As of now, year-round submission is possible.
So as soon as you have finished your work or project, you can send it with the other documents to the mentioned e-mail address (see below).
Please be sure to include an email address and a phone number where we can still reach you next fall. We will collect all work until October 14th, 2024 and only then evaluate it. If there are still questions then, we must be able to reach you.
The competition is aimed at students, graduates and doctoral candidates from various disciplines. The university prize is awarded for outstanding academic work. We are looking for work that contains young, innovative and current ideas. The competition entries should deal creatively with the current and future challenges in rural towns, communities and regions. Your work should present application-oriented proposals for a sustainable development of Lower Saxony's rural areas, deal with a future-oriented topic and be able to make a difference in rural areas of Lower Saxony. If your work does not contain a Lower Saxony example, however, the transferability to Lower Saxony should be clearly demonstrated.
All students and graduates who have worked on at least one of the following topics as part of a student research project, a practical example, a student research project (Bachelor's or Master's thesis) or a doctoral thesis are invited to participate.
- Education, knowledge society
- Services of general interest, mobility, living conditions
- Family, society, sport, demography
- Economy, work
- Environment, land use, energy transition
- Regional development
The list of topics is not to be regarded as conclusive. The submission of group work is also possible.
What do you have to consider?
You can submit your complete work. Your work should not have been completed more than two years ago. Your work must have been prepared exclusively by you or your group. Your work should be written in German or English. In addition, you must submit a curriculum vitae in tabular form with your complete contact details as well as your consent to the use of personal data (see download area). For papers written in English, a German abstract must be included.
Furthermore, an expert opinion with an evaluation of your work by your supervisor is required (please only use the fillable form in the download area for this purpose). The expert opinion must be written in German, even if the thesis is written in English. You can send us the expert opinion or your supervisor can send it to us directly by e-mail.
The ALR will create a DIN A0 poster in German or English for an exhibition for the award-winning works. Therefore, a summary of the main contents (as a Word file) as well as photos/graphics must be sent with the submission. Please follow the instructions in the information sheet (download area)!
The entries consisting of
- of your work as a pdf file (with German summary, if the text was written in English),
- Curriculum vitae in tabular form with complete contact details as a pdf (email address and telephone number valid for the long term)
- Completed expert opinion form of the supervisor (can also be sent separately directly by the supervisor via email) in German language
- Consent to the use of personal data (see download area)
- Material for the poster (see "Information sheet on poster content" in the download area)
must be sent by 14 October 2024 (date of dispatch of the e-mail):
by e-mail to: info [at] alr-niedersachsen.de (info[at]alr-niedersachsen[dot]de)
Nds. Akademie Ländlicher Raum e.V.
c/o Nds. Association of Towns and Municipalities
Arnswaldtstraße 28
30159 Hanover
Have you completely checked off the checklist in the download area?
Then send off your application!