All applicants must submit an application for admission. Please register an account with a.r.t.e.s. access to upload the following documents as pdf-files:

• Curriculum vitae
• Research proposal (3–5 pages)
• Certificate proving the recognition of already acquired credits and passed exams by the managing director (“Geschäftsführende/r Direktor/in”) of the respective department at the University of Cologne (--> download area)
• Supervision agreement (--> download area). The supervisor must be entitled to confer doctoral degrees at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
• Certified copies of the final diploma and transcript of records (diploma supplement is not sufficient) as well as any further certificates, where appropriate.In the case of Chinese, Indian or Vietnamese university degrees, an APS certificate (document verification). A copy of your passport must also be submitted by post before the deadline.
  
  Please note the following regulation starting in winter semester 2025/2026: If your master's degree (or equivalent degree) was obtained abroad, a preliminary review documentation (VPD, "Vorprüfungsdokumentation") via https://my.uni-assist.de/ is also required. Please select “Universität zu Köln - VPD” and “Promotion” as the university in uni-assist. The processing time is 4-6 weeks. The verification of your degree certificates will be conducted via uni-assist, and your final grade will be converted in line with the German grading regulations. Please upload the verification issued by uni-assist, together with your degree certificates, transcripts, and, if applicable, your APS certificate, as a single document in a.r.t.e.s. access under “Degree Certificate.” In this case, the submission of a certified copy of your degree certificate to the Doctoral Office is no longer required.
   
• Higher education entrance qualification (If necessary, please include certified translations of the documents into either German, English or French).
• A copy of your final thesis (untranslated) and an outline in either German or English (max. two pages)

Please note that the current Doctoral Regulations for Admission to Doctoral Studies require that the candidate has attained an average grade of at least 2.4 (according to the German grading system) in their preceding degree. If the final grade of the preceeding degree does not meet the threshold of 2.4, the candidate must submit a separate application letter and a letter of recommendation from their primary supervisor in addition to the above-mentioned documents by post before the deadline. The doctoral board will decide on any requests for exception.

You are not required to provide proof of your proficiency in German at the time of your application for admission. However, when you hand in your dissertation, you will also have to submit proof of German language proficiency: If you wrote your dissertation in German, you will have to provide proof of German at the level C1. If you wrote your dissertation in a language other than German, German proficiency at the level B2 is sufficient. You may enclose a request for remission of the German language proficiency requirement with your application for admission. In this case, please send a letter stating your reasoning (addressed to the doctoral board) together with a letter of endorsement from your primary supervisor by post before the deadline. Please note that after admission a remission of the German language proficiency requirement will not be granted.

Only complete applications will be taken into consideration. The letter of admission to doctoral studies will be sent shortly after the meeting of the doctoral board.

After admission to doctoral studies by the doctoral board, enrolment takes place exclusively digitally via the online portal KLIPS 2.0. Additional information on the procedure can be found via the International Office or the Student Application and Registration Office. Please note that doctoral students of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities are not required to register via the doctoral data management system Docfile.