The University of Bonn
The University of Bonn is among Germany's and the world's most prestigious research institutions. It has been one of eleven German Universities of Excellence since 2019. The University of Bonn was the most successful German university in the latest Excellence Contest, which was conducted by the federal government and states as part of their German Excellence Strategy in 2019. The University of Bonn is therefore the only German university which receives federal funding for six Clusters of Excellence.
Main Facts
Find more facts & figures about the University of Bonn.
Hosting BIGS-DR: The Center for Development research (ZEF)
ZEF is one of the University's 13 Central Research Institutes, who focus on interdisciplinary topics that cut across the disciplinary boundaries of the University's seven faculties. ZEF's main affiliations are with the Faculties of Agriculture, Mathematics and Natural Sciences, and Arts. The University of Bonn has 12 International Graduate Schools, of which the Bonn International Graduate School for Development Research (BIGS-DR) at ZEF is one. Most of the BIGS-DR graduates obtain their doctoral degree from one of these faculties.
The City of Bonn
Bonn has a population of nearly 336,000 inhabitants from 176 countries. It is located along the banks of the Rhine River, at the entrance to the Middle Rhine Valley. Public transport facilities are well-developed, which makes traveling around Bonn and surrounding cities such as Cologne easy.
Bonn hosts a large number of international research institutions as well as 25 UN agencies (e.g. UNU-EHS, UNCCD, UNFCCC). In addition, national actors in the field of development cooperation and policy, such as the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) and many NGOs. This makes Bonn an attractive and popular location for international conferences.
