Apply for the RAVE Scholarship 2027

Every artifact in a museum tells a story. Every archive holds a memory. Every heritage site carries the weight of a civilization. And behind every effort to preserve, manage, and share these treasures with the world, there is a professional — a curator, a restorer, a cultural mediator, a heritage manager — whose knowledge, dedication, and skill makes it possible for the past to speak to the present.

If that professional is you, Germany has an extraordinary invitation for you.

The RAVE Scholarship 2027 — supported by the Alexander Rave Foundation and administered by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa), one of Germany's most respected cultural exchange organizations — is a fully funded short-term scholarship that brings outstanding cultural heritage professionals from developing and emerging countries to Germany for a period of three to six months. During this time, scholars work within a German host institution — a museum, archive, cultural foundation, or heritage organization — deepening their expertise, building international networks, and developing innovative project work that they carry back to their home countries.

This is a scholarship for practitioners — for people already working in the cultural sector who want to take their expertise to the next level by engaging with Germany's world-class cultural heritage institutions and professionals.

The deadline to apply is 30 June 2026. That is just weeks away. If you are a cultural heritage professional from a DAC-listed country, now is the time to prepare your application.

About the Alexander Rave Foundation and ifa

The Alexander Rave Foundation is the philanthropic force behind this scholarship — a German foundation committed to supporting the international exchange of knowledge and expertise in the field of cultural heritage. By funding scholarships that bring cultural professionals from the Global South to Germany, the Foundation invests in a vision of cultural heritage management that is globally collaborative, mutually respectful, and genuinely transformative.

The scholarship is administered by ifa — the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen — one of Germany's oldest and most prestigious cultural relations organizations. Founded in 1917, ifa has over a century of experience fostering international cultural exchange, supporting artists and cultural professionals worldwide, and building the bridges of cultural understanding that connect Germany to the rest of the world. ifa operates under the German Federal Foreign Office and maintains deep relationships with cultural institutions, government bodies, and civil society organizations across the globe.

When ifa administers a scholarship, it brings more than logistical support — it brings a vast professional network, deep institutional knowledge of Germany's cultural landscape, and a commitment to ensuring that scholarship holders have access to the people, organizations, and experiences that will make their time in Germany genuinely transformative.

Together, the Alexander Rave Foundation and ifa have created in the RAVE Scholarship a program that is both rigorously professional and deeply humanistic — one that treats cultural heritage not just as an academic subject but as a living, breathing dimension of human identity and social life that deserves the very best minds working to protect and promote it.

Why Cultural Heritage Management? Why Now?

Cultural heritage — the physical and intangible expressions of human civilization, from ancient monuments and manuscript archives to oral traditions and museum collections — is under unprecedented pressure in the twenty-first century. Armed conflicts destroy irreplaceable sites and scatter collections. Climate change threatens coastal archaeological sites and degrades fragile materials. Rapid urbanization encroaches on historic landscapes. Inadequate resources leave collections unmaintained and inaccessible. And the legacies of colonialism continue to shape — and distort — how heritage is collected, controlled, and interpreted around the world.

At the same time, there has never been greater awareness of the importance of cultural heritage to community identity, social cohesion, and sustainable development. UNESCO's frameworks, the Sustainable Development Goals, and a growing global civil society movement all recognize that protecting and promoting cultural heritage is not a luxury — it is a foundation for the kind of inclusive, resilient societies that the world urgently needs to build.

But awareness alone is not enough. What the field of cultural heritage management desperately needs is skilled, innovative, internationally networked professionals — people who understand both the technical dimensions of preservation and conservation and the broader social, ethical, and political dimensions of how heritage is managed, interpreted, and made accessible.

The RAVE Scholarship is a direct investment in developing exactly those professionals. By bringing cultural heritage practitioners from developing countries to Germany — where some of the world's most sophisticated museum practices, archival systems, and heritage management frameworks have been developed — the scholarship transfers knowledge, builds capacity, and strengthens the global community of practice that cultural heritage management depends on.

Germany as a Host Country: A Cultural Heritage Powerhouse

Germany is one of the world's great custodians of cultural heritage — a country with an extraordinary wealth of museums, archives, libraries, and heritage sites, and a long tradition of rigorous, innovative, and internationally engaged cultural management.

The country is home to over 6,500 museums — more per capita than almost any other nation on Earth — ranging from world-famous institutions like the Berlin State Museums, the Deutsches Museum in Munich, and the Cologne Cathedral to hundreds of regional, specialist, and community museums that collectively represent one of the most diverse and richly documented cultural landscapes in the world. Germany's archives are similarly extensive — the Federal Archives in Koblenz, the German Literature Archive in Marbach, and dozens of state and specialized archives preserve collections of immense historical and cultural significance.

But Germany's significance for the RAVE Scholarship goes beyond the scale and quality of its collections. Germany has been at the forefront of some of the most important and difficult conversations in the global cultural heritage field — including the debate about the restitution of colonial-era objects, the ethics of provenance research, the use of digital technologies in museum practice, and the development of inclusive and non-discriminatory approaches to heritage interpretation. For cultural professionals from developing countries, engaging with German colleagues on these questions is not just professionally valuable — it is essential context for understanding the global forces shaping the field.

German cultural institutions are also increasingly committed to international partnerships and to learning from non-European heritage traditions and practices. RAVE scholars do not arrive in Germany simply to absorb German expertise — they arrive as professionals with their own knowledge, their own perspectives, and their own expertise, which German host institutions genuinely value and want to learn from.

The Four Focus Areas: Themes That Define the Scholarship

The RAVE Scholarship 2027 is organized around four interconnected thematic focus areas that reflect the most important challenges and opportunities in contemporary cultural heritage management. These are not narrowly technical topics — they are broad intellectual and ethical frameworks that shape how cultural professionals approach their work.

Cultural Participation addresses one of the most fundamental questions in heritage management today: who is cultural heritage for? Historically, many museums and archives were designed by and for elite audiences — their collections, their interpretive frameworks, and their physical spaces reflected the tastes and values of particular social classes, nationalities, and ethnic groups. The challenge of cultural participation is to transform cultural institutions into genuinely inclusive spaces where all members of society — regardless of background, education, age, disability, or economic status — can find meaning, representation, and belonging. This is work that requires creativity, empathy, and a willingness to challenge institutional habits and assumptions.

Sustainability in the cultural heritage context means thinking about the long-term environmental, economic, and social conditions that make it possible for heritage institutions to exist and fulfill their missions. How can museums and archives reduce their environmental footprint? How can heritage sites be managed in ways that support rather than undermine the communities that surround them? How can cultural institutions build the financial resilience to withstand economic shocks? These are questions that every cultural professional needs to engage with if heritage institutions are to survive and thrive in the twenty-first century.

Non-Discriminatory Spaces pushes cultural institutions to actively examine and address the ways in which their policies, practices, and physical environments may exclude or marginalize particular groups. This includes addressing accessibility for people with disabilities, creating spaces that are welcoming for people of all gender identities and sexual orientations, ensuring that multilingual and multicultural communities can engage with heritage in their own languages and on their own terms, and confronting the historical biases embedded in collections and interpretive materials.

Decolonial Working Methods is perhaps the most intellectually ambitious and practically challenging of the four focus areas — and one that is particularly significant for scholars from the Global South. Decolonial practice in cultural heritage management means critically examining the colonial origins of many museum collections, rethinking the Eurocentric frameworks that have historically shaped heritage interpretation, engaging in processes of restitution and repatriation, and developing partnership models with communities of origin that are genuinely equitable rather than extractive. For RAVE scholars from countries whose cultural heritage was affected by colonialism, this focus area is not merely academic — it is deeply personal and professionally urgent.

The Host Institution: Your Institutional Home in Germany

One of the most distinctive and important features of the RAVE Scholarship is the requirement that scholars identify and secure their own host institution in Germany before applying. This is not simply a logistical formality — it is a substantive part of the scholarship's design, and understanding why helps explain what makes this program genuinely transformative.

By requiring scholars to find their own host institution, the RAVE Scholarship ensures that the fellowship placement is a genuine professional match — not an arbitrary assignment but a relationship built on shared interests and mutual commitment. A RAVE scholar who has already established a connection with a German museum, archive, or cultural organization arrives not as a stranger but as a recognized professional partner whose expertise the host institution has already chosen to engage with.

The process of finding a host institution is itself an act of professional networking and relationship-building. It requires scholars to research the German cultural landscape, identify institutions whose work is relevant to their own expertise and interests, make meaningful contact with German colleagues, and articulate a clear and compelling proposal for what they want to accomplish during their stay.

Host institutions must be non-commercial — meaning they should be public museums, national or state archives, cultural foundations, heritage organizations, or similar non-profit cultural entities. Scholars and host institutions are expected to develop a joint project proposal — a concrete plan for the research, learning, or professional development work that the scholar will undertake during their residency. This collaborative project proposal is a central element of the scholarship application and is evaluated by the selection committee as evidence of the quality and feasibility of the planned fellowship work.

For scholars who have not yet established connections with German cultural institutions, the ifa network and guidance materials can provide support in identifying potential hosts. Beginning this process early — well before the application deadline — is essential.

Germany's Cultural Cities: Where You Might Find Your Host

The RAVE Scholarship does not restrict scholars to a single city or region — host institutions can be located anywhere in Germany. This means that a RAVE scholar might find themselves spending their fellowship months in Berlin, Germany's extraordinary cultural capital, with its unparalleled concentration of world-class museums, galleries, and archives. Or in Munich, home to the Deutsches Museum and a rich array of Bavarian cultural institutions. Or in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Leipzig, Dresden, or any of dozens of other German cities with their own distinctive cultural landscapes and heritage institutions.

Each of these cities offers its own character, its own cultural life, and its own professional community — and spending three to six months in any of them is an experience that enriches a cultural professional's life in ways that extend far beyond the formal scope of the fellowship.

Germany's cultural cities are also excellent places to live as an international scholar. The country's public transportation network is excellent, its cities are safe and well-organized, and its cultural life — concerts, exhibitions, theatre, film, and festivals of every description — is inexhaustibly rich. The RAVE Scholarship's monthly transportation pass ensures that scholars can move freely and engage with the city and region around their host institution throughout their fellowship.

How to Apply

1. Identify a suitable non-commercial host institution in Germany relevant to your professional expertise and interests — begin this process as early as possible
2. Contact the host institution, establish a professional relationship, and jointly develop a project proposal for your fellowship period
3. Obtain a formal letter of acceptance or endorsement from your host institution
4. Visit the official ifa RAVE Scholarship page at ifa.de/en/funding/rave-scholarship/
5. Complete the online application form and upload all required documents
6. Submit your complete application before 30 June 2026