At its meetings in November 2021 and April 2022 the Board of Trustees of the Gerda Henkel Foundation approved funding for research stays by Ethiopian scholars to German and West European institutions as part of the GHF’s funding initiative Patrimonies. Originally launched by Dr. Wolbert G.C. Smidt (Friedrich Schiller University Jena) the scholarship initiative seeks to help 30 young academics in cultural studies associated with the University of Mekelle in Ethiopia, as well as research assistants on German-Ethiopian research projects, to continue their studies and research with scholarships of up to two years' duration. In view of the crisis in Ethiopia, this initiative is primarily intended to support those young professionals who have already been associated with academic German-Ethiopian cooperation projects which have flourished particularly in Mekelle, who have collaborated in various ways with German and other European academics, and whose experience and talents will be of great importance to the future development and stabilization of their home country.

The recipients come from different regions of Ethiopia, reflecting the federal structure of Ethiopian universities. The scholars include doctoral students supervised by Wolbert Smidt in the History and Cultural Studies PhD program, other MA and PhD students with majors in Cultural Preservation, Archaeology and Anthropology, amongst others, and post-doctoral fellows in Sociology and Anthropology as well as History. Funding research assistants with in-depth local cultural knowledge for Wolbert Smidt's ethnohistorical research within the framework of the Yeha research project at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena will also help ensure the continuation of a long-running German-Ethiopian research project on the cultural heritage of the ancient cultural region of Tigray.

In the meantime, some fellows have already been able to start their work at the universities in Erfurt, Frankfurt, Munich, Wuerzburg, and Mainz, respectively.