The doctoral program (HCS) based at the Department of History and Cultural Studies, FU Berlin offers a structured, research oriented three-year curriculum in cultural studies with disciplinary and interdisciplinary elements in one of the research areas of the Department of History and Cultural Studies.

The languages of instruction are German and English.

The disciplines represented in the HCS program work historically and deal with material, visual, and written cultures. They explore ancient cultures as well as the present, examine literatures, textual traditions, languages, and cultures in the Near and Middle East, in various regions of East Asia, or with religions and cults.

The doctoral program brings these subjects together in the common interest of combining broad approaches of cultural studies with subject-specific knowledge and competence and of forming a practice of interdisciplinary work. HCS considers both the tradition of Kulturwissenschaften taught in Germany and the Anglo-American cultural studies approach to (socio-)political questions.

The program gives doctoral students the opportunity to develop and regularly discuss their own research on the basis of these discursive traditions. Participation in HCS requires both well-founded subject knowledge and a profound interest in theoretical and methodological issues on an interdisciplinary level.