Temporary special provisions in relation to the doctoral degree

How will the measures put in place by the university to stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus affect the doctoral degree procedure at the Department of Earth Sciences?

Admission

Admission documents must be sent by postal mail (not email) or submitted via the letterbox next to Room A013 on the ground floor of House A. They must include the original signatures of the doctoral candidate and their supervisor(s).

Certificates of previous degrees obtained at the Department of Earth Sciences at Freie Universität Berlin can be submitted as scans or photocopies. Certificates of degrees obtained at any other university, whether in Germany or abroad, must be submitted as certified copies when you submit your application for admission.

The letter of admission will be sent by postal mail to the address provided on the application form.

Submitting the dissertation

Please note that it is currently not possible to visit the office in person at any time.Your dissertation must be submitted as a PDF by email to geopruef@zedat.fu-berlin.de. At the same time, the original must be sent by postal mail to

Freie Universität Berlin
Fachbereich Geowissenschaften
Promotionsbüro
Malteserstr. 74-100, Haus A
12249 Berlin.

The date when the email is received serves as the date of submission.

NOTE: When you send the email with the dissertation as a PDF attachment, you MUST also include your consent form confirming that...

• The dissertation and the grades received may be sent by email to the professors and other members of the Department of Earth Sciences who hold a doctoral title;
• The examiners’ reports may be sent by email to the members of the doctoral commission;
• Any position statements submitted by professors and other members of the Department of Earth Sciences who hold a doctoral title may be sent by email.

The dissertation will not be forwarded to your examiners and no further steps will be taken until your consent form has been received by the doctoral degree office!

Oral examination (Disputation)

All oral examinationsshall be held entirely via video conference by agreement with the members of the doctoral commission.

Every member of the commission must agree that the examination may take place in this format. They may confirm their consent by sending a short email to this effect.

We recommend in the strongest possible terms that the official systems provided by Zedat for Freie Universität Berlin should be used for the video conference, i.e., either Cisco WebEx or FU-Meeting.

When holding the oral examination by video conference, there is no need for a monitoring officer to be appointed. The chairperson of the doctoral commission shall be responsible for checking the identity of the doctoral candidate.

Currently, oral examinations are not open to members of the public, but the doctoral candidate may, with the agreement of the doctoral commission, invite as many persons as they like to listen/watch the examination via the video link.

Certificate

Once you have received a confirmation from the Dissertations Department at the University Library (Hochschulschriftenstelle) that your dissertation has been published, please get in touch with us via email to confirm your current address. Your certificate will then be sent to you via registered mail to be signed for.