acts as a Fellow's personal host; it is highly desirable that a Fellow's research includes a cooperative element with one of the Würzburg members of MagEIA. Fellows participate in MagEIA events (two research seminars a week during the semester; MagEIA lectures) and also contribute to these events themselves by presenting their own research. All MagEIA Fellows work in close cooperation with the MagEIA core teams in Würzburg on the "MagEIA Handbook of Magic in the Ancient World", which is to be published at the end of funding phase 2 (probably in 2031).

Offices, including the MagEIA reference library, are located in a suite of rooms in the Neubaustraße 11 building. Here, fellows, core teams and the administration work together in one place. MagEIA Fellows are provided with workplaces in single and double offices.

MagEIA’s cooperation with the University’s Siebold-Collegium Institute for Advanced Studies (SCIAS) provides the ideal infrastructure for accommodating the Fellows in Würzburg and supporting their integration into the scholarly community of the University of Würzburg. SCIAS offers mid- and long-term accommodation for Fellows, including families, in the 18th-century Welz-Haus, located in the historic city centre within walking distance of the MagEIA offices and the Institut für Altertumswissenschaften in the Würzburg Residenz. In addition to accommodation for families of different sizes, SCIAS caters two barrier-free apartments suitable for persons with reduced mobility. The Welz-Haus, however, serves not only as a guesthouse, but is also an academic institution with its own scholarly and cultural life, of which MagEIA will become a part. SCIAS has its own lecture theatre, which MagEIA will be able to use for talks and seminars.

Both the MagEIA offices and SCIAS are situated in the immediate vicinity of the Würzburg Residenz, where most of the institutes and disciplines participating in MagEIA are located with their research libraries. The Würzburg Residenz is also home to the Antiquities Collection of the Martin von Wagner Museum of the University.

Interested colleagues should first informally contact the PI closest to their own expertise and/or the spokesperson of the MagEIA Centre (see Principal Investigators). Essential criteria for admission to MagEIA are individual scholarly excellence and the suitability of the Fellow's project for the overall MagEIA research agenda.