Since 2015, the Claussen-Simon Foundation has regularly issued calls for themed doctoral scholarships in the field of the arts. These scholarships support outstanding practice-based research projects in the visual arts and music, conducted in collaboration with institutional or third-party partners.

Since 2021, the foundation has also been awarding non-thematic doctoral scholarships for research that integrates artistic and academic methodologies. The Claussen-Simon-Stiftung is particularly committed to fostering doctoral projects that explore and strengthen the interplay between artistic practice and scholarly research.

A central concern of the foundation is to enhance the visibility of artistic research in the public sphere. Accordingly, the funded projects are realized in cooperation with institutions or venues within the art, music, and/or cultural sectors, with the aim of presenting and communicating both the research process and its results to a broader audience.

Dominic Wills studied at the University of Manchester and the Royal Northern College of Music before coming to the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg to complete a master’s degree in composition. As part of his doctoral project, he is exploring how birdsong, alongside historical models, can contribute to developing a new musical language that feels fresh and spontaneous. In addition to the musical component, he is also passionate about nature and bird conservation. His work builds a bridge between music, biology, and communication.

Since 2018, Sophie Steiner has been exploring the connections between Europe and East Asia. As part of an academic-artistic doctorate at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, she has been researching East Asian string instruments since 2023 and investigating ways to combine East Asian and European traditions. With a background in both music and Japanese studies, she is committed to highlighting interdisciplinary content and making research topics accessible to other fields. She views her research as a catalyst for intercultural exchange and aims to create an artistically designed, cross-cultural dialogue based on data collected during field research in Japan, Korea, and China—thus ensuring not only artistic but also academic relevance.

Anne Pretzsch has been a doctoral scholarship holder since April 2024. The stART.up alumna will conduct research and work for three years at FUNDUS THEATER and at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HfbK) on the topic of "Imitation." She aims to examine and practically explore repetition as an artistic and mediating method, particularly through the lens of contemporary participatory performance. In exploring the transformative and transdisciplinary potential of imitation within performative formats, she identifies a research gap that she intends to address academically. The artistic-practical part of her doctorate will present imitation as a potential field of action at FUNDUS THEATER. She regards repeated action, i.e., repetition, as a core concept within this artistic-scientific doctoral project, spanning the fields of mediation, performance art, and academic research.

Natis (Hasan Aksaygın) is a conceptual painter with a strong interest in research-based working methods and has been a fellow in the field of academic-artistic research at the Claussen-Simon Foundation since March 2022. In his artistic practice, he creates, embodies, and instrumentalizes various performative artist personas or alter egos that challenge the social understanding and role of artists as subjects. These alter egos engage with themes such as personal and collective memory and forgetfulness, speculative (non-)linear temporality, gender, postcolonialism, and new materialism.

He is pursuing a doctorate at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg on art-historical and contemporary alter egos of visual artists, asking how and why these mental and physical transformations take place.