Freie Universität Berlin is a leading research institution in Germany. It is one of the 13 German universities funded through the German government’s Excellence Strategy and is part of the only University Consortium of Excellence, the Berlin University Alliance. Through the Dahlem Research School, Freie Universität Berlin promotes the training and development of junior scholars and scientists.
Freie Universität Berlin has 16 academic departments and central institutes offering over 150 degree programs across a wide range of subjects, 24 of them taught entirely in English. The university maintains more than 100 international partnerships with universities worldwide and operates five liaison offices around the globe – in Cairo, New Delhi, Moscow, Beijing, and São Paulo.
Freie Universität Berlin
17%of FU Berlin students come from abroad
5Number of Nobel laureates who teach or have taught at Freie Universität Berlin
#1FU Berlin is ranked the most international university in Germany, according to the Times Higher Education World University Ranking 2020
Research
Freie Universität Berlin offers a broad range of disciplines in its teaching and research activities, from natural and life sciences to social sciences and humanities. FU Berlin’s research is distinguished by disciplinary and transdisciplinary excellence, the diversity of scholarly, research, and scientific networks, and the university’s high-profile and competitive international focus on overarching research fields, such as biomedical foundations, health and quality of life, materials research, complex systems, educational processes and results, (in)security research, human-environmental interactions, transregional relations and cultural dynamics.
Engagement with IU
Freie Universität Berlin’s ties with Indiana University have been very close since its foundation. IU’s 11th President Herman B. Wells, who worked in Berlin as an expert in rebuilding the university system after World War II, helped establish the university in post-war Germany in 1948.
The first informal exchanges of scholars between the two universities began as early as the 1950s. Dating back to 1962, the graduate exchange agreement with Freie Universität Berlin is IU’s longest-running exchange partnership, delivering FU students to Bloomington and IU students to Berlin for graduate study and research. IU’s 18th President Michael McRobbie renewed the partnership in Berlin on November 5, 2015, part of a trip to inaugurate IU's Europe Gateway Office, and again on November 1, 2020.
Facilitated by IU’s Europe Gateway, joint public events have given IU researchers an opportunity to present their research in Berlin. In addition, joint research workshops and research stays have led to new academic connections.
