Career Opportunities

• Press, Radio, and Television
• Museums and Exhibition Area
• Cultural Management and Cultural Mediation
• Libraries and Archives
• Marketing and Advertising
• Leisure and Tourism Industry
• Universities and Research Institutes (Research & Teaching)
• Opportunity to join a master’s degree program or doctorate at the JGU Mainz

FTMK – a subject combination that is unique nationwide

The FTMK Institute combines the subjects Film Studies/Media Dramaturgy, Theater Studies,
Media Culture Studies and Cultural Studies/European Ethnology as well as the research unit Everyday Media and Digital Cultures in a joint institute.

The interdisciplinary merger of the disciplines recognizes that a comprehensive academic training in modern arts, cultural and media studies cannot succeed without research and teaching on the edges of one’s own subject. Currently, approximately 1,500 students are enrolled in three undergraduate bachelor’s programs and five postgraduate master’s degree programs. These degree programs supplement the subject-specific training with interdisciplinary content from the neighbouring disciplines. The integrated study area Culture–Theater–Film functions as a platform for transdisciplinary learning and offers important impulses for research collaborations between the various departments of the institute.

The beginnings of the discipline Cultural Studies/European Ethnology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz are closely linked to the history of the German Institute. Initially, it was Germanists who co-represented the subject Volkskunde at the university. These included the professors Kurt Wagner (1890–1973), Karl Bischoff (1905–1983) and since 1970 Wolfgang Kleiber (1929–2020), all three of whom had an additional Venia for Volkskunde. However, the subject was strengthened early on by the appointment of Lutz Röhrich (1922–2006), who came to the German Institute in Mainz as an assistant in 1950 and habilitated here four years later in German Studies and Volkskunde. Röhrich created the basis for the establishment of a separate professorship, because after his call elsewhere in 1967, Günter Wiegelmann (1928–2008) was the first Volkskundler without a German studies profile to be brought to the university as his successor. However, Wiegelmann only stayed in Mainz for a short time and followed an offer of appointment to the University of Münster in 1971. His successor in 1972 was Herbert Schwedt (1934–2010), who for 27 years decisively shaped the fortunes of the subject at the University of Mainz.

With the re-advertisement of his position in 1999, the renaming of the subject to “Cultural Anthropology/Volkskunde” went hand in hand. The content-related reorientation was taken over by Michael Simon (born 1956), who was appointed to the University of Mainz in 2000 and represented the subject until the winter semester 2022/23. The re-advertisement went – analogous to the year 1999 – with a renaming of the subject in Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology hand in hand. For one semester, Mirko Uhlig (born 1981) took over the management of the subject as a substitute. Since April 1, 2023, the subject has been headed by Čarna Brković. The subject area in Mainz is now referred to in English as “Cultural Studies/European Ethnology” to make a distinction between the various traditions of the field in German- and English-speaking academia.

Until 2011, it belonged organizationally as a separate department to the German Institute. Afterwards, it joined with the subjects Film and Theater Studies to form the newly founded Institute for Film, Theater and Empirical Cultural Studies, which is located in the Faculty 05 “Philosophy and Philology”. The institutional reorganization was not least motivated by the introduction of the reform degree programs at the University of Mainz, which were jointly organized by the subjects of the new institute. The start of the bachelor’s program Cultural Anthropology/Volkskunde took place in the winter semester 2009/10, enrollments for the master’s degree program were first accepted in the summer semester 2012. The old Magister degree program, which was the standard degree in the subject for many decades, expired at the end of the summer semester 2017.

sucThe increasing demand and the growing number of students have been taken into account in recent years by the establishment of further professor/positions: In 2004, a junior professorship for the subject could be advertised for the first time, to which Timo Heimerdinger (born 1973) was appointed. He was followed in 2010 by Asta Vonderau, who remained at the University of Mainz until 2015. In 2012, the subject received another junior professorship, which was filled by Sarah Scholl-Schneider (born 1978). Mirko Uhlig succeeded Asta Vonderau in 2016.

Of the academic degrees, the habilitations in the subject deserve special mention: After Lutz Röhrich, Max Matter (1983), Sabine Doering-Manteuffel (1993) and most recently Christina Niem (2012) received a Venia legendi for (Cultural Anthropology/) Volkskunde.