General Information

Postdoctoral fellows are invited from across the globe to spend two years at the Institute to pursue their individual projects in varied disciplines, but also to shape, advance, and probe the Institute’s biennial project in a weekly research colloquium as well as by collaboratively organizing workshops, symposia, and conferences. Fellowships are usually advertised every other year for a particular project. Applications can only be considered when received during the application period.

The ICI Berlin formulates interlocking core projects that run over several years: Tension/Spannung (2007–14), ERRANS (2014–20), Reduction (2020–). The collaborative work within the fellowship programme informs, and is informed by, shorter-term foci, such as, Multistable Figures, Constituting Wholes, ERRANS, in Time, or ERRANS environ/s.

ICI Core Project 2020-
Reduction

The ICI Berlin’s core project ‘Reduction’ explores the critical potentials of notions and practices of ‘reduction’, within and across different fields and approaches, from the sciences, technology, and the arts to feminist, queer, and decolonial approaches, inquiring in particular into the transversality of different economies of reduction and production, and into possibilities of escaping them.

Currently No Fellowships Are Announced

The deadline of the last ICI Fellowship announcement has passed. The next announcement will be posted by mid November 2025 on this website, our newsletter and other mailinglists.

Past announcement
ICI Focus ‘Scale’ (2024-26)

Scales are used to quantify properties such as length and temperature, or also to measure popularity and affect. But as Alice discovers in Wonderland, a change of scale can also have dramatic qualitative consequences. It disrupts customary ways of perceiving, acting, and being — to the point of feeling as ‘queer’ to her as a caterpillar’s metamorphoses. Helped by the arguably inextricable intertwinement of different meanings and aspects of scale, Alice’s experiences continue to provide apt metaphors for the disorienting importance and effects of scale and scaling at a time of hyperglobalization and the so-called anthropocene.

Scale is indeed a highly ambiguous notion, even when one only considers the meanings deriving from the Latin or Italian scala, ladder. It simultaneously denotes the whole ladder, one of its steps, and the relation between two steps: The scale of a cartographic map is the ratio between a distance on the map and a distance on the ground, but any particular length also defines a scale, and the range of scales from the subatomic to the planetary scale is part of the spatial scale. Paradoxically recursive, scale combines and helps mediate quantity and quality, as well as subjective perception, objective material properties, and contingent construction.

See full project description

Academic
Calendar
2023/24

11 Sep 2023 – 12 Jul 2024
Term I

11 – 17 Sep:   Check-In Week
18 Sep: Term Begins
30 Oct – 5 Nov:   Break Week
8 Dec:   Term Ends

Term II

8 Jan: Term Begins
19 Feb – 25 Feb: Break Week
28 Mar: Term Ends

Term III

29 Apr: Term Begins
3 Jun – 9 Jun: Break Week
5 Jul: Term Ends
8 Jul – 12 Jul: Check Out Week

Academic
Calendar
2024/25

16 Sep 2024 – 18 Jul 2025
Term I

16 – 22 Sep:   Check-In Week
23 Sep: Term Begins
28 Oct – 3 Nov:   Break Week
13 Dec:   Term Ends

Term II

13 Jan: Term Begins
24 Feb – 2 Mar: Break Week
4 Apr: Term Ends

Term III

5 May: Term Begins
9 Jun – 15 Jun: Break Week
11 Jul: Term Ends
14 Jul – 18 Jul: Check Out Week

Academic
Calendar
2025/26

15 Sep 2025 – 17 Jul 2026
Term I

15 – 21 Sep:   Check-In Week
22 Sep: Term Begins
27 Oct – 2 Nov:   Break Week
12 Dec:   Term Ends

Term II

12 Jan: Term Begins
23 Feb – 1 Mar: Break Week
2 Apr: Term Ends

Term III

4 May: Term Begins
8 Jun – 14 Jun: Break Week
10 Jul: Term Ends
13 Jul – 17 Jul: Check Out Week