The German Center for Art History Paris (DFK Paris) will award five two-year research fellowships related to the 2026–2028 bi-annual theme: “The Image of the City”, with a start date of 1 September 2026:

DESCRIPTION
It seems scarcely possible to reduce the multifaceted phenomenon of the city to a single, unified concept. Indeed, the city stands as an open-ended succession of forms and counter-forms, of materializing and dispersing occurrences, of dreams realized, abandoned, and destroyed. As a built form, as an urban space, and as a source for the imagination, it reveals itself not only through theoretical engagement but also through a vast reservoir of images, which – in their production and perception – at once accompany and shape the experience of urban life.
With its bi-annual theme “The Image of the City,” the DFK Paris seeks to make a key contribution to the historical and theoretical understanding of the city’s formation, representation, and imagination, in dialogue with current methodological discourses.
The call for applications is deliberately expansive in its historical scope. We welcome research projects on art and visual culture from the Middle Ages to the present. In terms of content, project proposals should be oriented towards one of these general thematic fields: utopias of the city; the city as a work of art; modes of orientation in the city (the history of city maps or modern navigation systems); the park as an urban form (manifestations of nature in the city); dynamics between centre and periphery; the figure of the urban pedestrian in art or literature; designs for imposing an absolute order on the city; the city as palimpsest; the urban subtext (advertising, posters, commemorative plaques, street names, numbers); a city’s “non-places”; ideologies of modernity (the Athens Charter, its utopias and their actualization); articulations of urban chaos in modern art (Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism); Dadaism as a distinctly urban art form; or representations of the crowd in painting, photography, or film.
Fellows’ individual research projects will be integrated into shared working formats such as seminars, lectures, workshops, excursions, and study days.

Program directors: Peter Geimer and Jean-Christophe Bailly

APPLICANT PROFILE
The call is addressed to doctoral candidates and postdoctoral researchers from Germany, France, and abroad who are conducting research on the outlined theme in art history or a related discipline.

FUNDING
The DFK Paris will award five research fellowships related to the above-described theme, each with a term of 24 months and a start date of 1 September 2026. The fellowship provides a monthly stipend of €1,750 (plus a flat-rate monthly research allowance of €250 and, where applicable, a child allowance). Further provisions include a workspace and access to the infrastructural resources of DFK Paris. For the duration of the funding period, fellows are expected to maintain their primary residence in Paris and participate regularly in the institute’s activities.

CONTACT
Further information about the German Center for Art History Paris can be found at http://www.dfk-paris.org/. For questions regarding this call, please contact Franziska Solte at fsoltedfk-paris.org.

APPLICATION
Applications must be submitted in German, French, or English via the online portal, no later than 12 April 2026. They should include the standard documents (a letter of motivation, a CV, a letter of recommendation from the doctoral advisor or—in the case of a postdoctoral project—from another suitable researcher, degree certificates, and, where applicable, a list of publications), as well as a description of the proposed research project (maximum three pages and an additional bibliography). Only applications submitted via the online portal will be considered in the selection process.
https://karriere.maxweberstiftung.de/de/jobposting/23bce580ba7cb327f59a12cf26d3250a4fa16efa0/apply
Interviews are expected to take place at the DFK Paris during the week of 27-30 April 2026.