S02, Episode 9: The Women´s Representative and Gender Equaliy Office: „Abuse of power is definitely at the top of the list. This means that academic staff and postdocs are discriminated against, stalked and bullied by their superiors as a result of abuse of power.“

Audio

Download or listen to the audio version of the podcast here.

transcripT

The interview is held in German, the following transcript is translated.

INTRO

Marlies Klamt: Welcome to the podcast of the Dahlem Research School, where today you can expect an interview with Christine Eßmann-Stern, the Women’s Representative and Gender Equality Officer at one of the departments of Freie Universität Berlin.

I’m Dr. Marlies Klamt and I’ll be your host for today’s episode.

To give you an idea of what to expect from this episode, I would like to give you a brief summary in advance. My interview partner Christine Eßmann-Stern shares exciting and sometimes very humbling experiences from her everyday life as a decentralized women’s representative and gender equality officer with us. We talked in particular detail about the abuse of power by superiors, as this is one of the most common reasons why doctoral students turn to her.

We also talk about what she thinks can be done to ensure that there is less abuse of power on the part of professors and leaders of working groups.

Ms. Eßmann-Stern explains what usually happens after someone has contacted her, why she doesn’t always speak or can’t speak to the heads of the working groups and what consequences you can and can’t expect if you contact her.

It turned out to be a very informative interview, which can be encouraging, but also shows where the academic system can still be upgraded to ensure more justice and fairness in science.

And I don’t want to say any more in advance, but we’ll start directly with the interview.

INTERVIEW

Marlies Klamt: Welcome to the podcast, Ms. Essmann-Stern. Could you please just briefly introduce yourself so that our listeners know who they are dealing with today?

Christine Essmann-Stern: Yes, with pleasure. My name is Christine Essmann-Stern. I am the decentralized Women’s representive and Gender Equality Officer at Freie Universität in the Department of Biology, Chemistry and Pharmacy.

Marlies Klamt: As you have just said, you are the department’s Women’s Representative and Gender Equality Officer. What is the most common issue that people approach you with in this role?

Christine Eßmann-Stern: Abuse of power is definitely at the top of the list. This means that academic staff and postdocs are discriminated against, stalked and bullied by their superiors as a result of abuse of power.

Marlies Klamt: You’ve already mentioned a few examples, such as stalking or discrimination. But what exactly is abuse of power?

Christine Eßmann-Stern: Research assistants and postdocs are dependent on the head of the working group. This means that doctoral researchers are dependent on evaluations and are sometimes put under pressure. In other words, they are told that if you don’t do this and that, you won’t get these and those benefits. It goes as far as shouting at them, putting them under pressure by saying that if you don’t do this or that, then I will no longer support your project and you can do it all on your own.
This also concerns vacation, which everyone is entitled to, including doctoral candidates and postdocs. They’ll be told, if you want to apply for a leave, it’s not possible, our project must continue. But the fact is, you have the right to take leave. This is recreational leave. You don’t have to say why you’re taking this leave. But the AG leaders sometimes simply refuse, even though you are entitled to it.

Marlies Klamt: Now you’ve just said that the head of the working group says, for example, if my doctoral researcher doesn’t do as I say, then I won’t help them any more and I won’t support them any more. What is it that they might be more or less forced to do ?

Christine Eßmann-Stern: A lot of working group leaders don’t get on with their doctoral researchers expressing their own opinion. There you can find a lot of pressure. There are so many different problems that I learn about. Every employee is entitled to turn to me if, for example, they feel discriminated against or are constantly being shouted at. And if that happens and the person comes to me, then I first listen to them, try to advise them and then, with the consent of the person who comes to me, I contact the head of the working group.

When I do that, the hammer usually comes down immediately afterwards. For example the head of the working group saying that there’s someone here who has betrayed me. Everything is anonymous, which means that the AG leader doesn’t know who was with me. I also just say that I’ve heard that…
Of course, they keep asking who it was, even though they know it’s confidential, and that I don’t have to tell them. Then a team meeting is held in the working group and then the leaders might say, that someone betrayed them, and they could have come forward, and as long as the person who did it hasn’t been found, they won’t support the doctoral researchers any more.

It is very profound, because when doctoral researchers come to work with us, the supervisor enters into a contract with them. This means that they sign up to being a doctoral supervisor and they have to continue to support these people. And people forget that it is the right of every employee, i.e. every member of staff, to turn to me. And it’s always very difficult to criticize the AG leader, because they often misunderstand or do not want to understand. There’s also a lot of narcissism involved because, of course, many AG leaders think they are doing everything right. But if they don’t listen to what I say…
After all, they’re not slaves, they’re employees, for whom the head of the working group also has a duty of care. And that is often forgotten. And a lot of people sit with me crying because they just don’t know what to do.


Most of those who have these problems are undergoing psychological treatment because they usually come too late. Either because they don’t know that we exist or what we are there for. We don’t just sign contracts as decentralized Women’s Representative and and Gender Equality Officers, we also try to solve problems and concerns, to negotiate, to discuss things with people, preferably together. But the is often the issue of fear involved and they do not want that.

So it’s a difficult thing that I do, but I often have a good feeling when it turns out well. And that also makes me happy when someone comes up to me and says that everything worked out wonderfully, that my working group leader is completely different. They understood the problem. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen that often. I try to move people if it’s no longer working at all in this working group. I then sit down with the administrative management or the Office of Faculty Recruitment and Appointment Strategy directly under the Executive Board and say, well, we have this and that problem and we have to move this or that person on.

Marlies Klamt: You have already touched on many, many different topics that I would like to go into them a little more deeper. First of all, let’s go back to the situation you’ve just described. Let’s assume that I really do have a professor sitting in front of me who says in the team meeting that as long as I haven’t found the person who has betrayed me here, based on his feelings, I won’t supervise anyone else here. That’s basically a refusal to work on the part of the professor. And if this happened in front of witnesses, as was the case in the example you described, is it still acceptable for the university to allow such a person to remain in their position?

Christine Eßmann-Stern: Not really. It’s a very big problem as far as university lecturers are concerned. I can talk about the problems, I can pass them on, but there are usually no consequences. And that’s actually what bothers us all decentralized Women’s Representatives at the FU. We can try, if we get permission from the person concerned, to talk to them, to the heads of the working groups. We can pass it on to the administrative management, but nothing happens. In other words, nothing happens from the top. Of course, you could also go straight to the Executive Board, to the HR department.

It’s just that I’m only doing this internally for the time being, i.e. within our department. I also want it to stay there, I don’t want it to be passed on to the staff council or the HR department. That’s why I actually try to do everything I can beforehand to ensure that we sort it out internally in our department. Unfortunately, usually not much happens. The administrative management may talk to the person, the university lecturer. But there are no consequences. And I think that in such a case of refusal to work, as you said, he has entered into a contract with the doctoral candidate, he has had the doctoral reseracher employed and has agreed to be the doctoral supervisor. Then this person must supervise the doctoral candidate. And I also consider that a refusal to work.

And I always think that if it were any other employee, we would have already received something from HR, a warning or I don’t know what. In other words, there have to be consequences for such cases. And unfortunately, they are very, very rare. I have a lot of conversations with university lecturers, especially with controversial working groups, where I know there are often fires. But I don’t get anywhere because this narcissism gets to me. People don’t realize that they make mistakes themselves. This self-reflection, what am I doing, do I need to change something, that doesn’t happen, instead I’m always being told that I’m doing everything right here, that my work group is doing well. Apparently not, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many people coming to me. And of course I’m very perceptive when several people come from a working group. Then there’s something to it.

I listen to both sides. But when four people or so come from the working group and say, well, our working group management does this and does that and I have minutes of their discussions then also emailed to me. Then I know that something is wrong. And that means we have to do something to change it. That’s a very important story. That’s why I’m also in favor of every university lecturer, whether they’re long-established or newly appointed and will be leading a working group, getting some kind of coaching or attend a workshop beforehand. How do I lead a AG? What are my duties? What are my rights? Also administrative matters, which is also very important.
As I said, it does not concern all university lecturers , but there are some where the staff keeps coming back and saying that something is wrong here. So there must be consequences also for university lecturers. And there has to be a workshop or whatever, because I have to get a driver’s license if I drive a car. I also have to be trained to lead a AG.… I’m a leader, I have a responsibility, a duty of care, so I have to be trained in advance. How do I deal with it? What do I do? That’s actually what I would like to achieve.

Marlies Klamt: I think that’s a great idea, also mandatory for new professors or for those starting out.

Christine Eßmann-Stern: That’s actually coming soon. I know that it’s in work for newly appointed professors. But as I said, we still have a lot of long-established professors. And it does not work like that, they think I’m up here and you’re all down there and you do what I say. And if you don’t, I’ll get loud or you’ll face some kind of consequences if you don’t get your act together. That doesn’t work. We work together. We are employed by Freie Universität. Our working group leader is put in front of us, in quotation marks. That’s why it’s our supervisor. And we all have to treat each other well. And that’s not always the case, unfortunately.

Marlies Klamt: Do you have any ideas, or perhaps there are already some in the pipeline, on how to detect and prevent such abuse of power more quickly during a professor’s entire term of office? Without waiting for people to turn to you once problems have arisen or, as you have now described, for several people from a working group to turn to you when the fire is already burning. How could you perhaps introduce a kind of quality control on a regular basis so that such things don’t happen in the first place?

Christine Eßmann-Stern: Well, that’s very difficult. We have so many working groups in our department. Biology, Chemistry and Pharmacy is the largest department at Freie Universität. And there are so many working groups in each individual institute that it’s impossible to control them. This means that in order for me to be able to do something and to find out I am of course dependent on the employees, on everyone, whether it’s another employee, a doctoral student or a postdoc or a technical assistant, whoever. Otherwise I would never find out.
I believe that the number of unreported cases of abuse of power is very high because people are afraid to make it public. One way of possibly curbing it would perhaps be to make it compulsory to attend a workshop once a year. What has changed in that year? What else can I do? Is there any new law? Most people don’t even know that yet. Maybe if something like that would be compulsory. That wouldn’t be bad at all. Once a year it would be compulsory for university lecturers to attend a course on how to run a working group, how to deal with employees. I think that would be good.

But otherwise, if that doesn’t happen, we can’t control it because we can’t see it. And if no one approaches us – out of fear or for other reasons, or a doctoral candidate says, oh, gosh, I’ll get through the three or four years here and only realizes afterwards that he’s actually become completely ill as a result – if they don’t come to us and we really do treat everything confidentially, we don’t need to name names, I don’t need to go to the heads of the working groups either. Of course I’d like to change things. That’s why people come to me. But if the person says to me, no, I don’t want to do that because I’m scared…
Of course I always try to say, oh, come on and I’ll try to convince them. But many people say, no, please don’t, the conversation has actually already helped me, where I can look for help elsewhere, for example, psychological support. But if that’s not the case, then there’s nothing we can do because we have no insight into how the heads of the working groups treat their employees.

Marlies Klamt: You have already mentioned several times the fear that academic staff have when it comes to approaching you in confidence, if there has been a case of abuse of power. Could it be that, in addition to this fear, which I am quite sure is also very present in many people, also simply be a rational consideration and to say, okay, if I now turn to the Women’s Representative and Gender Equality Officer and also allow you to turn to the head of department or the head of the working group, then I can expect this or then I have to expect that in the worst case there will be no consequences at all. And that’s not unlikely, but there could certainly be negative consequences for me as a person or for the working group as a whole, because the professor might feel that he or she has been stepped on the toes and perhaps treat people even more unfairly?

Christine Eßmann-Stern: Yes, there are two problems. Of course, people don’t know how it will end, what the consequences will be, which is often very disappointing. Because they come to me, let’s say, they give their consent, I can go on, I talk to the head of the working group, but they realize that there are no consequences at all. And in return, the head of the working group is then on the case and says, watch out, not like this. I do what I can here. I do everything I can to help you progress here so that you can complete your research project. I help and do and do, and that’s the thanks I get.

I understand those people. It’s not that I don’t understand. It’s just that I always think that together we are strong. Of course, as I’ve already mentioned, that it is really bad that there are no consequences. You run into walls. There was a case of a working group leader where it was quite extreme. He was also spoken to at a higher level. And then it was said that the man was simply overworked, that’s why he reacted like that. And then they simply gave him one or two more employees. For me, or let’s say for the people who came to me, which wasn’t just one person, it’s like a slap in the face. This person treats employees really badly and, because the poor man or woman is supposedly overworked, he gets two more employees. I think to myself, that’s like getting another sweet when I’ve made a mistake. And that’s the big problem.

Sure, the person may be overworked, and I may have a certain amount of understanding for that, but it doesn’t help the employees.When I lead a working group, I know that it has so and so many employees. I can’t shout about it or freak out or, because I’m unbalanced at home, take it out on my work group. I mean, we all have bad moods from time to time, but it’s not anyone’s fault and certainly not the employees in a working group. And if there are no consequences, and here we are again, but instead sweets, then the WG management won’t learn anything from it. Then the WG management will say to itself, well, okay, then I’ll just go and talk to a higher authority. But so what?After all, I did get one or two employees out of it. That’s not a consequence for me, it’s a reward.

Marlies Klamt: Yes, and it also sends out the wrong signals.

Christine Eßmann-Stern: Right, right. And then I always don’t know what to say to the people who come to me with their problems and worries. Of course I tell them that I’m completely dissatisfied. And that nothing else is happening, and that it’s taking forever. The process from the day they come to me until something happens or doesn’t happen takes forever. It takes months before the person has time, before we can have a new conversation, before he or she answers. There are discussions without end. And I think that in a certain case, i.e. according to the degree of severity, for example repeat offenders, in quotation marks, consequences should really follow quickly. And it’s not enough to have a conversation with an administrative manager. It has to happen at the very top so that the person realizes that I’ve made a mistake here, I have to change something, otherwise the consequence might be that I’m no longer allowed to lead a working group. Something like that, for example.

Marlies Klamt: What are your experiences with the people who come to you, how well do they know about their rights as academic staff?

Christine Eßmann-Stern: Not at all. No. The thing is, they apply when there are calls for applications for doctoral candidates. Then they apply and are accepted. But I don’t think there is enough information beforehand. What are my rights and obligations? There should actually be a kind of handbook for everyone who starts working at Freie Universität, where, for example, there are emergency numbers, i.e. for sexual harassment, which Women’s Representative is responsible for my area. There is the SPDG group, for sexual violence and discrimination, where you can go to. There are many contact points at the FU, but very few of them are known.

A year or so ago, when I listed them all together, I had posters and flyers printed and sent them out. I sent them to the first-year students, for example. We always have the first-semester introduction where all the students come, and I put them in their goodie bag so that they know about them. But doctoral students, they don’t actually get anything.
They start out and we assume that most of them have already studied with us, completed their Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, are now doing their doctorates and now let’s see. But they should also get an introduction. So, where can I go if I have this or that problem? What are my obligations as a doctoral student? What are my rights?

And there should be some kind of manual containing all this. It doesn’t have to be a big book. Who likes reading thick books? It’s like having a homepage with 1000 subpages and I’m looking for something and just can’t find it because I have to click through so much. Then you just don’t feel like it anymore. So you have to reduce it to a minimum. Yes, write down the rights and obligations in bullet points:What do I have to do at the beginning? Where do I go if…? There should be something like that. But I know that this is already being discussed with the central Women’s Representative and Officer for Gender Equality of the FU, that we want to propose this to the Executive Board.

Marlies Klamt: Yes, I think that’s a great idea. Or I could also imagine lectures or fireside evenings, for example. Where things are perhaps a bit livelier and where people are pointed out to those things again. With a book like this, you might have a look at it as a reference book if you really have a problem.
But if you’re made aware of certain things from the outset, for example through a lecture, that you might not even be aware of, that problems could arise during the course of your doctorate, then you might have created a different level of awareness. And then in connection with that: If the problem arises that your supervisor doesn’t want to sign the leave request for the third time and the leave now expires if you don’t take it, then the next step would be to do this and that. Or then you can make use of this and that assistance, contact this and that person.

Christine Eßmann-Stern: Yes, I think the problem is time. The fact is that most academic staff work 50 percent when they are hired. But it’s also a fact that a research assistant is actually 100 percent at the FU.

Marlies Klamt: Is that legal?

Christine Eßmann-Stern: It is legal, yes. So actually 50 percent of my work is for the FU and the other 50 percent I’m writing my research paper or my dissertation. So that’s combined. So I would say it’s not not legal. But of course it’s at the beginning… You see 50 percent advertised and you’re actually working 12 hours for your employer.
And if vacation is being refused, because we have to be here and as quickly as possible, then you can imagine about the time… If they ask, that they would like to go to the workshop here or I want to inform myself, some working group leader would say there is no time for that. You don’t have time because you’re still behind or you have to work a bit faster. It’s not that easy either.

We have the Graduate Center here. Doctor Alette Winter does an excellent job. All doctoral candidates can go there for advice. She helps, she is also a coach. She does a great job. But some people don’t even know that this Graduate Center exists. Because, as I said, I always have the feeling that I don’t like clicking through emails and the homepage. So I don’t look or type into Google, where can I go as a doctoral candidate at the FU? That’s simply not done.

Everything should be much more transparent. There needs to be more communication. With a flood of emails, most people skip a lot of them or delete them straight away if they only see the subject line. Poster notices, yes, are actually good too, but they don’t reach the target everywhere. I don’t have the right solution yet. But I think the more we communicate, also with people such as doctoral candidates, students and other employees, who also have their problems, be it that they want to be promoted and don’t know how to do that.

So there are so many questions and sometimes perhaps too many places to go. It’s like a maze. Where do I go now? What do I do now? Is this right or is that right? What does she even do? Can she help me? I have to be careful here. If my employer finds out, there will be consequences.

That’s why I would first suggest a handbook for everyone who is newly hired. And, of course, there are always offers from the Graduate Center of the FU’s continuing education program. Workshops, further training on the subject of abuse of power, how do I get through my doctorate? So all these controversial topics that are always listed there, that people are made aware of.
There are mailing list where I can only reach doctoral candidates and postdocs and I send them something like this at regular intervals. For example there is further training for your doctorate here. Because they don’t see anything in their flood of work. They have to take care of their research project, they have to make sure that they please the head of the working group, that everything works, and at some point they also have a private life. Then they write their dissertation, which is all very stressful. And so you don’t really have an eye for anything else and try to get through these years. Only sometimes with consequences that wouldn’t have been necessary if they had gone to a contact point sooner.

Marlies Klamt: I think that a nice addition to the handbook you mentioned could also be something like this podcast, for example, where you conduct regular interviews because you can also consume it on the side. You don’t have to be totally focused on it. You can also listen to it on the train, for example. And then it’s a nice addition. A simply different way to get in touch with this topic and to do educational work or to get information from the scientific staff. Have you personally had any experience of abuse of power?


Christine Eßmann-Stern: Yes, unfortunately. I’ve been at Freie Universität for 40 years. The problem was simply that this appreciation, that you actually do everything you can, and even more as a secretary. Well, I can only say that as a secretary. As a Women’s Representative I am independent. I don’t have anyone reporting to me. But when I work as a secretary, I always have problems with the head of the working group, with disputes, and unfortunately I’ve had that experience. That also made me very ill at times.

Marlies Klamt: Thank you very much for sharing these personal experiences with us, even if they were unfortunately not so pleasant. What are your plans for the future?


Christine Eßmann-Stern: I would like to retire next year, but I would like to continue working at the FU as Women’s Representative and Officer for Gender Equality on the side, because that is the office that is so close to my heart. To support people in their worries and problems. To achieve things, to change things, to simply tackle everything that is not running smoothly or is unfair. Even the things that are always swept under the carpet. Because I can present myself to the outside world with all sorts of things. A homepage, paper is patient. But as decentralized Women’s Representative and Officer for Gender Equality, we can see what it looks like on the inside. What problems are there with the employees of the FU, in their working groups, wherever. And that’s where I’d like to be able to continue to carry out my duties in a supportive way and to be able to let people become happy again and for them to be able to say that you’ve helped me so much. That is also support.

I don’t just give advice and try to solve problems and concerns, I also provide funding for conference trips and printing work for dissertations. Because a research assistant or a member of staff doesn’t earn that much. That means I also support them with babysitting, which was extremely difficult during the corona period. It was difficult to continue working during the corona period, especially during the lockdown. And then I said, okay, you have to go to the lab sometimes because some test or project has to be done there. Find a babysitter and I’ll pay for it with the funding.
I also do lab exchanges or students who take part in excursions and simply can’t afford the 150 euros, for example, but the excursion has to take place or is part of their studies. Then of course I also fund them. And that’s all I can do to help people get through their work or their studies and relieve them of a few worries. And that’s why I would like to stay on as Women’s Representative and Officer for Gender Equality for at least another two years.

Marlies Klamt: Ms. Christine Eßmann-Stern, thank you very much for this interview, but also for the important work that you do, which I think you do with a great deal of passion.


Christine Eßmann-Stern: Yes, thank you for this interview and I hope many people listen to it. And maybe one or two of them will have the courage to come to me and discuss their problem with me.


Marlies Klamt: We will definitely link to you again on the podcast website, as well as to the Women’s Representatives and Officers for Gender Equality in the other departments.


Christine Eßmann-Stern: That would be great. Thank you very much.

OUTRO

That was the interview with Christine Eßmann-Stern. Please note that we recorded this interview last year, i.e. in 2023. So when Ms. Eßmann-Stern speaks or has spoken about next year, then she was referring to the current year, i.e. 2024.

And while I certainly hope that you yourself aren’t struggling with abuse of power, at least now you know who to turn to if that should ever happen, or if you hear about it from someone else. Remember that Christine Eßmann-Stern is the decentralized Women’s Representative and Officer for Gender Equality for the departments of biology, chemistry and pharmacy, which means that if you are doing your doctorate in another department, then check out the website for this episode. There we have an overview page for everyone and you can find which FU’s decentralized women’s representative and Officer for Gender Equality is in charge of you. On the page you will also find a link to the other episodes of the DRS Podcast. I am Dr. Marlies Klamt and I’m pleased that I was able to accompany you through today’s episode as presenter. Thanks for listening and see you next time!

S03, Episode 3: Factors for Success in Supervising Doctoral Candidates – an Interview with Professor Lammert

This interview has been conducted in German. An English transcript is available at the bottom of this page.

Prof. Dr. Christian Lammert, Political Scientist and winner of the DRS Supervisor Award 2023, talks about the importance of good supervision of doctoral candidates, his plans for the prize money and the changes in his role as a supervisor over time. Other topics include the often lacking self-confidence of doctoral candidates and possible reasons for the dissatisfaction of many doctoral candidates with their supervision. Professor Lammert also reveals what he believes is the ideal number of doctoral students that a professor can effectively supervise at the same time.

Highlights

„Man kann keinen Einbahnstraßenfahrplan für eine Betreuung einer Dissertation machen“

„Neben der grundsätzlichen Betreuung hinsichtlich Thema und Methode ist es wichtig, dass man den Kontext der Kandidat*in gut kennt, weil nur dann kann man auch eine gute Betreuung und die notwendigen Schritte sehen, um die Leute in diesen drei, dreieinhalb Jahren zum Abschluss zu bringen.“

„Ich habe bei mir gemerkt, wenn es dann mal mehr als sechs Promotionen waren, die man zeitgleich betreut hat, das wurde dann schon ein bisschen viel. Deswegen, ich würde wahrscheinlich sagen, drei bis fünf ist so ein Feld, das kann man noch gut leisten. Alles andere leidet die Betreuung drunter.“

from our interview with Prof. Dr. Lammert

Audio

Download or listen to the audio version of the podcast here.

English transcript

INTRO

Welcome to the DRS Podcast, the podcast of the Dahlem Research School at Freie Universität Berlin. I am Dr. Marlies Klamt and I am excited to host today’s episode for you. This episode is part of a series of interviews we have conducted with the winners of the DRS Supervisor Award, a prize awarded for excellent supervision of doctoral candidates.

In this episode, I talk to Christian Lammert, who is professor of political science and was one of the two winners of the Supervisor Award in 2023.

We talked about what good supervision means to him, how he plans to use the prize money and whether and how he has changed as a supervisor over time. But we also talk about the lack of self-confidence of many doctoral candidates, especially women, and about why doctoral candidates are often not satisfied with their supervision and how he thinks this can be changed.

I also found Professor Lammert’s answer to my question about the maximum number of doctoral students that a professor can supervise at the same time very interesting.

I don’t want to tell you any more in advance, but we’ll start with the interview straight away.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Professor Lammert, please briefly introduce yourself to the listeners of our podcast. 

Prof. Lammert: Yes, I am a political scientist and have been at the John F. Kennedy Institute at the Free University of Berlin for over 15 years now, where I hold the professorship for North American political systems. 

Dr. Marlies Klamt: And in this role, you also supervise doctoral students who nominated you for the Supervision Award. And you didn’t just get nominated by them, you also won it. Do you remember the moment when you were informed that you had won and what was your first thought?  

Prof. Lammert: Yes, I remember it pretty clearly. I took my cell phone and checked my e-mails and got this e-mail. You get it by e-mail before it officially arrives by post. And at first I was a bit skeptical and thought, what is this again? Nowadays you’re always very sensitive when you’re told somewhere that you’ve won something. But when I saw that it was all very solid and that I knew the senders by name at least, I have to admit that I was really happy and satisfied because I was also surprised. I didn’t know that anyone had nominated me and I think getting a prize like this, which is about mentoring other doctoral students, is something really nice and that’s why I was really pleased. 

Dr. Marlies Klamt: I can imagine that. Also that you were suspicious at first, as I always am when I think I’ve won something…. In addition to this non-material recognition that you have just mentioned, there is also prize money of 2,000 euros, which in turn is intended to benefit the doctoral students. Do you already have an idea of what you will invest this money in?  

Prof. Lammert: Yes, I already have an idea. That was always a point that many doctoral students raised. When we met regularly in a larger group to discuss the individual projects, we usually did this at the institute. And people have always suggested that we could get together somewhere outside of Berlin for an overnight stay or two and not just talk directly about the projects, but also talk a bit about the broader environment of science and what it means to become a scientist in the first place, to exchange ideas a bit. And I think I will use at least some of these funds for a retreat like this.  

On the other hand, which is always very important for our doctoral students, especially when you have such a broad spectrum of topics and, above all, methodological approaches in your work, and if I’m not so well versed in certain methods, is that you then organize special method workshops where you invite people so that the candidates can get the necessary grounding from the methods side.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: That sounds like two very nice ideas. Firstly, the retreat as a team-building measure and then the methodological training. I’m sure your doctoral students will be delighted. And the special thing about this DRS Supervision Award is that the award winners are nominated by the doctoral candidates themselves, as you have just mentioned. Why do you think your doctoral candidates or one of your doctoral candidates nominated you? And what makes the way you supervise doctoral candidates so special?    

Prof. Lammert: Well, I reconstructed it a bit afterwards and found out who specifically nominated me when I asked. People or the nominee didn’t tell me that beforehand,  but then she was particularly pleased that I got the award. Why was I nominated by the candidates? Yes, I don’t really know and then you ask yourself, it’s not the first time you’ve supervised doctoral students, I’ve been doing it for over ten years now. Why did you get the award now? You also think about that maybe you weren’t so good before, but now you’re better. 

But I think it always has to do with the specific contexts and I would also like to relativize my role a little. This candidate came from our graduate school. We have the Graduate School for North American Studies at the Kennedy Institute. And there it always has to do with which group comes together, how comfortable they feel and how the whole thing, the whole social context is right. And I already know in the year that I received the award that this group worked very well, that there was also very intensive contact among the candidates outside of the graduate school. And I think that’s always part of making people feel comfortable overall. And if they then consider whether it might also have something to do with the supervisor, then I’m pleased when they come to that conclusion and express their trust in me afterwards.  

Dr. Marlies Klamt: What constitutes good supervision for you?  

Prof. Lammert: Yes, I believe that good supervision is about engaging with the respective candidates. I don’t think you can have a one-way roadmap for supervising a dissertation. It also depends on whether they are candidates who are at the graduate school, whether they are individual doctorates, whether they are people who want to stay in academia and articulate this early on, or whether we sometimes have people who come and say I primarily want the title. I’m already on my career path, but a title like that helps me. These are different approaches that you have to consider when dealing with people and you have to find that out early on. 

You also have to get to know the candidates early on to know whether they are people you have to put under a bit of pressure because they need deadlines, because they need intensive support. Are they people who need to be slowed down a bit? I’ve also seen people take on far too much and then overwork themselves if you don’t intervene. So I think that in addition to the basic supervision in terms of topic and method, it is important that you also know the candidate’s context well, because only then can you provide good supervision and take the necessary steps to get people to graduate in these three, three and a half years. 

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Is that something you specifically ask or does it come out anyway if you know each other well?  

Prof. Lammert: I don’t ask that specifically. I would find that … That would somehow be a breach of trust and it would also make it seem as if you really had a pattern that you were using. So we meet regularly with the doctoral students to discuss things. But we also meet up after such meetings or at the beginning or end of the semester to go to the beer garden together and talk about other things. And then you get to know the people a bit, also in the group, when they are at the graduate school, how it works there, how they work together, that they tend to motivate each other. It can also happen that a group like that blocks you or makes you anxious because you think you’re not smart enough. So I think you always have to observe everything closely at the beginning and then you’ll realize that. I think a questionnaire like that would be counterproductive.  

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Now you mentioned earlier the surprise when you won this award and that you wondered why it was at this precise moment in time. Do you think that the way you supervise has changed over the years and that you are a different supervisor today than you were ten years ago?  

Prof. Lammert: By all means. Or let’s say I hope so, at least. But of course you learn from every supervision. It’s also an intensive relationship that you build up with the candidates here. And sometimes you realize that something didn’t go well. There are always conflict situations. And then you always ask yourself, why is that? Are you too close? Are you giving people too much freedom? Do you have to intervene more in terms of content? Are you putting too little pressure on them? You always realize that afterwards, hopefully in most cases in between, that you can still make corrections. 

But that’s always the case at the end of any promotion, when it’s finished, and then of course you review it again. If it could have gone faster, if it could have been done differently. You also notice whether people are satisfied with the result. And that usually doesn’t stop there. That’s what it’s all about and you have to discuss it with people at an early stage: What should happen next? And that’s always a nice indicator, where you realize that you haven’t done everything wrong and, above all, that the candidates haven’t done everything wrong, if there are employment prospects afterwards and you can also be supportive, for example in publishing the work. And if it all works well, then you have the feeling that you’ve done quite well. And that’s been happening more and more recently. And then I think that you’ve also learned from the examples before. 

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Yes, great, I’m pleased to hear that your doctoral students are finding employment well there. And that is definitely a point that I will come back to towards the end of the interview. But what would interest me right now is whether there are or were one or more people or perhaps experiences that have shaped the way you support your doctoral students today. 

Prof. Lammert: I’m now thinking about the positive things, whether I had candidates. Yes, I think it’s more when there are problems that you start thinking about what you can do better. If everything goes smoothly, I always tell that to the people, if you think it’s going smoothly, then I won’t intervene much, apart from the normal feedback rounds that you always have. But if you notice that something isn’t working, then of course you try to improve it. For example, I had … I mentioned earlier that sometimes dissertations are submitted by people who are not planning an academic career at all, but who need it for their job.   And I also had one candidate who was always very short on time because he was of course also very involved in his job and had to use his vacation time and that is of course also a high stress factor. And I hadn’t taken that into account and sometimes I think I put him under a bit too much pressure and expected too much. And now I also know that I have to ask people beforehand exactly how much time they really have and how they imagine they can manage the whole thing in parallel with their dissertation and their job, because it’s an immense burden. 

Another problem that I often see is that some people lack self-confidence and you have to discover that early on. Sometimes female candidates try …,and there it really is often a gender problem. In my experience, women are often more insecure, not in general, but more often, there is a tendency to question their own performance. They question themselves much more often than male candidates do. And you also have to recognize this early on and signal to people that if they are insecure, they should get in touch immediately. And sometimes they don’t. And you have to develop a sense for when people somehow run into a dead end because they don’t trust themselves, so that you recognize this crisis situation early on. I think I’m sensitized to the fact that I can recognize such things earlier and that I can support them so that they don’t run into this dead end. 

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Yes, I think that’s a very important point about self-confidence and I think it’s wonderful that you also have an eye on it, because it’s also something that people don’t necessarily dare to address on their own. 

Prof. Lammert: Exactly. 

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Unfortunately, not all doctoral candidates are as satisfied with their supervision as yours. According to a study by the Leibniz PhD Network, the satisfaction of doctoral candidates with their supervision also decreases over the course of their doctorate. Do you have any ideas as to why this is the case? 

Prof. Lammert: I would emphasize two factors. On the one hand, I would want to criticize myself and my colleagues a little and perhaps also the university system, that traditionally, and this is only now slowly changing, you are not prepared to properly supervise such work, to deal with people over such a long period of time. That’s a social skill that you have to have. Of course, it’s also a professional skill that you have to have. 

And many of my colleagues, and sometimes I don’t exclude myself from this, think that if you have the technical expertise, you’ll be fine. And then the candidates just have to fall back on this professional expertise. And I believe that the university should offer more support at an early stage, perhaps even for young academics, when it’s clear that people are aiming for an academic career, in terms of what supervision looks like. The FU already has a very good program that is voluntary and is mostly used by people who are already better mentors than others. But here you have to consider to what extent you can create incentives for professors to voluntarily train themselves to provide better supervision. 

The other thing that I think is a problem is the overall work overload and the expectations in the scientific landscape in Germany. And that’s a big difference. I know this from American colleagues or Canadian colleagues who are under much less pressure to acquire third-party funding, to write these applications. And in this system, of course, there are also incentives to exploit such doctoral candidates a little for other purposes by having them co-write such applications and incorporate their expertise. Of course, this can also benefit people for their future career, but my experience is often that you actually distract people, that you also increase the pressure, because then there is a completely different set of expectations, which can then become problematic in such a relationship of dependency. 

And here you should simply say that if someone supervises a lot of doctorates, you first have to make sure that there aren’t too many. So I sometimes ask myself, what is the maximum number of doctorates you can supervise at the same time? If you have a graduate school like this, that’s something you have to ask yourself so that everyone still benefits from it. And then you also have to give people a bit of support so that they can use sufficient resources to provide good training. Because that is the future of universities and science, that we produce good young talent. And sometimes this is treated a bit neglected in the overall concept of expectations in science. 

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Where would you personally see the limit for how many doctoral students you can supervise at the same time? 

Prof. Lammert: Well, I’ve often thought about that and there is even a minimum number, I would say. So I would say that if you only ever have one candidate, that can be problematic because you might become too fixated on them and then people don’t have any colleagues with whom they can exchange ideas. They can also talk about the supervisor, the supervision. I think it’s also important for people to have an environment outside of this relationship with the supervisor where they can talk about the work, but also about the situation. And that’s where three people are really good. And I noticed that when I was supervising more than six doctorates at the same time, it became a bit much. That’s why I would probably say that three to five is a field that you can still manage well. Everything else suffers in terms of supervision.  

Dr. Marlies Klamt: How many doctoral students are you currently supervising?  

Prof. Lammert: I currently still have three. This is partly due to the fact that we are now out of DFG funding for our graduate school, where we had twelve doctoral scholarships every year at the beginning or for almost twelve years, with three of them sometimes going to our department, where you were also involved as a first or second supervisor. And this is currently being cut back because the DFG funding has come to an end. And I now have two remaining cases. That sounds a bit negative. In other words, people who are already a bit past the doctoral period, who still want to finish, but who are both already working. And another individual doctorate that is being processed. And the next one will have to wait until after the graduate school. That’s another strategy, looking for funding in order to supervise such projects again. 

Dr. Marlies Klamt: How do you think universities can deal with the fact that there are now supervisors who either – which unfortunately also happens – don’t actually fulfill their duties of support and don’t provide assistance or are perhaps even toxic? 

Prof. Lammert: Yes, I think there needs to be massive intervention here. I don’t know how you can introduce such a warning system. Berlin now also has the Dahlem Research School, which mainly looks after doctoral students and programs on how they can be improved. There are also representatives of the doctoral candidates in it and I think that contact options need to be found here so that such candidates can also address problematic supervisory relationships, which can be problematic in very different ways, either you are ignored, exploited or there are other forms of abuse, so that this can be addressed. And then, of course, you would have to have committees that discuss such things and possibly also draw consequences and, in case of doubt, if there are extreme violations of the obligation to supervise, also temporarily restrict the right to award doctorates for certain people or recommend some kind of further training so that such things don’t happen. 

But I think there is a lack of contact persons at the universities for doctoral candidates to exchange ideas in such cases. I think the institution of the Graduate School has actually been a very good step forward here, because it has enabled candidates to exchange ideas with each other. Because sometimes you don’t even realize that you’re in a problematic supervisory relationship if you can’t exchange ideas with others. But if you discuss it with others, and that happens in graduate schools like this, then you’re more likely to have the courage to articulate something. But then of course you also have to do that, because you can’t leave the candidates to find a new supervisor on their own with all the effort and distraction that this entails from the actual doctoral project. So there has to be intensive support from the university.  

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Yes, I definitely agree with you and in my experience, it’s often not a lack of contact points, but rather a lack of consequences. I have already conducted an interview for this podcast with the central ombudsperson of the FU and with the women’s representative of a department. And what came out of that was actually rather… Well, they are available as contact persons, for example, but that often nothing happens when a complaint is made and that is of course also a deterrent for future doctoral candidates, other early career researchers, etc., when you see, okay, someone actually complained, but in the end nothing even came of it. 

Prof. Lammert: Exactly, exactly. But sometimes, even if you have the places, many of the candidates don’t even know that they can go there with such problems. You always think that something must have really happened. But there are also more subtle forms in which this support can be exploited, in which people are put under psychological pressure for whatever reason. And then, as I’ve also heard from conversations with doctoral students, they often don’t even know that this is a case that should definitely be discussed with gender officers and ombudspersons. So I think it would be important here, when someone starts a doctorate, to communicate these options openly and perhaps provide addresses and telephone numbers as a kind of handout on who to contact in which cases.  

Dr. Marlies Klamt: That was exactly the topic I discussed with the Women’s and Equal Opportunities Officer. We’ve already talked about what constitutes good support and what constitutes less good support. But to come back to this point, good supervision doesn’t just involve the supervisor, but of course also the doctoral student. What is particularly important to you when you talk to potential doctoral candidates and what do you think they should bring to the table, both on a professional level, but perhaps also on a personal or other level?  

Prof. Lammert: That’s a good question. And that’s also something I always try to make clear to people at an early stage in discussions about what it means to write a doctorate. We also have some candidates who ended up at the graduate school, who we got to know beforehand during their studies. Some have even completed a BA, a Master’s degree with us at the Kennedy Institute and then a doctorate, others just a Master’s degree, some come from outside and apply. You have to talk to people early on about what their ideas are, what it means to write a thesis, a doctoral thesis, what they think they need to invest in terms of work.  

So if you write a doctorate, you need over three and a half years, some people need four years, some people only need three years, that’s also possible. You have to be extremely disciplined, but you also have to – and I think it’s very important because most people find this very difficult – be careful not to start exhausting yourself, because sometimes you’re not in any normal context where you’re off work or where you know you have to finish it in 14 days and then you’ve done something and then something new comes along. You have a big project ahead of you and then you think you have to work 24 hours a day. It’s also a discipline to say, I’m not working now. And you have to talk to people at an early stage to discuss strategies for structuring your day so that you can put down the keyboard in the evening with a reasonably good feeling and say, that’s it and now I’m going to do something else. So you have to have the discipline and the sense not to exhaust yourself.  

And what is very important is that people have to work on a topic. A colleague of mine once put it like this: you have to have an inner fire for it. So you have to have a real interest in the topic. If you notice that these individual doctorates, who usually only want a title, come to you and say, yes, I’m a bit interested in this and that area, could you perhaps give me a topic to work on. That’s never a good starting point. So people have to try to come up with their own idea that really interests them and has the nutritional value to feed the candidates intellectually for these three years.  

If that’s not there, then you have to question the whole thing early on. And I think that’s also very important, and that’s more the role of the supervisor again, to tell people honestly quite early on that it might not make sense to go through the three years and waste the time, and then you end up with a degree that doesn’t qualify you to stay in academia or you might not get a degree at all. 

So that’s also something I always do. I observe people very, very closely at the beginning and after six months at the latest, if I think it doesn’t make sense, then I communicate that. These are moments of crisis, of course, and you have to be very sensitive, but I think it’s also fair to the people who invest so much time in working on a project. 

Dr. Marlies Klamt: I can hear that you have also done this in the past, that people have suggested that you drop out of the doctorate, right? 

Prof. Lammert:  Yes. 

Dr. Marlies Klamt: And how was that received? 

Prof. Lammert: It’s usually not well received. Especially when people have already received a scholarship. I had a candidate whose Master’s thesis I supervised and it was a very difficult project, with emotional crises where you had to spend hours in the office providing psychological support because there was such a crisis of meaning. And then there was also a candidate who came back at some point and said, I’ve got it under control now and I’d like to do a doctorate because she was also in a certain context where she would actually have been able to access materials well in terms of the topic, but after just a few months I realized that it would start all over again. Nothing has changed. And I told her that too. And that was very emotional again. But then she realized that too and dropped out of the doctorate. 

Dr. Marlies Klamt: And do you know whether she continued elsewhere or actually finished with it? 

Prof. Lammert: No, she’s no longer doing her doctorate. She ended up at an international organization and is now working in the field of human rights policy. 

Dr. Marlies Klamt: I also asked so precisely because I could well imagine that if someone tells you that you’re not suitable for a doctorate or that you’re not doing yourself any good by doing so, that this will initially meet with resistance …  

Prof. Lammert: I wouldn’t put it like that either. I think that would be too harsh. I couldn’t do that. Of course, I always say that I try to ask, is that really what you want? And how do you envisage things continuing like this? Don’t you think that this will happen again, especially if you’ve already seen the experience with the Master’s thesis, that it will rob you of the same strength again and then you’ll get people to do it. I would consider it an affront to tell someone that you are not suitable for a doctorate. At that moment, I would also consider my competencies to have been exceeded. Once I’ve accepted someone as a candidate, I can ask whether they really believe they can do it on their own or whether another path might be better. But if they say no, this route is better, then as a supervisor I have to accompany them on the best possible path and hope that I can get them through. Also with further training courses that are offered in the university context.  

Dr. Marlies Klamt: I didn’t mean to accuse you of being too direct and you have a sensitive way of approaching the conversation. But I can still imagine that it’s a big shock at first when you’re told that the other person doesn’t necessarily see you where you used to see yourself. 

Prof. Lammert: Yes, that’s right. Yes.  

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Do you often receive initial applications from people you don’t even know who would like to do a doctorate with you? 

Prof. Lammert: Yes, we get that quite often because we are also one of the few research and teaching institutes at the FU where everything is done entirely in English. This means that we get an incredible number of unsolicited inquiries from people from all over the world. And you have to take a look at how well-founded the interest really is and also the discussion as to why these people have now asked me. With most things, you can tell from the cover letter that it’s a collective letter and only my name is written at the top and then you ask a few colleagues and then they say yes, I got them all. 

In such cases, I always say no straight away. I also say no to candidates that I don’t know and where it doesn’t fit thematically. For example, if they … I’m mainly responsible for domestic policy in political systems at our institute. I also get a lot of requests from people who want to do something about American foreign policy. And if there’s no justification as to why I’m an excellent supervisor, then I always say no, because for me that’s also a sign that people haven’t really looked into the options for supervisors. But we do get a lot of requests like that. 

Dr. Marlies Klamt: And how can I increase my chances there, apart from the things you have already mentioned now? Of course, I should send a cover letter and make it clear in any way why I think you are a suitable supervisor for my doctoral thesis. But will it help if I send you a short exposé? Would you like to have a long, elaborated exposé to see that I have worked my way into it? Or is it really about the topic first and it must be clear why the person is contacting you?  

Prof. Lammert: No, that’s absolutely right. So a brief description of the project, that’s what I need. That’s what most people send. That’s not usually what is lacking. Of course, you can talk about the quality of these proposals, but if someone has just finished their studies and develops an idea like this, then it’s okay if it’s still a bit cloudy. So that’s what I expect. I expect a cover letter that makes the motivation clear. And it shouldn’t contain generalities like „the FU is one of the most prestigious universities and that would be good for my career“. 

But you also have to have dealt with the content a bit, why the institute, the FU, the Kennedy Institute and why I would be suitable as a supervisor now. Then I actually also expect people to have looked into my research a bit, to what extent they can benefit from it. That sometimes happens, motivated students do that. I always find that quite good, because then I can also assess for myself that people have thought about why I should be the supervisor. So this information has to be there and there has to be a project idea that really has the potential to bring something surprising to light or generate something new in terms of knowledge.  

If something is missing from that, then I am always very skeptical and ask again. And I would say that if you then ask so critically why I should supervise it or why the Kennedy Institute is so suitable: In 50 percent of cases, you don’t get an answer at all. And then you also know that it was perhaps a collective email. So it should give the impression that you already have a specific project idea and that people have thought about why I would be a good supervisor.  

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Yes, it’s also interesting that when you ask back, that you don’t even get an answer, because people are obviously looking for a job or a place to do a doctorate. 

I would like to come back to the topic of self-exploitation, which you mentioned earlier, because I find this very important in the university context or in the academic world in general. And unfortunately, this self-exploitation and working around the clock is something that is often exemplified by professors. How do you perhaps try to set an example against this? I’m thinking of things like availability outside of working hours or something like that. Do you have certain rules that you perhaps even put into words directly? Or do you behave in a certain way to show your doctoral students how they can or should manage their time? 

Prof. Lammert: Yes, that’s absolutely part of it. I don’t just do that with doctoral students. I also try to make it clear to people on my Bachelor’s and Master’s degree courses that I write directly in my syllabus how they can reach me and that I generally don’t answer emails after 6 p.m. and before 8 a.m. and also don’t answer emails at the weekend. I then tell the doctoral students the same thing, with the exception of course, unless it’s somehow an emergency. And by emergency, of course, I mean that you somehow think … That’s also something that happens very often, that people are in the third year of their doctorate and suddenly find a publication that does something similar. And then the big crisis of meaning begins. So I said that in emergencies like that, where you really have doubts about the project, you can contact me in the evening or at the weekend. 

But like this I also try to signal that scientists are allowed to call it a day. That’s how I try to set an example. I always say quite openly and honestly that I’ll tell people when I’m going on vacation, when I’m not available and that they can still email me if they have any problems, acute problems of course, but otherwise they should leave me alone. And I also try to give people strategies on how to manage to stop working. So what I always tell people, for example, is that they should stop working from late afternoon around 5 or 6 p.m., and of course that also depends on what kind of candidates they are. Of course, I’ve also had PhD students who are night owls, who don’t get up until 11 and work until two in the morning. That’s fine if that’s what they have to do. I don’t want to forbid them to do that.  

But when they finish work, a good tool is always to briefly write down what you’ve done that day, in bullet points. So that you also have some reassurance that it wasn’t wasted time and at the same time to make a note of what you’re planning to do the next day, what the to-dos are, two or three points. Because the moment you’ve done something like that, you can also finish. If you haven’t written it down, then you keep thinking about it. So I try to teach people things like that, techniques like that, so that people have a certain distance from their work. And I think it’s also part of it and that’s why I also said that you often go to the beer garden with a group or have dinner somewhere in a restaurant, that it’s not just the dissertation, but that people also realize that there’s a life besides academia and that you have to set an example for people. 

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Yes, I think it’s very important and thank you for sharing this technique, which is almost like a ritual to bring the day to a close and to say goodbye to one day and get in the mood for the next or to make it easier to start the next day. 

We’ve almost reached the end, but I have one more question to pick up on the topic from the beginning. You talked about the fact that doctoral candidates also have very different career aspirations. Let’s assume that someone is aiming for an academic career and wants to become a professor later on. What advice would you give this person? What should they definitely do to ensure they are well positioned? 

Prof. Lammert: Yes, that’s always part of the discussions I usually have after a year of the doctorate, when I also see that people really have the potential. Then I try to make it clear to people that it’s not just a good job, but that you also have to present yourself specifically with this first work in certain scientific communities where you want to be recognized later. That you need to think about this early on. And that is precisely …. I can only speak for political science now, but if you are a political scientist doing a doctorate at the Kennedy Institute, for example, you have to be careful that you are not seen as an Americanist. 

People need to learn early on that they have expertise that is in demand in the scientific field in addition to the topic of North America, which is very prominent here. And you have to think about this at an early stage. Is it party research, is it federalism research, is it certain methodological approaches that you refine and that the USA is then just a case study that is important for the academic profile, but does not offer any future options as a unique selling point. The next question is how and where you have to publish, how many articles should you try to place somewhere during your doctorate, which conferences do you go to in order to form networks, how important are such networks.  

So I try to discuss this with people at an early stage. If they are already reasonably confident in their project, we usually get them to write their first proposal for a conference on a smaller scale, and then I go to the conference with them. Then you go there together, so it’s also a kind of safe space when you present your results for the first time. And then at some point you push them to the big conferences. 

And you have to be careful that it all works, but I’ve only had very good experiences so far. We once had six doctoral students at our institute who applied for such conferences. We always give practice presentations so that they can present their papers in a small setting and then get feedback so that they are more confident when they go out to compete with others for ideas. I think you have to make it clear to people early on what the risks are. What does it mean to live in this postdoc phase with great uncertainty as far as employment prospects are concerned for up to ten years? Some are even longer, having to move from one externally funded project to the next. You also have to prepare people for this so that they don’t enter the academic world with too much idealization.  

Dr. Marlies Klamt: That sounds like a wonderful accompaniment and a wonderful introduction to the difficult situations that you are then exposed to. Professor Lammert, I would like to thank you very much for your time and for this interview. 

Prof. Lammert: Yes, of course. 

OUTRO 

This was an interview with Professor Lammert, who won the DRS Supervisor Award in 2023. If you enjoyed this interview, you are also welcome to listen to the other interviews we have already conducted with other award winners. You can also find the link to the Supervisor Award on the website for this episode if you are doing your own doctorate at the FU and have a great supervisor you would like to nominate. 

That was Dr. Marlies Klamt for the DRS Podcast, the podcast of the Dahlem Research School of Freie Universität Berlin.  

Links

Leibniz PhD Survey 2017 – https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/61363

Profil von Prof. Dr. Christian Lammert – https://www.jfki.fu-berlin.de/en/faculty/politicalscience/team/professors/lammert/index.html

 

S02 Episode 6: Building a Good Relationship with Your Supervisor

Join Amanda in a conversation with Dr. Marlies Klamt, a PhD coach who provides valuable advice on fostering a healthy and productive relationship with your thesis supervisor. Dr. Klamt shares her experiences, offers strategies for effective communication, and highlights the importance of setting boundaries. This episode is filled with practical tips for PhD students to navigate their academic journey with greater ease and satisfaction.

Highlights

„………“

from our interview with Dr. Marlies Klamt

Audio

Download or listen to the audio version of the podcast here.

transcript

Amanda: Hello everyone. We are here today with Dr. Marlies Klamt, and she is going to talk to us about the supervisor relationship. So Marlies, I know our podcast listeners probably know your voice, but if you could just briefly introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself. about what you do.
Marlies: Yeah, thanks a lot for the introduction, Amanda.
I’m really glad to be here on the other side this time, not facilitating, but actually answering your questions. I’m a PhD coach. I help people, I support people from the point of When they make the decision to do their PhD up to the defense. So I’m working with doctoral students pretty much every day of the week.
And my main focus is time management, but also other topics like the one we’re talking about today, which is the relationship with your supervisor. Using communication to have a better relationship with your supervisor. And my vision really is to prevent doctoral students from suffering during the PhD journey.
I know it’s not always possible, but at least it’s possible to reduce the suffering part and to actually enjoy the journey as well and say, okay, it’s like an important couple of years, a couple not, it’s an important few years in my life. And I want to make this time a good time and also enjoy it.
And I have a podcast myself as well. And I called it Glücklich Promovieren, which roughly translates to happy PhD, because that’s really something I want to advocate.
Amanda: Oh, thank you. So I want to start off With a really basic question why is it important to have a good relationship with your supervisor?
And that might seem a little bit simple, but a lot of people that I’ve worked with and I’m sure that you’ve worked with have said, oh, it doesn’t matter. I’m just gonna, put my head down. I’m going to push through. I don’t need a good relationship with him. I just have to finish. Why do you think it’s important to have this good relationship?
Marlies: Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s not always on the top of the list of the agenda people have, but I think it’s very important for two reasons. The first one is, if you have a good relationship with your supervisor, it can really have positive effects on your thesis. And people might actually be surprised to hear that.
But I think if you’re not afraid to ask questions, to clarify if you get an answer you don’t understand, and in general to ask for support, then That can really benefit your thesis and the quality of your work. And the, second reason is that a good relationship also can have a positive effect on your wellbeing.
And I think that’s very important as well, because it can be very stressful if you feel your supervisor doesn’t respond when you ask them something, maybe you even think they dislike you or they just don’t. Like permanently, or they just permanently don’t act in a way you’d like. I think this is really a stressful situation.
So having a good relationship with your supervisor just makes your life a lot easier as well.
Amanda: Thanks. I’d love to hear a little bit more about your relationship with your supervisor. I have some other questions for you here, but before we go to them, how was your relationship with your supervisor? What did you experience?
What went really well for you? We’ll start there.
Marlies: Yeah, my supervisor was also my boss. He’s actually the one who talked me into doing a PhD because it wasn’t, actually it wasn’t on my list of, on my agenda when I started working for him. I liked the job he was offering me, but when I started working at university, I wasn’t aiming at doing a doctorate.
And he kept on asking, he was quite persistent. And in the end I said, yes, but. only under this and this conditions, but that’s another story. But he had a really supportive personality. So he was really, as a human being, he was very human. He was very interested in not only me, but all the other doctoral students he had as well as the people working for him to make sure that they actually feel good as well, so they don’t just do their work and then that’s it.
But he really had this, yeah, I would say human relationship, which isn’t always the case in the academic system. He wasn’t like my best friend or anything like that. He was quite old. Can you say old? Do you need to say mature? He was about to retire, so he was a lot older than me. He actually retired just after I had it in my thesis.
And so it wasn’t like a friendship relationship, but it was a very supportive relationship from, of his side. And we also stayed in contact after he stopped working at university after he was retired. And yeah, and actually it was a good relationship, even though it all obviously also had some parts that were more challenging.
Amanda: You said that what made the relationship it sounds like what made the relationship work so was this sort of, this human level, this empathy what do you think a doctoral student can do to build this good relationship if their supervisor isn’t meeting them there with this great relationship or this strong level of empathy or the human feeling to it?
What could I do if I were a doctoral student and I wanted to build that? relationship or support or start a relationship or move my already existing relationship in that direction.
Marlies: Yeah. I think the first step always should be to check your own expectations. That means to find out what you actually expect from your supervisor.
And that often is on a subconscious level. If we don’t really reflect on it, we don’t, we often don’t know what we actually do expect from them. And then they’re disappointed if you don’t get it. And when I give workshops about the topic of the making the relationship with your supervisor a better one, I usually start with an exercise that I call the ideal supervisor, which is one where we actually look at what do you expect?
What, like, how would your ideal supervisor look like? So in an ideal world, and it doesn’t matter if you have one already or not, and you’re not thinking about the supervisor you already have, or the supervisors you already have, you’re actually thinking about in my ideal world, how would that person behave?
Would they ask me if I made progress or not? Would they hold me accountable or maybe not? Maybe they wouldn’t, they would give me lots of freedom. It can be something different for everyone. That’s the interesting thing. And then the second step is to check, to make the reality check and to actually see, does that person meet my expectations?
And It’s very likely that at least in some points, it doesn’t meet my expectations. So the third step would be to thinking about how making, how you can. So the third step would be to. work on making your relationship a better one. And the different means to do one is by having a better communication, communicating in a better way.
And the other one is by something I call managing up. That’s a term that comes from the business context. And it means that you’re managing a person that in a hurry. that in a hierarchy, that within a hierarchy has a higher position than you. And this can mean thinking about when do I approach them best?
When is the best time, like during the day, during the week to approach them? How do I approach them by which means of communication? Do they prefer to be called? Do they prefer if I show up in their office, whatever works best for them in this case, and not for you, I would use. So it’s really about a change of perspective and to put yourself in their shoes.
And think about what is their agenda, what are their goals and how can I use those also to meet their expectations? Because in order to have a good relationship, obviously it’s important that both people meet the expectations of the other ones, at least in the most crucial points. And yeah, so that would, the goal would be to have a better relationship.
Okay. I think the last sentence you can delete. Hang on, I’m going to, I’m going to just say one last sentence. So these would be the three steps I recommend. Check your expectations, check reality, and then work on making the relationship a better one by managing up and by having a better communication.
Amanda: That’s excellent advice. I would like to ask you back to your own supervisor relationship. Were there any challenges that you faced or maybe something that you would do differently, looking back, even, or maybe at the time you thought this isn’t working for me maybe what you had to start learning these strategies.
What didn’t go so well.
Marlies: Yeah, I think I’m not, I wasn’t bad at communicating, but I still could have been better at it because my supervisor was a very, or is a very knowledgeable person. He just had this vast knowledge, not just in the field where I was doing my PhD in, but in like pretty much all the other fields there as well.
History was like a field where he had a lot of knowledge and he often would connect, if he would, Tell him something about your thesis. He would connect that to whatever. This queen in the 17th century, and to be honest, often I just didn’t have any idea what he was talking about, but I also didn’t have the guts to ask because I think often imposter syndrome is kicking in those moments and, oh, if I ask him, and maybe that’s a really important queen, and I should know her, and I should understand why this queen connects with my, Thesis, which is set in the presence, which doesn’t have nothing to do with history.
And I think it would have been a good idea to actually ask him right out and say, I don’t really understand the connection. Could you explain to me what that person has to do with my thesis? And then also another anecdote I would like to share, because that would have really saved me lots of work is.
After I did the last revision of my draft and beforehand in my thesis, he told me, like, all the things I mark when I read your chapters, and he had this kind of Yeah, because I said he has had this, I mentioned that he had a lot of knowledge and that he connected your topic with like many other topics.
And he did that when revising my chapters as well, and would make like footnotes like you could mention this queen from the 17th century here, or this theory. And he told me that was all the marks of all the notes I made on your chapter. These are all just recommendations. You choose whatever you want to use.
What you don’t want to use, and I felt every little note he made, I had to research and try to convert that into something that enters the chapter. So that would have been a really good idea to actually ask him, is that just, are those just recommendations or do you actually want me to use that for my thesis?
Amanda: It’s very interesting and I think also a really common problem is how much can I push back or when can I ask questions? What will people think about me if I ask questions? What will people think about me if I say no? And that connects really well to the next question we have, which is, can you speak up to your supervisor?
They’re grading you. They might be your boss. Are you allowed to say no to someone who is your, is you’re in charge of your future, basically paying your salary maybe. And how do you handle that?
Marlies: Yeah, that’s a very good question. And I completely understand that many doctoral students hesitate when it comes to saying no to your supervisor.
And for good reason. The reasons you just mentioned, they’re paying your salary, maybe they’re creating you. So it’s not so easy to say no. But I think that making your doctorate is not only a chance to grow. As a scientist, but also as a human being, and it’s very important to learn to set boundaries.
I also think that supervisors are not interested to ditch someone just because they say they cannot or they don’t do not want to do something. I think that’s a fear. Some doctoral students might have, but it’s not very likely, or it’s very unlikely that they would actually consider kicking you out just because you said no.
It might be the other case that they respect you more because you do. And then the other thing I want to mention is that it’s also good to think about how you phrase. It doesn’t need to be. a really clear and strict no in every case. Maybe you want to say, yes, but only I can only do this part of the task you’re giving me, or yes, I can do it, but only next week.
So that’s a no, I’m not doing it right now also, but you’re not saying no. It could also be, I can’t do whatever you’re asking me right now, but I could instead do it. Do this and this. So giving them another alternative, what you’re actually able to do, because often people don’t know what’s on your, what’s on your agenda.
And maybe they don’t even, they’re not even aware of you’re having an important deadline tomorrow. So you could also explain, you could say, I can’t do that tonight because I have to finish this paper, the deadlines tomorrow, for example.
Amanda: That’s such great advice and I would just agree with it and I think that’s one strategy for really good communication is maybe not assuming what the other person thinks and really asking them or providing information for them.
What are some other strategies that you would maybe share for good communication just in general but with your supervisor specifically?
Marlies: Yeah, as you already mentioned, not assuming you know what they think is a very good advice already, so if you have doubts, always clarify, because misunderstanding is often a really good ground for conflicts that are not necessary, because you might be on the same page, but you don’t know it, because You never asked.
And then some other tips I could give to our listeners are, is that starting the conversation on a positive note, even though you might have a conflict situation. So you don’t start right away with the conflict. You don’t go into the conversation and say, I really don’t like that you did this and this. I wouldn’t say that anyway, but try to start the conversation on a positive or at least a neutral note. You could do some small talk and just say, Oh, it’s so hot today. That’s not a positive note, but that’s something you might feel you have in common. So you’re still starting the conversation more positively than starting with the conflict directly.
Then I think it’s very important to be clear in your communication, to be friendly, but to really say what you mean. So don’t talk around it all the time, because that means that maybe the other person doesn’t understand what you’re actually talking about. Then another one, which is really cruel, is that you actually listen actively.
What sometimes happens if, especially if it’s a conflict conversation, and it doesn’t always need to be a conflict conversation, but I think that’s like the, one of the worst ones. So it’s important to actually talk about those as well. And that’s why I’m using it as an example. But what happens is that while the other person talks in our head, we are already preparing our next argument.
And we’re not listening to what they say. And you can imagine that it’s very difficult to have a good conversation. If you don’t listen to what the other person says, and obviously that goes in both ways that goes for the other person as well, but that’s something you cannot influence. And then something else is to be prepared.
So supervisors are usually very busy people. So you don’t want to ask some questions where you could find out the answer yourself within five minutes using Google. So try to Like everything you can find out by yourself, do that beforehand, be prepared. Be prepared also means if you go into conversation, bring all the materials you might need during the conversation.
For example, I don’t know, print out your chapter, have it ready on your computer, on your laptop. It means also have something with you to take notes. And then if it’s an important conversation, because The outcome is very important, or because it’s a conflict, you can also practice the conversation with someone else in a role play.
This can be a friend, it could be a colleague, someone you trust, and you just tell them, Okay, I want you to play my supervisor. This person is like that and that. You could, for example, say, Okay, usually my supervisor is quite harsh, so they know how they should play that person. And then you practice the conversation.
You come into the room and you say, Hi, it’s so hot today or whatever. And then you start and you’re playing this conversation and then you get feedback from the other person about how they perceived you during that conversation and what you could do to actually make the conversation even better when you have it with your supervisor in the future.
Amanda: I think that’s such a great idea to get someone to practice it with you because so often I feel like a lot of people are so worried and if you practice it with someone and tell them to assume that you’re the other person is a nice person at heart, right? And not to try and pretend to be the evil supervisor.
Usually what comes out Is that they’re going to react in a nicer way than you think. So that’s such a good idea. And
Marlies: And obviously you don’t want to do that with every conversation. But as I said, if it’s an important conversation, if you’re very insecure. And the nice thing is also you’re getting better.
You’re practicing it. You’re having the real conversation and every time you do so you’re getting better at it. So in the future, you might not have to do that. While right now it might feel like a good solution for you.
Amanda: Yeah. And it’s a skill that you need, not just in working with your supervisor, but it’ll be important later on the more comfortable you feel with these conversations, the easier it will be.
And in many work related and maybe even personal situations in your life. Yeah. So what happens, I still go back to, you mentioned you had this It’s nice supervisor, you would say, I felt really comfortable with, it didn’t always maybe work perfectly, but it was a generally a good relationship, but that’s not always the case.
And so what do you do if this relationship is just really bad? If you have the feeling that they don’t respect you, that you’re not getting maybe what you need and you don’t really see a way to make that better. It’s just not a good fit. What do you recommend that someone can do? What can they do? What options are available?
Marlies: Yeah, you can try all the things I already mentioned, trying to have a better communication, trying to managing up, but if nothing that you do helps and this person just doesn’t respond in a way you needed and you’re feeling bad every time you talk to them or you go to work and see them, It might, you might want to consider changing your supervisor.
It’s something that is possible. It’s not easy to do, but it’s definitely possible to change your supervisor. And I would always consider also how much of your doctorate you have left. If you’re in the very beginning and you feel like the relationship is really bad, talk to someone else. Talk to the other doctoral candidates if they’re happy or not.
And if they all feel the same, maybe they’re happy because they need a different kind of supervisor as you do. Maybe they’re all unhappy, but it can give you more of a feeling if your perception of how this person is treating you is real or not. And then if you’re like, if you’re about to hand in your thesis, I don’t know if you’re planning to hand in your thesis in two months, I would definitely think about it more than once or twice if you want to change your supervisor, because it’s going to delay the process.
And you’re almost done. But it’s an option. And I think it’s always good to know this option exists that your supervisor can be changed. Then another option is to look for help from the outside, especially if there’s any kind of power abuse involved, or if you feel discriminated, there are different institutions, different departments at every university and also at the FU where you can go to.
If that happens, for example, for this podcast, for the DRS podcast, I made an interview with Professor Heberle, who’s the central ombudsperson at the FU. And there’s another, there are like ombudsperson people, ombudspeople at every department as well. So if you have an issue with your supervisor, like a conflict situation, for example, because They told you would be the first author of a paper you’re publishing together, and then you’re handing it in and you saw that they put their own name first.
You might want to talk to them directly if you have that kind of relationship, but you could always also go to the Ombuds people and get their advice on the situation. And also for cases of discrimination, there is. Is a place like an anti discrimination advice and support department at the FU where you can go to as well.
So getting help from the outside in order to get a better perspective on your situation is a good idea. Knowing that you can change a supervisor and yeah, those are your options basically here.
Amanda: Thanks. And I really appreciate that you said that you can change your supervisor. I think it’s really important to hear that because a lot of people think I started this, so I have to stick with it until the end.
And we’re going to interview some people who’ve changed their supervisor in the process in our first season of the podcast. All right. It’s not something that’s impossible. It definitely can be done and you should not suffer. And so we, when we want you to finish the PhD and still be ready to do cool things with your, with science or with other stuff as you choose and not feel like this process was just so draining.
That you’re not comfortable continuing in any workplace, right? So don’t suffer needlessly. I have a few more questions for you. The first one is, you mentioned some resources about what you can do if your relationship is really bad. What other resources or support systems are available for students who might just be having a few challenges?
And building a relationship with their supervisor, maybe it’s not terrible yet. They don’t have discrimination or they’re not feeling like they need the ombudsperson. It’s not like they, they just are not feeling so great about their relationship with their supervisor.
Marlies: Yeah, I think the exercise I mentioned in the beginning, the one about the ideal supervisor and finding out what the expectations actually are is really helpful because then you can also look at the list you made and check if which points does my supervisor what things does my supervisor not want to give me, or he or she cannot give them to me, maybe also.
That was the case, for example, with my supervisor, that I did an interdisciplinary doctorate, and I knew that there was just one discipline he wouldn’t know about. And he told me that straight away as well, in the beginning, this part, I won’t be able to help you. So my ideal supervisor, obviously, would have had this knowledge he didn’t have.
What I did in this case, I was looking for a mentor. I was participating in a mentoring program for doctoral candidates. And I just looked for a mentor who’s actually coming from that discipline to actually check that box. I couldn’t check like the, to fulfill that need I had, my supervisor couldn’t give me.
And you can do that obviously with other resources, not only with mentors, but also, for example, visiting workshops. For example, let’s say, you’re using a method and you’re not sure how to use it and your supervisor is also not able to explain it to you or he or she doesn’t have the time to do, doesn’t see him or herself in the role to explain a method to you, you can look at, is there actually, A workshop covering that topic I can visit or a course.
Can I do a course to do so in order to get that knowledge I need. So just check what other resources there are out there that could cover the needs I have that my supervisor cannot cover. And. I think that’s what I pretty much what I wanted to say. Thanks.
Amanda: I also would do a little bit of advertising here because we have some workshops in our workshop series that is connected to this podcast.
So we have some workshops that are on different topics. I know that there is one, for example, that I’m doing that’s about intercultural relationships with your supervisor. So if you’re not from Germany and your supervisor’s from Germany, and you want to come and learn about how that can affect the supervisor, that’s a
Marlies: great
Amanda: Supervisee relationship.
Marlies: People interested in this topic, I occasionally give workshops about this topic, about making the relationship with your supervisor better. And you’re free to visit workshops at other universities as well. So even if you are doing your PhD, your doctorate at the FU or at the Charité. Or at the HU, you can visit those workshops as well.
So if that’s a topic you’re really interested in, or if you have a difficult relationship with your supervisor, you might want to visit this workshop and just check out when the next one is. It’s usually either a half day or full day workshop where we do role plays as well. So we actually go, we do the things I told you about today, we go, we do the role play and we try to find out how you can make your communication better with your own supervisor.
Amanda: So my second to last question for you is, what do you do? So imagine you haven’t had contact with your supervisor in a really long time and you’re like, Oh, this is, I don’t know if I can talk to them. I feel really intimidated. You might even worry that they have forgotten about you or that they’re annoyed that you didn’t get in touch.
What can you do to make that happen? Yeah,
Marlies: that’s a very good question because I know that’s the situation many doctoral students, especially the ones who don’t work at university have. I often have that situation in coaching, that people tell me I haven’t had contact with my supervisor for a month and sometimes even for years, and the longer the wait, the harder it gets, right?
Usually what I ask them is, when was the last time you had contact? Often they still know. Or they tell me, yeah, I wrote him or her an email and they never responded. And then when I ask, did you write a follow up question? Did you write a follow up email and I never did that. So sometimes it’s just that email got lost and they didn’t respond to you because they think you’re a stupid person or they don’t like you but just because they didn’t read your email or they didn’t answer it straight away and then they forgot to do then also I think it’s important to keep in mind that they are very likely not to think about you all the time. So they don’t think, ah, this person didn’t get back to me. Maybe they think about you occasionally, but they usually, you’re probably not the biggest issue in their life. So they also, yeah, then might not be, hang on, how do I phrase it?
So I think it’s important to have that into account, that they might not think about you as much as you fear or as you think. Okay, now let’s come to actual solutions. What can you do to make it easier to get back into contact with them? It might be a good idea to find a reason to contact them. Let’s see.
Okay. It would be December, Christmas is coming up. Maybe you want to send them a Christmas card or a Christmas email and say, I just want to say Merry Christmas. And by the way, I’m still doing my doctorate. And then I think it’s also a good idea to write them what they can expect and to show engagement, to tell them what you’re working on, what you want to work on the next month, actually prove that you’re still on track that you’re still doing your stuff.
You might also want to give them an explanation. You don’t have to, but you, if you feel better doing that, you might want to do that and tell them why you didn’t, why you haven’t been in contact. Maybe you got a child and you have a very good reason why you haven’t been in contact or you have been sick or you changed jobs or whatever.
So you can give them an explanation. And I also think it’s good to Tell them what you actually want. So do you want to have a meeting? When could that happen? The next two months or whenever you feel it’s a good time? What do you want to do at that meeting? What do you want to discuss? And if you feel really insecure?
It might be a good idea to give that mail to someone and say, how did it, how does it sound? Because you also don’t really want to sound, hang on, because you also don’t want to sound too humble maybe. So just give that email to someone else and ask them, what do you think about that mail? How would you, Feel if you receive that mail being my supervisor in case you feel insecure and then you can still make some adjustments and how you phrase things in order to send out that mail with a good feeling.
Or another, hang on, I just had another idea. Another option might also be to try to meet them at an event that’s taking place anyway, which could be a colloquium or maybe a conference where you know you could meet them and get in touch that way if that’s something that feels easier for you than writing an email or making a call.
Amanda: That’s a great point. And that’s great advice. So I have one more question for you. And that is, if you would think back into your past work experience, maybe back to your doctorate or to work experience that you’ve had, where you’ve had a supervisor or a boss, what advice would you give your past self from where you are today?
So what is something that you maybe would go back and tell your past self about what they’re doing? If you could say one thing to them, if you could time travel back to them, what is one thing that you would say?
Marlies: I think I would tell myself Don’t worry too much. Have trust in that things will work out the way they are meant to work out or in a good way and that also maybe if you have a bad situation, if you don’t feel good at a given point of time, if you have a conflict situation or I don’t know, your boss or your, my supervisor told me he wasn’t happy with something, this will pass.
It’s also not. so important. Like me, my personality, I have the doctorate is not the only thing. And I think that’s something that often happens during your PhD, that it feels like the most important thing, like the thing that defines you. And you really make yourself your well being up to a certain point, dependent on that other person’s opinion about your work.
And it almost feels like the person is judging you as a person and not your work. Maybe I should delete the always because it sometimes it feels like you’re a good person or you’re a bad person. If you wrote a good chapter, a bad chapter, a good paper, a bad paper. And that’s something that also happens to me during my own doctorate that, I very much define myself by my thesis. and if other people liked it or not, or gave me good feedback or not. And I think it’s important to actually separate yourself a little bit from that, and to acknowledge that you’re already a full person, you’re a great person, no matter if other people acknowledge what you’ve done there or not.
You’ve done your best, and if you made a mistake or if something, you wrote a chapter which is not as good as it could be, you can still go back and rewrite it and make it better. So that’s always an option too. Yeah, so I think that’s the advice I would give to myself if I could travel back in time.
Amanda: Thank you, Marlies.
Marlies: Thanks a lot, Amanda.

S03, Episode 2: „Good supervision means that you adapt to the needs of the doctoral candidates.“

Professor Dr. Cornelia Reiher was one of two recipients of the Supervisor Award 2023, an award presented annually by the Dahlem Research School for exceptional supervision of doctoral researchers. In this episode, Professor Reiher talks about what good supervision entails for her, how she supports her doctoral researchers and what she expects from them. We also talked about how she and her doctoral researchers dealt with the challenges during the pandemic, which particularly affected them due to their field research in Japan. Professor Reiher emphasizes the importance of recreational breaks and a good work-life balance in order not to lose creativity in the scientific creative process.

HIGHLIGHTS

„You can’t be creative and productive 24/7. That’s why these recovery phases are immensely important, especially for creative ideas. I think a lot of people, myself included, have the best ideas in their free time and not when they’re staring desperately at a screen.“

„The most important factor is not to lose the passion and enthusiasm for the project.“

AUDIO

TRANSCRIPT

INTRO
Welcome to a new episode of the Dahlem Research School podcast. I am Dr. Marlies Klamt and I am happy to accompany you through today’s episode.
In this episode, you can expect another exciting interview with one of two winners of the Supervision Award, Professor Cornelia Reiher, who is a Japanologist at the FU Berlin and won the award in fall 2023.

In this interview we talk about the following:

How she plans to use the prize money

What is generally important to her when supervising doctoral researchers

What challenges she and her doctoral researchers, who are all doing field research, have faced during the pandemic and how they have dealt with these challenges

What she wishes from her doctoral researchers

Why she herself completed her doctorate on the train

And how she assesses the situation of doctoral researcher parents – and I can already tell you, more positively than I would have thought.

I also found her attitude to work-life balance, which we talk about at the end of the interview, particularly interesting.

I hope you enjoy listening to it now.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
Prof. Reiher, please introduce yourself briefly.

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
I am a professor of Japanese Studies at the Free University of Berlin. My work focuses on the society and politics of contemporary Japan. And I deal with two larger topics. One is food and nutrition in Japan, but also culinary globalization. So I also have a project on Japanese cuisine in Berlin.

At the same time, the other is Japan’s rural areas. I am particularly interested in finding out how rural areas in Japan are changing against the backdrop of demographic change.

The two topics combine the larger issue of migration, i.e. on the one hand transnational migration of Japanese people to Germany, for example, and on the other hand urban-rural migration of Japanese people within Japan, as well as the role of transnational migrants in rural Japan.

Another topic I have dealt with a lot in recent years is qualitative methods in Japan research. It’s more about how do we actually research Japan? And in this context, I have also published a handbook that doctoral researchers also like to work with.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
This is already the perfect segue, because even though that sounds like a very exciting field of research, we are going to talk about something else today, and that is that you have won an award for the exceptionally good supervision of doctoral researchers. How many doctoral researchers are you currently supervising?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
There are currently five. Two are in a DFG project and the other three are at the Graduate School of East Asian Studies, where I am PI.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
How did you find out that you had won the DRS Supervision Award and what was your first thought?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Well, I received an email and thought, oh wow, I’m really pleased that my work has been recognized. Especially from the doctoral researchers who were allowed to nominate me. In other words, it’s really nice when doctoral researchers are satisfied, because that’s not a given. After all, a doctorate is a fairly long-term, difficult and not entirely easy undertaking. A time with many ups and downs. And if the doctoral researchers then feel that they are well supported by their supervisor, i.e. by me, then I am extremely pleased.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
I think that was a very nice recognition that comes with the award, but it also comes with a payout of 2,000 euros, which is intended for the further promotion of young scientists. How did you use the money, or how do you plan to use it in the future?

Well, I received an email and thought, oh wow, I’m really pleased that my work has been recognized. Especially from the doctoral researchers who nominated me. In other words, it’s really nice when doctoral researchers are satisfied, because that’s not a given. After all, a doctorate is a fairly long-term, difficult and not entirely easy undertaking. A time with many ups and downs. And if the doctoral researchers then feel that they are well supported by their supervisor, i.e. by me, then I am extremely pleased.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
I think that was a very nice recognition that comes with the award, but it also comes with a payout of 2,000 euros, which is intended for the further promotion of young scientists. How did you use the money, or how do you plan to use it in the future?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Yes, I think there are two big issues for which there is never enough money: proofreading the dissertations. One of my doctoral researchers is a native English speaker, but they all write in English. This means that it’s always nice to have the English proofread by a professional at the end if there’s a bit of money available. That’s one option I’m thinking about.
The other is, of course, conference travel. Because when the results are actually available, it’s nice to take them out into the world and present them to a specialist audience. So those are the two thoughts I have at the moment. I will discuss this with the doctoral researchers to see what their needs are.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
I think that’s two great ideas and of course it’s also great that you then want to discuss this with the doctoral researchers. Can you still remember the first doctoral researchers you supervised and what it was like to suddenly be on the other side and guide someone in their scientific work? And what challenges, but perhaps also what wonderful moments can you remember?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
This is quite a good time for this question because next week the first doctoral researcher I have ever supervised will be defending her dissertation. That was a bit of a lengthy process, because maybe I can say something about corona afterwards. This has been a very, very difficult time for Japanologists, especially those who have to conduct field research in Japan. I came to the FU in 2014 to teach at the graduate school and to get involved. That means that I was already involved in teaching doctoral researchers before I was officially allowed to supervise the first doctoral student, so it wasn’t the first time that I was allowed to supervise and advise doctoral researchers.
But being the first doctoral researcher of my own was of course a very intense experience. It wasn’t an easy path for either of us, precisely because of the many ups and downs. At some point, we ran out of funding and then, or actually especially during the pandemic, field research was not possible, so we had to go through some ups and downs together, not only intellectually but also personally.
After all, it wasn’t just the doctoral researchers who were handicapped during this time, but of course also the researchers who were already a bit further along. That affected me just as much as my doctoral researchers. And in this respect, I am very pleased that, despite these many hurdles and obstacles, it has now come to a successful conclusion.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
Then I’ll keep my fingers crossed that the defense goes well next week. And I will ask you the question about corona and Japanese studies, but first I would like to talk a little more about doctoral supervision. I would be interested to know how you rate the importance of good supervision for the success of a doctorate.

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Well, good supervision helps when there are problems, of course. I assume that most doctoral researchers are motivated to start because they are interested in working on a research topic in depth. This means that intrinsic motivation is usually very strong, especially at the beginning. But then, of course, such a doctorate proceeds in phases. Before the field research, most doctoral researchers are still in relatively good spirits, optimistically happy that they are now doctoral researchers. Especially in connection with the graduate school, you get to know a lot of new people, the Dahlem Research School offers fabulous workshops and then suddenly you’re all alone in the field.
And it may not work out the way you had imagined. Maybe nobody wants to conduct interviews, maybe access to the field is difficult. There are all kinds of intercultural problems that can arise and perhaps personal problems, loneliness, whatever. And I think it’s important to have good support. So that there is a relationship of trust, that you can turn to your doctoral supervisor to talk about it openly, to address it.
At the same time, however, and this is the strength of the graduate schools, I also point out, for example, that peer groups are very important because doctoral students never have this experience alone. And then simply getting support from other doctoral researchersis important. Interestingly, however, sometimes doctoral candidates in this situation don’t even realize that this is a possibility and that they can provide the impetus. And this also applies to the other phase after the field research, which is often very enjoyable, actually analyzing and writing the data. It’s quite a lonely process at your desk, after you’ve been on the road a lot and perhaps had some great adventures, to then say „make writing social“, i.e. write together, get together in writing groups, meet up, you don’t have to go through it alone. That’s an impulse that a good tutor should also give.
And of course I read everything I receive and comment on it openly and honestly. And of course that prevents situations in which a dissertation is submitted and then perhaps fails because nobody looked at it beforehand.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
Yes, I agree with you 100 percent. Both in terms of the fact that you don’t have to do a doctorate alone. I always say that you don’t have to do a doctorate alone, just write your thesis alone. But also that it is good to exchange ideas with each other and that the supervisor is not the only person who can provide support.
Do you think there are also areas where it is not appropriate for them to provide support, where you say that the person doing the doctorate has to do it alone?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
I see a doctorate as a process in which you learn to conduct research independently. And that of course also means that you have to establish contacts in the field independently and of course be able to work independently with the data and acquire certain methodological skills yourself, for example, if you don’t have them.
Of course, there are all kinds of offers for this, which I can also point out. But the work of data collection and data analysis can, of course, only be carried out independently by the doctoral student with support.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
In my experience, the vast majority of doctoral candidates have problems with the fact that they don’t have enough accountability, i.e. commitment. Have you established structures to regularly review the progress of your doctoral students or do you say that this is now an area that is their responsibility?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Here I would differentiate a little between doctoral researchers at the graduate school, who are ultimately committed to themselves and their sponsor, and doctoral students who are working on a research project. I have to write a report at the end and I have to present the results and they are employed directly by me. I make sure that certain milestones are met or achievements are made. More so than with doctoral researchers, who can actually work on a free topic at the graduate school. But if I don’t hear anything for a while, I ask. At the same time, the graduate school also has milestones. So sometimes papers are due or literature reports and things like that, so you have to be careful that the doctoral researchers don’t get lost.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
If you had to describe in one sentence what kind of supervisor you are or would like to be, what would that sentence be?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Good supervision means that you adapt to the needs of the doctoral candidates.

Marlies Klamt:
And thinking the other way around, what does your ideal doctoral researchers look like? What expectations do you have of them? What skills should they have, but perhaps also what human values?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Yes, ideally doctoral candidates are creative, passionate about their subject, interested and full of a thirst for knowledge and ideally friendly and cooperative.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
That’s a bit different for everyone. I think your colleagues would perhaps give a different answer, but that’s exactly right. If you think back to your own doctoral studies, what influence do you think your relationship with your supervisor(s) back then had on how you work with doctoral researchers today and how you lead and guide them?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
I myself did my doctorate in a Research Training Group and I can say that I really appreciated this experience of working together, and in some cases suffering through the doctoral period. That’s why it’s so important to me to encourage doctoral students today to get together with their peers, with their fellow researchers, to exchange ideas, perhaps even to plan their first publications together, to organize workshops. And perhaps also to be aware that these are the networks that may endure and become important in the future, regardless of whether they work in academia or perhaps outside academia.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
Do you see a change in the function of supervisors of doctoral researchers? Do you think that supervision is different today than it was perhaps ten or 20 years ago?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Well, I only have one German doctoral researcher, all the others are international doctoral candidates. And I think that, on the one hand, there is certainly a change over time, but on the other hand, there are also different doctoral cultures that we have to deal with. I think that the expectations of supervisors are sometimes very different from what I experienced myself. I had a lot of freedom. I also didn’t expect my doctoral supervisor to read everything I sent. I always knew that the professors I was dealing with at the time were all very busy.
Today, the expectation is more that doctoral researchers want to play it safe in my opinion, prefer to ask again, want to be absolutely sure that they are going in the right direction, don’t make any mistakes. And I would perhaps also like to see a little more self-confidence and a little more freedom to be creative and solve the problem yourself first, or perhaps with the help of peers. In other words, to dare to be more proactive again.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
I find it very exciting that you have just mentioned that your working group or the group of doctoral researchers that you supervise is very international. How do you deal with the fact that there are perhaps very different expectations and approaches?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
This is a work in progress. Our working language is English. And we come across problems from time to time that I would never have thought of. The only thing we can do is to talk openly with each other and explain how the German university system works, perhaps also how the job market works, and hope that the next problem, which is sure to come, will be addressed just as openly. And I believe that a basis of trust and direct communication is also important here. Sometimes that works more, sometimes less well.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
But all your doctoral researchers are on site with you in Berlin when you’re not doing field research in Japan?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Yes and no. So perhaps we will also have to address the tiresome issue of funding. Some of the doctoral researchers whose scholarships or positions have expired and who are not yet finished are no longer on site. So at the moment I’m in a phase where only three of the doctoral researchers are still here on site, two are no longer, so in principle we are now doing more of what we practiced during the pandemic, namely communicating online. At the same time, these are also the strategies that we practiced during the field research. In this respect, it no longer seems so unusual to me, but is really, really helpful.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
Let’s stay directly on the subject of funding. What challenges do you see, or perhaps you have seen, during corona, but also now in particular?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Yes, first of all, scholarships are of course rare, especially for foreign students. The graduate school where I am a PI receives DAAD scholarships and China Scholarship Council scholarships, but these are not available to everyone interested in doing a doctorate, for example not to German citizens. And secondly, you can of course raise third-party funds to supervise doctoral researchers. But these then expire. This means that the duration of a doctorate is clearly limited, usually to three years. And for projects with intensive field research, this is actually relatively unrealistic and almost impossible to achieve. And that’s why it would of course be nice if the FU were to put a little more money into the graduate schools if it wants good doctoral researchers, but also good supervision.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
Could one solution then also be to narrow down the projects? In other words, not to do without field research, but to make the project smaller overall?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Yes, but a doctorate should also have a certain level. You certainly have to look at it on a case-by-case basis. Generally speaking, you never use all the data that you bring back from field research. Even if it’s tempting, of course, it won’t work. It’s also my job to curb some of the enthusiasm, to say, look what you have here, you can actually leave it as it is and save the rest for papers. But in the end, it just takes time. We work with Japanese informants, Japanese-language sources. So on the one hand, we have to take the foreign language component into account.
And on the other hand, field research is also something that you can’t plan well if there are problems somehow, that you can’t get access to the field, that the timing is perhaps also bad because it’s a time when no one can talk to you. Then you have to be a bit creative. I think the pandemic has also opened up many new opportunities for us that we perhaps hadn’t even considered before, namely that you can also conduct online interviews, that you can even do digital ethnography.
So these are all newer methods that, I believe, also benefit doctoral researchers. At the same time, what you just mentioned, namely the problem of too much data, does not solve the problem at all, but actually increases the amount of data and many doctoral researchers naturally feel overwhelmed by it, and here it is important to try to narrow things down by talking to each other.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
Do you do that in addition then, the online interviews for example, or could that also replace the field research on site?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
That depends on the topic. I have a project that I am currently supervising, which is mainly about what policymakers say about rural revitalization policies, so I don’t think you have to be on site. There are also a lot of written sources, policy papers and so on. But if you want to find out how people do certain things in their everyday lives, then it makes a lot of sense to be on the ground. We have now done a lot of hybrid ethnography. This means that we conducted online field research during the pandemic and were able to go back into the field afterwards.
And it’s very interesting to observe the differences. In other words, what you learn when you look at the online representation of various practices or online practices and what you don’t see. For example, sometimes you don’t even notice that people might be neighbors because it’s never been an issue. And many things that you would otherwise not even notice, you can actually only notice on site. That’s why I would argue in favor of maintaining field research, on-site.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
Yes, you’ve just said a lot about the situation during corona. Perhaps we can still talk a little more in detail about what the particular challenges were in your field, i.e. in Japanese Studies, during the pandemic and how you dealt with them?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Yes, with pleasure. Japan is one of the few countries where there was a complete ban on non-citizens entering the country between 2020 and 2022. Our project started in October 2020, so it was a challenge to get the doctoral researchers to Berlin in the first place. After a week in which I think we actually saw each other here on site, there was a new lockdown and we were really only able to meet online for six months.
That was of course difficult for many reasons. On the one hand for motivation, but also of course for getting to know each other. And especially for international doctoral researchers who were new to Berlin, it also meant that they didn’t get to know anyone and felt quite alone.
I then tried to solve this with a study group. We met online, sometimes every week during the pandemic. Since all of my doctoral researchers have something to do with migration and rural Japan, it worked out quite well and we invited more and more people or they somehow found us, so the study group became bigger and bigger, and more international.

And then we started a blog at the same time, so that the doctoral researchers, even if they couldn’t go into the field yet, could at least start writing small posts about what they had already read and what we had discussed, which helped them to get into writing, so that there was simply the feeling that a text was being created. And of course it was also a very good exercise. But there were always crises. The Japanese government briefly opened the borders, but closed them again immediately afterwards. This naturally led to a lot of uncertainty and increased psychological stress in the group.
And then we simply tried to support each other. We organized a small online Christmas party. So it was really more about giving social encouragement again and again and reminding people how we could perhaps carry out the project by other means. And then we came up with these digital tools. And that was good that we were able to continue the project at all, that the doctoral researchers were able to continue their doctorates, even if they were fortunately all able to travel to Japan again for real field research in 2022.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
And what delays did this cause? For some, it must have been almost two years, if you actually wanted to fly there at the time when the borders were closed?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Yes, that is not yet entirely foreseeable. We now have some work that is still in progress. I think it will take one to two years. There’s also parenthood, which often happens during a doctorate. In this respect, several factors have come together that have been challenging. But the great thing is that I also saw how wonderfully the doctoral researchers coped in the end, even though they may not have felt that way when it was difficult. So I think we really made the best of it and, above all, discovered new methods that we wouldn’t have thought of before. And I think we all grew together. And I thought that was very, very nice.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
So in the end, the result was a positive one, even if the general conditions weren’t exactly ideal.

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Well, if you now apply the criterion of rapid completion, then certainly not. But when it comes to intellectual growth, then I would say yes.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
Yes, and above all, you have now described it in such a way that you have developed strategies and methods that can be continued and are conceivable in the future, perhaps only as a supplement, which you would not have thought of before.
Fortunately, there was no pandemic during your own doctorate. What was the biggest challenge you faced during your own doctorate?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Well, I already had one child when I started my doctorate and then had a second and then my scholarship came to an end at some point. And then I had a full-time job in the last year in another city and basically finished my doctorate on the train. I don’t think that was so easy in retrospect. But I think that might be a good thing, because I can then show my doctoral researchers that it’s possible. So yes, perhaps as a positive example, even if ideally everything is a bit easier.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
Of course I didn’t know that, that you did your doctorate with two children. Perhaps you have some special advice for doctoral researcher parents?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Very difficult. My general impression is that parents are better organized in their doctoral studies. I believe that the procrastination time is simply not there. In other words, if I can shovel four hours off, then I work more concentrated during those four hours because I don’t know exactly when I’ll have time again. That’s why I believe that doctoral researcher parents, if they have a good support network, are actually not in such a bad position. And of course you have to ensure a work-life balance somehow, find a balance, allow yourself to do nothing for a day.
So I think that’s the biggest problem anyway, that a lot of time is wasted being ashamed that you haven’t done anything. That’s okay. And then you might feel refreshed and get a lot more done. And it’s not just assembly line work. There are days when creativity doesn’t flow and it’s difficult. And then it’s okay to say, okay, I’ll take a break for today and pick my child up from daycare earlier and do something nice and then things will work out better tomorrow. But all the small and big disasters when the child gets sick and there’s a deadline, how to deal with it successfully, I don’t think there’s a magic formula. Unfortunately.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
I am a great advocate of taking regular vacations and days off. I mean regularly, every week – not the vacation, but the days off, to simply recharge the batteries and then move forward better and with more energy. How do you see it? Have you ever had to send a doctoral researcher on vacation? Do you say that’s their responsibility? Or how do you talk to your doctoral researchers about the fact that time off can perhaps also be an important thing, and one without a guilty conscience?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Of course, I can’t send anyone on vacation, but there have been situations where doctoral researchers who are extremely exhausted, especially during field research, have given feedback that they can’t do any more. And then, of course, I’ve told them to take a few days off. I see it the same way you do. It’s extremely important. You can’t be creative and productive 24/7. And that’s why these recovery phases are immensely important, especially for creative ideas. I think a lot of people, myself included, have the best ideas in their free time and not when they’re staring desperately at a screen.

Dr. Marlies Klamt:
Yes, I absolutely agree with you. Is there another important point, an important area that I forgot to mention, that we should definitely talk about today?

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Yes, I think it is perhaps important for doctoral researchers, when they are desperate, to simply remember again the passion with which they started the project and the curiosity. I always find it helpful to perhaps take another look at the first synopsis. Most of the time you end up there again in a roundabout way anyway, which I find very interesting. So I think it’s always good to remember why you started, even if it’s difficult at the time. The most important thing is not to lose your passion and enthusiasm for the project.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: I think that’s a very nice thing to say at the end. Thank you very much, Professor Reiher, for this interview.

Prof. Dr. Reiher:
Thank you very much.

OUTRO
If you enjoyed this episode, please listen to the other episodes as well. For example, there are more interviews on the topic of good doctoral supervision that you can listen to and also an episode in which you can find out what you can do as a doctoral candidate to build a good relationship with your supervisor.
This was Dr. Marlies Klamt for the DRS Podcast, the podcast of the Dahlem Research School of Freie Universität Berlin.

S02 Episode 7: Cracking the German job market as an international doctoral researcher

In this episode, we’re not just unraveling the mysteries of job applications in Germany. We are arming you with tools, with strategies for planning your career, no matter where you’re from. Get ready for some insights into the German job market – we are covering aspects you might not have even considered.

Highlights

„Anything that you are doing in your life is, is experience and it’s just that you need to be able to connect the thing that you that you want to do to something that you’ve done.“

„I’ve never worked with anyone who has zero hands-on experience. You all have so much experience and what we tend to underestimate is, all of the work that you’ve done in your PhD, in your master’s, even in your bachelor’s, you have worked with other people to do things…“

„I think it’s really, really important that you sit down as early as you can. Give yourself the gift of the time that you will invest in your own career planning.“

from our interview with Amanda Wichert

Audio

Download or listen to the audio version of the podcast here.

Links

transcript

Marlies: Hello and a warm welcome to the DRS podcast brought to you by the Dahlem research school. I’m your host, Dr. Marlies Klamt and today’s episode is extra special because I’m joined by someone you probably already know: Amanda Wichert. Amanda is not only a fellow host of this podcast but also an expert in cross-cultural carriers.
And guess what? We here to talk about cracking the German job market as an international doctoral student. In this episode, we’re not just unraveling the mysteries of job applications in Germany. We are arming you with tools, with strategies for planning your career, no matter where you’re from.
Here’s a sneak peek of what’s on the menu for today. Get ready for Amanda`s insights into the German job market covering aspects you might not even have thought about. We are diving deep into the skills and experiences you need while Amanda offers guidance and strategies for those who lack them. Or who think they might lack them, because sometimes that’s not even the case, you just don’t know yet.
Ever wondered if German is a must when applying for a job in Germany. Stick around to find out Amanda’s take on whether a positive answer to the question „Sprechen Sie Deutsch?“ is a must.
One of the wonderful long words we have in German is „Wissenschaftszeitvertraggesetz“ Yep. This is really only one word and it refers to a law that for many doctoral students is very relevant. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry. Amanda sheds light on it.
Another aspect we talked about is whether or not it makes sense to do a postdoc after finishing your doctorate. Buckle up for this enlightening interview, we’re here to fill your ears with lots of information and with lots of practical tips. Enjoy the interview with Amanda Wichert.
I’m very excited to have you as a guest in our podcast today with this episode that is especially addressed at international doctoral students who are wondering how to get into the German job market.
Amanda, I have lots of questions prepared for you, but before we get started, please let our listeners know who you are and what’s your profession.
Amanda: If you’ve been listening to our podcast, you maybe heard my voice before because I am the other podcast host. But when I’m not doing this Dahlem Research School podcast, I offer trainings and coachings on a couple different topics.
You know organizing yourself, well-being at work. But my main topic is cross-cultural careers, so trying to figure out how to successfully launch your career in a new and international setting. And I work quite a lot with doctoral students and postdocs on this topic here at the university.
Marlies: That sounds very interesting and that makes you a real expert for our topic today. I know that many of our podcast listeners come from all over the world and every job market has its own rules and particularities. What would you say is special about the German job market, how is it different from the international job market?
Amanda: So one of the things that I think is really surprising to people that come to Germany, and I know it was really surprising for me when I first came here because I came from the US in 2008 and I thought, well, I can just keep doing the thing that I was doing before, and I was really surprised learn that that’s not really how Germany works.
So Germany still has a very structured job market and it’s a really specific job market and what I mean by that is that most people, not everybody, but most people in Germany do the thing that they studied. So there’s still a lot of connection between whatever it is that you’ve studied and whatever it is you’re gonna do.
And more so than in other job markets, there’s not as much flexibility, so people don’t usually change their careers as much. And this is really changing. So with the startups and with just the globalization of the job market, I think that in, maybe even in like five to 10 years, we’ll see a huge difference here in Germany.
But we’re still at a place where people are really looking at what did you study and what did you do before and how is that connected to what you do next as opposed to sort of what success have you had, which is sort of what we’re looking at in the US or, or are you well-rounded or you know, are you enthusiastic?
It’s much more about how does your profile actually fit the job you’re looking at.
Marlies: I can imagine that that also has some effects on the job application process itself. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the job application process in Germany, and if there are any specific requirements or expectations that have to do with what you just explained to us, that might not be very common to everybody.
Amanda: So one of the big things that German companies still want that’s actually really surprising to non Germans to international applicants is this photo, right? And I think the photo is sort of maybe, you know, not a huge element, but it’s kind of a thing that is a, a big symbol for me of the difference between what is expected in the international market and what’s expected in Germany.
So if you’re a German and you’re applying at a German company and you know, you’re looking at a very traditional German employer. You will almost always be expected to include a photo. And when I talk to German hiring managers or German employers and I say, you know, what is the photo for?
And they’re like, oh, I just wanna see like, what do you look like? Are you friendly? Are you „sympathisch“ as this word in German that they’re looking at. And most international employers in Germany don’t really want that photo. And I think again, it’s one of those things that’s changing. But, but there’s that and, and there’s also sort of this traditional German CV structure, which is not quite the same as the CV structure you have in the rest of the world. So in Germany, there’s not traditionally a profile or like a, a pitch at the top of your CV. Usually you just jump right in and it’s facts only, right? Like, so what did you do and where did you study?
And not so much this sort of How do we say it’s very optimistically phrased description of your skills or like a summary of your accomplishments. It’s much more about the facts. What did you do and how does that relate to the thing that you’re applying to?
Marlies: That’s a great bridge to my next question.
You already talked a bit about the CV structure, that it’s different. About the photo, which is still quite common to include, but would you say that there are also some specific qualification or maybe skill sets that German employers value, especially when hiring PhD graduates?
Amanda: When you talk to employers about PhD holders in Germany, so people with a doctorate and you say, what do you see? Right. The thing that they’re usually looking at is well first of all, they see you as an expert, in your field. You have, you know, cutting edge experience and information.
What they’re also a little bit worried about is sort of this we can say in English, this ivory tower you know, theoretical approach. And they are really looking to see, have you used your skills or your experience in a hands-on setting. So insofar as the job that you’re applying for isn’t extremely theoretical, and of course there are jobs in the industrial job market that are just theoretical, but even there, they’re looking for, you know, do you know how to do these things in a setting where it’s all about the application and not about just pure science, right? That’s the one thing.
The other thing they’re looking for is your interpersonal skills, your soft skills, and that might seem like, okay, well I’m an expert are these that important? They wanna see like, what did you do, where did you work with people so that they can feel more comfortable about your ability to integrate into this non-academic job setting, because the values are really different. And that’s one of the biggest things that we see when you work with people with a PhD in the industrial job market, is that they say, oh, these are the values of my employers.
They might be really, really different than the values that are central to academia. And so that would be what they’re most likely looking for. And then the other thing would be to look and see: What is it that I wanna do and what do most employers expect me to do in this type of role?
And something I would recommend is just go out and look at four or five job postings for the same position. It doesn’t matter what organization. That could be any organization ideally, like somewhat close to the organization that you’re looking at, but you know, a couple of job postings and look and see what are the key skills that they want for this role that’ll help you get to get a better idea of what really matters.
Marlies: That sounds like a really, really helpful strategy. I wanna quickly jump back to the first thing you just said that employers expect you to have some hands-on experience as well, some practical experience because I can feel like a lot of our listeners now kind of shivering and saying, oh, but I don’t have it.
I don’t, I don’t have any hands-on experience outside of university at least. So what can you actually do if that’s your situation and you’ve done your doctorate you can call yourself PhD, but you actually lacking still that practical job experience. How can you land your first job?
Amanda: I’m gonna kind of start off by saying you have hands-on experience. So I’ve never worked with anyone who has zero hands-on experience. You all have so much experience and what we tend to underestimate is, all of the work that you’ve done in your PhD, in your master’s, even in your bachelor’s, you have worked with other people to do things.
So that is hands-on. So where you’ve collaborated with people. Even if you’re, you know, saying, I’m just doing research maybe I’m in the social sciences or the humanities, and I’m maybe even just looking at text and I’m analyzing it. And you say, okay, I can’t really find the hands-on. The hands-on is when you work with other people. In that moment, you are using those skills that you’ll need to do your job later, and then all the other stuff that you’re doing at the university. So when you get involved in let’s say running a colloquium or giving talks or getting together with other students to solve problems in your department.
So you have just this example, it doesn not have to be at a company. It doesn’t have to be in an organization. It doesn’t have to be like a formal hands-on you know work experience because you already have that and it’s just looking for tasks and other kind of things that you can add to what you’re doing right now.
Or you think maybe I need a little bit more practice, then look for something that you can do in volunteering. Volunteering is a really easy way to do this. Get involved in like a student led startup. There’s a lot of them in Berlin. And just, you know, see, can I do this one thing?
Cause I want to try it out and see if I can do it on my own. And that is I think one of the best ways. Internships. You cannot do them in Germany as a student. So this surprises a lot of international PhD students. But if you are a PhD student in Germany, there is no legal or like regulatory framework for you to do an internship.
So you’d have to leave Germany and I actually don’t always recommend that unless there’s something that you really, really, really wanna do and you’re like, I know exactly what it is, and I found somebody that does it, I don’t know, in the UK or in Sweden, and you’re like, I’m gonna go over there and do it for a little bit.
That’s something you could do. But I wouldn’t call it an internship necessarily. I would maybe just think of it as like a, a collaboration or like a, you know, some kind of short work experience.
Marlies: So what I hear you say, it’s mostly about selling yourself better.
So you actually mostly have the experience, you have the skills, you just have to sell yourself in a way and make people believe that you actually do have them. And then also that if you’re still lacking experience, especially when you’re still doing your PhD, when you’re still a doctoral student and you’re not done yet, that you already think about strategically, what do I wanna do in the future? Do I still lack skills for the jobs I wanna apply to? And then try to get those skills, those experiences, by doing internships outside of Germany, doing some volunteering work or some other work experience you can get hold of.
Amanda: Yeah, exactly. PhD students focus a lot on, like, I don’t have a job, I don’t have any work experience.
Anything that you are doing in your life is, is experience and it’s just that you need to be able to connect the thing that you that you want to do to something that you’ve done.
That might be a paper that you wrote internationally with different people, and you had to kind of coordinate maybe as a junior researcher on the project you were responsible for kind of getting everybody to answer, right.
And so you might have been the one that wrote those emails to get everybody to answer, got on the phone and called people. And so using that as an example of your ability to reach out and talk to people or, you know, maybe you got involved in a volunteer project where there were a lot of actors involved and you have experience connecting them.
And it doesn’t have to be work, it doesn’t have to be an official job. It can be anything that is remotely related to your professional experience. So, you know, student stuff, all of that is really valid.
Marlies: I really appreciate your optimistic perspective on that, that you actually just have to look at what you already have. And most of it will be there already.
Now I wanna shift the topic a little bit. I know you don’t have a PhD, but you are a foreigner. You have come to Germany a long time ago, and you have successfully established yourself in the German job market. Would you mind sharing your story with us and let us know how you did it?
Amanda: Yeah, so what I think was really important, this is the thing I always tell everybody, is it is about getting to know people along the way. So that I think is one of the most important things about the story. But when I came here, I was teaching high school in the US and university, and I did curriculum development for the us for the school system I was working in and I came to Germany and I thought, first of all, I’m just gonna take a year. That was my idea. I was gonna take a year kind of as a sabbatical because I was at a really stressful school. Although I really enjoyed, enjoyed my work, but I needed kind of a break. And I came to Berlin and I thought, well, you know, in about a year I’ll go back.
And I just sort of looked around at the time and this is not something that I would recommend that people do, and it’s actually, I would say kind of, it worked out well for me, but it’s something that my clients that I work with in coaching that it can often, you can get stuck, but I just looked and said, what can I do?
Who will hire me? Right? And I ended up doing consulting for a kindergarten company, a company that owned a couple kindergartens, and I would help them to work with the English speaking staff. So I did staff training and I did a little bit of educational consulting. And I also taught English what I was doing in the US and through those things that I was doing I met people who who I ended up working with later.
I met one of the partners who used to be part of my company now when we founded a couple years ago, she’s not with us anymore, but she was involved in the kindergarten. Her child went to one of the kindergartens that I was consulting for. And so I got to know her and she was like, oh, you know, I really wanna work in this intercultural field and you’re an intercultural specialist.
Why don’t we do something together as a project? And I also worked in IT for a little while and it was the same thing I was teaching, I was doing communication coaching, and I was working with the CEO of a company and I ended up just saying, you know, hey, I think I could work in IT.
And I talked to ‚em about it and I ended up working for their company doing consulting in IT for a little while. And I think it’s all about you know, I would not recommend just taking any job because that often doesn’t work in Germany. A lot of foreigners come in with this idea that like any job is good because you’ll be able to convince someone that you’re great and then you’ll move up. And that’s not the case. And especially for people with PhDs, that can be really dangerous. I mean, I guess today is a big word, but I would be very cautious to do that because what can happen is you end up in a job that doesn’t fit your profile and in Germany particularly, people will look at you and say, why did you end up there? What did you do? You know what happened that you are at this job that doesn’t match your profile.
And so I wouldn’t necessarily do that, but I would really look at like, who do you know and who are you talking to? And try things that talk to people and say, you know, hey, I’m interested in this. Because the more that you tell people about what you’re doing and what you’re interested in, the more likely you are to meet somebody and come into contact with somebody who’s interested in working with you.
Marlies: I can imagine that. Yeah. Now, you already spoke German when you came to Germany. How important would you say for someone just finishing their doctorate is it to actually speak German if you are looking for a job in the German job market?
Amanda: So first of all, there are a lot of jobs in Berlin, especially in this tech sector that are in English and in the science sector. So you can work in English. However, there are two kind of aspects. So one is you will be limited to the work that involves people who speak English. So, where you start running into problems will be in situations where there are colleagues or clients who don’t feel comfortable in English.
And this is quite interesting. In Germany there’s a lot of people who don’t speak English that well, and Germans tend to have a pretty strong connection between language competency and this kind of skill level. Germans don’t feel as comfortable speaking English if they think they’re not gonna be really, really good at it. And a lot of people will say, I can do it, but I feel like I am way more of an expert in German and Germany is an expert culture.
And so that’s an issue if you have like a client facing job and then anywhere where you have to interact at your company with departments of the company that are staffed by people with less likely high English skills.
So that might be like, if you’re working with bookkeeping or anywhere there’s a lot of regulations or all that stuff, that’s all still in German.
Marlies: I guess your recommendation would really be to get some German under your hood and probably just start learning German while you’re still doing your doctorate.
Amanda: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s gonna make it easier. You can get by without it if you really work hard. And I always say everything is possible, some things are just like a lot more work and the less German you speak the harder it will be unless you are very technical. So if you’re like, you know, a data scientist or you know, there’s some other fields you can usually get by with without it, but it’s gonna be harder. And then Germans tend to speak German with them.
You know, when they’re alone and you leave them alone, you leave the room, you come back and they’re speaking German. So it’s just easier for you if you learn German
Marlies: And also for your social life, I guess, not just speaking professionally, right?
Amanda: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s so much easier. I mean I would say, if you don’t speak German, there are two Berlins.
There’s the Berlin that is, you know, I would say the deep Berlin that’s in German. There’s all this stuff going on that you’re just not aware of, and it’s not, it’s completely different. It’s like a completely different city. And if you are only doing things in English, then you are in this international community, which is also great, but it’s, it’s not like as deep.
And you’ll also find that you will have a bigger network. And it’s just a lot easier to meet people and to get problems solved. It’s a lot easier to get things done and you’re never reliant on other people which is sort of a, a part of being international, we say it’s a lot higher stress.
If you don’t speak the language the stress level will be higher that you have to deal with over time.
Marlies: It’s worth the stress I have to learn German actually for what I’m getting out of it when I start speaking the language.
Are there departments at the university that actually help me setting me up in the best way possible for the job market, including learning German, but also that maybe help me at university and beyond that help me when I’m looking for a job in Germany that can support me.
Amanda: There’s a career service department at the Freie Universität, and you are allowed to go there as a doctoral student, and they have info sessions and you can contact them. You can also we have a couple workshops in the Lounjee that you can see that we do and we’re probably gonna repeat them.
You can get in touch with the Dahlem Research School directly if you have like questions and you’re not sure who to talk to. And in the BUA there’s a lot of career workshops. The different BUA universities have different resources and some of them have a little bit more career options.
So there’s that. And otherwise what I really recommend if you’re stuck is to, you know, go look at all those workshops, see if there’s one out there that fits you at any of the Berlin universities. Email, the Dahlem Research School and then talk to people in your department because a lot of the departments they do specific things to support your career development. So if you and your cohort, maybe your colleagues in your department need resources, you can always reach out to the Dahlem Research School as a department and say, look, we would really like this support and the Dahlem Research School can recommend trainers or coaches that you can work with.
And that is also a, a really good strategy if you can’t find something that works for you. And finally I do recommend taking a look at the different resources. We’re gonna put some from the website here. We have an interview we did with a welcome office that’s more for people who already work in the university and, and that can be quite helpful as well.
Marlies: Thanks a lot for that, Amanda. We will also link the resources you just mentioned on the website about this episode, so that you don’t have to look for them yourself. You’re gonna find the workshops Amanda just mentioned and also the career service and all that on the website and you don’t have to look for the links yourself.
There are two topics I still wanna mention before we come to an end of this interview. One is, it sounds a little bit complicated. Like if I imagine I would be a foreigner to actually enter the German job market, I need to, to learn German, I need to get used to all the different approaches that Germans have.
So it might seem easier to say, I’m just gonna stay at university. You know, why don’t I just do a postdoc so I don’t have to face all those challenges and I just stay at university. Would you, for someone who doesn’t actually see him or herself having a career at university, would you actually recommend doing a postdoc or would you say: No, there’s some danger involved in that as well, and there actually good reasons not to do so.
Amanda: Let’s start with the statistics. So my, my last number is, and this is not to scare you, it’s just like, you know, we want, we want you to be informed. So we say about 3% of PhD graduates will go on to be professors in Germany. And one of the best ways to increase your chances is to get a junior professorship that’s like something like 40% or maybe even like 70%.
There’s a lot of different numbers that of, of people who do the junior professorship become as a type of postdoc, become professors long term. The junior group leader is also a really good way to kind of get on that tenure track.
Otherwise, I would say the question is how far away is your postdoc topic from the non university job market. So if there is an application for what you’re doing and you think that you could find somebody in industry who would say, yeah, I could imagine that having like a real world use in the non academia world, right? They’re both real, I guess, but the non-academic world that I can go out into industry or in, in, you know, development work and say like, this is something that’s useful, then it’s okay. Then it’s no problem to go on and do a postdoc.
If your postdoc is taking you really far away from an applicable topic, so something that you can really see that somebody would quickly be able to understand, has an industrial application, has an application in NGO work, wherever it is, you see yourself working. That is where it becomes a challenge because the longer you stay in academia, the more employers will worry that you are not going to be able to feel comfortable and be able to adjust to the industrial job market, the values of the industry, which are really different, right?
In industry it’s about making money or maybe even not even just making money, but like creating something with a value, right? So in help and aid work. We’re not talking about like these academic discussions. We’re talking about what can we actually do right now?
And sometimes in aid work, for example, or in development work, the thing you end up doing is not really something that academics would jump in and do. They’d say, oh, we really need to talk about that first, because there’s a lot of, you know, a lot of sides. I’m an anthropologist from my background, so I would say, you know, there’s a really big disconnect between what applied anthropologists are doing in aid work and what anthropologists and academia are writing about. They’re not always, I mean, sometimes they are close, but they’re often very far apart, right? And so if you have these postdocs that are really far away, that becomes a challenge. And so I would really look and see, is my postdoc taking me in the right direction?
And another thing you can think about is you can look for a postdoc in industry or, you know, an industry is not just industry like pharma. It’s also all that NGO and aid work. You can look for a postdoc in what is we call academia adjacent worlds, right? So in science management and civil service. You can also do what I like to call a DIY postdoc, or you find your own funding and then you find an industry partner or you know an NGO partner that you want to work with.
There’s a funding database in Germany. There’s a lot of funding out there. You can look and see if you can find something and you can make a match. And those, those are strategies that will let you stay in academia a little longer.
But if you’re gonna do that, you really, really need to make sure that you’re also building those hands-on skills. So you wanna get involved in other stuff. One example that we have here in the university that I didn’t mention before, is the career day from the Humboldt Graduate School. And that happens every year in February, you can actually get involved and there’s another conference called Incredible Research, which is through the Charité, but again it’s BUA so you all can get involved, right?
And those two events are student organized conferences on different topics. And so getting involved in that is a really good way of building hands-on skills. And, you know, you just show up and you get a lot of support. And I mean, those are really great ways in the career day. Also lets you explore more about careers. So that’s a pretty good, pretty good place for you to be.
Marlies: That’s very good and wise. Thanks a lot for that. Actually, I would like to talk to you about the „Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz“ (German Act on Fixed-Term Scientific Contracts) as well, because especially for people who feel like they wanna stay longer at university, this will be important at one point.
Amanda, could you enlighten me and my listeners? What’s the „Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz“ and why does it matter? Why is it so important?
Amanda: So this is, I think, like very unique to Germany. I mean, there are other countries that have something similar, but so in Germany, the German government doesn’t want you to be in a temporary contract.
They think temporary contracts are bad. And the reason for that is basically all these insurance, like maternity leave, health insurance, long-term care injury insurance, unemployment insurance are all paid by the employer. So when people in Germany are on unemployment one (AGL 1), as we would call it their unemployer paid insurance and the government would prefer that nobody ends up on unemployment two (AGL 2) or what you may have heard of as Hartz IV, right? Because it’s not so great, the government has to then pay for it, right? So the first one is paid by the insurance employer. And the idea is they don’t want anyone on temporary contracts, except they’ve made an exception for a couple of things.
And one of the things that they’ve made an exception for is science. So basically the government has said science, it’s okay. Temporary contracts are okay, but you only have a certain amount of time. And right now, and this is gonna change, they’re discussing the change. But right now you have six years before you finish your PhD. And six years after, and that’s cumulative. Not like the clock starts today, but adding up all the time that you worked in a certain type of job.
And so a lot of the jobs in academia especially the postdoc positions a large, large, large portion of those jobs are „Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz“. So, that means that they fall under this category of jobs and you only have six years and sometimes you can borrow, and if you have kids, it’s longer and there’s like all this stuff that you can do. So what we would recommend is if you’re worried about it, you’re not sure and, and you haven’t finished your PhD, but you’re about to, each employer who is employing you under this kind of law, this exception, they will tell you how much time you have left.
So you can ask them. And again, right now, the clock resets when you finish your PhD most of the time. So you can ask them like, how many, you know, years do I have left? And why is this important? Because basically if you don’t get to tenure track before you run out of time, it makes it very, very difficult because, and again, it depends on the job, it depends on the type of funding.
It’s way too complicated to explain like you know, in a short podcast. But there are positions out there that are science positions that are funded in a way that doesn’t impact this. But a lot of them do use this type of exceptions. So that means you really only have, I would say like, those six working years, once you complete your, your PhD.
If you run out of that time, then you can’t take another postdoc, and that makes it really, really hard for you to, to kind of make that jump to tenure track because those pre-tenure, like the, you know junior professor, the junior research group leader, all of that is usually on this contract.
So if you don’t have any time left, you won’t be able to take on that job. And what we usually tell people to do is if you, if you run out of time and you wanna stay in academia, you have to go abroad. So there’s always kind of this loophole. You can just leave. It doesn’t count. Work done abroad is not part of this this exception.
But it’s just important to keep that in mind because if you’re not aware of it and you run out of time and you really wanna stay in academia, yes, you can go abroad, but we want you to be able to make that decision yourself and not have that decision made for you. And so being aware of it can make you give you permission to make your own decisions.
Marlies: So that’s definitely something you wanna consider, especially if you wanna stay in academia. Amanda, is there anything important that we haven’t discussed yet? Is there anything you would like to add?
Amanda: Maybe one thing. I think it’s really, really important that you sit down as early as you can. Give yourself the gift of the time that you will invest in your own career planning. Even if you have no idea what you’re gonna do, just like make a deal with yourself and say, I’m gonna take some time for me. You deserve this. Like this is your time. Even if you don’t know what you wanna do and you’re not sure where you’re gonna go.
Giving yourself permission to maybe take like half an hour a week or maybe you’re closer to the end of your PhD. Take a little more time. Take like an hour, set yourself some time aside and really spend some time on yourself and don’t wait until it’s done. Don’t wait until you’re finished.
Cause a lot of people mistake or they mix up career planning with applications, those are two different things. So applying for a job, that’s one thing, but deciding what you wanna do, that’s actually like a completely different project. And so give yourself time to spend on yourself and like end up thinking about, you know, what do you wanna do, where do you wanna go?
And you might say, oh, that feels so overwhelming, I don’t wanna do it. But the earlier you start and the more time you give yourself, the less scary it becomes because you can break it down to tiny pieces and you can say, today I’m just gonna start by making a mind map of all the things that you think you might wanna do.
And then start from there and like, learn about those things. Talk to people who are working in the field and the more time that you have, the more likely you are to be able to use the time while you’re still a student to like, take advantage of the university offerings or go take a class or build some soft skills or, you know, sit in on a, a lecture on something that you might need. You can do all this stuff because while you’re a student, you have access once you’re not a student anymore your access is much more limited.
And so we would really recommend I would recommend everyone that I work with recommends take the time for yourself. Give yourself that, that gift, gift of time which just for you where you’re focusing on yourself and what you wanna do.
Marlies: Amanda, thank you very much for your gift of time. Thank you very much for this interview filled with facts, with information, and with great advice and thank you.
Hello again, dear listeners. I hope you enjoyed the interview with Amanda Wichert as much as I did. Remember to explore the resources mentioned during our conversation.
For your convenience you find all of them on our episode’s website together with a transcript of our discussion in case you want to revisit certain parts of the interview. Wishing you a great date and until next time.

S02, Episode 8: Navigating the academic crossroads: Is a doctorate right for you?

To decide whether or not a doctorate is the right choice for you is not easy. This episode is meant to assist you in the decision making process. It will explore the pros and cons of doing a doctorate, what kind of motivation can contribute to a happy and successful journey, and other factors you should take into account.

Highlights

„You won’t be the same person after finishing your doctorate as you have been before“

„A pro and con list alone will most likely not help you make your final decision.“

„Distinguish between what you want and what other people think is good for you.“

„Don’t forget that making a decision can also involve setting conditions or exclusions.“

from our episode with co-host Dr. Marlies Klamt

Audio

Download or listen to the audio version of the podcast here.

transcript


Hello, and a very warm welcome to the DRS podcast, the podcast of the Dahlem Research School at Freie University in Berlin. I’m Dr. Marlies Klamt, your host for this episode, and I’m really, really glad you tuned in today, because I will be delving into a very important topic. Should you pursue a doctorate or not?
Maybe you have just completed your master’s degree, or perhaps you have had the dream of doing a doctorate for many years, even though you finished your graduate studies a while ago. Regardless of your situation, it is crucial to make an informed decision, one that aligns with your personality, your hopes, and your dreams for the future, among other things.
The goal of this episode is to assist you in the decision making process. To achieve this, in this episode I will explore the pros and cons of doing a doctorate, what kind of motivation can contribute to a happy and successful PhD journey, and other factors you should take into account. Now, let’s jump right into the topic.
In order to take a well informed decision about whether or not pursuing a doctorate is the right choice for you, it’s a good idea to begin by examining the pros and cons of undertaking a doctorate. Let’s start with the cons. The first downside is time, and by that I mean the time it takes to complete a doctorate.
However, I’m not just referring to the actual number of years it will take you to do your doctorate. And of course, these are years in which you will not gain practical work experience outside of the university, so those are important. But when I talk about time, I’m also referring to the time it costs you on a weekly and daily basis.
You might wonder if these are not essentially the same thing. So let me clarify. It’s highly likely that you will have to sacrifice leisure time, free time, especially when working in a lab where it’s not uncommon to be required to work outside of regular hours and also on weekends. But in any case, in any field, pursuing a doctorate involves a substantial workload and even with excellent time management (and that’s one of my focus topics, so I really know what I’m talking about here), so even if you have excellent time management, your doctorate, your dissertation, will consistently demand your time and energy.
Another point to consider on the downside of doing a doctorate is the financial aspect. Depending on your field, you might potentially earn a significantly higher income in a non academic job. This means for each year you spend on working on your dissertation, you could be missing out on higher earnings.
Obviously, that’s not always the case, but it can be the case. Sometimes it can also be challenging to find funding for your doctorate. Landing a scholarship or also a job as a doctoral student can be really competitive and varies greatly depending on your field. And you can already see, it’s difficult to make general statements here about this.
So it’s essential that you research the funding opportunities available in your specific field and that you take them into account. The third drawback of doing a doctorate is that you may find yourself far away from home, friends, and family, having to adapt to a new culture. Obviously, this is especially true for international students coming to FU in Berlin from abroad. But it can also be relevant if you, for example, are coming to Berlin from another region in Germany that significantly differs from the capital city.
The fourth and last reason against pursuing a PhD or doctorate is the difficulty factor. What do I mean by that? You can expect to encounter numerous challenges and crises during your journey.
And there may even be moments when you think about giving up. So, you’re in good company, you would definitely not be the first one if that are feelings you have. You might feel lonely, you might feel stuck, you might be annoyed with yourself, you might be annoyed with your supervisor, your fellow doctoral students, and with your thesis. This is completely normal.
However, it’s important to recognize. that these obstacles can be overcome and there’s help and support available. So take the challenges into account, but also evaluate their significance in the context of your own priorities and your own goals. Now let’s shift perspective and explore the positives of pursuing a doctorate.
Because it can also be an incredibly special and rewarding experience. Why can it be a rewarding experience? Because you gain new findings and new insights, and you actively contribute to the creation of knowledge. And that can feel really, really good.
The second pro reason is that it can be enjoyable. If you have a passion for scientific work, for academic writing, for the tasks that come with working in the academic field, then you’re likely to find satisfaction in doing your doctorate. Despite the ups and downs involved.
The third reason to consider is that new job opportunities become available once you obtain your doctorate and these opportunities may potentially come with a better income. However, as you remember, I’ve already said this on the con side, it largely depends on your field of study if that’s the case or not.
Another pro argument for doing a doctorate is that you will become an expert in your field and you have a title to prove it.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, doing a doctorate in a new country can have its challenges, however, it can also be viewed as an adventure, an opportunity to get to know a new country, city, make new friends and gain new experiences. So this could also serve as an argument in favor of doing a dissertation in Germany if you’re coming from abroad.
Another compelling reason for doing a doctorate is that you gain numerous valuable soft skills, and there are so many that it’s impossible to list them all. But I want to give you a few to provide you with an idea. There’s critical thinking, there’s communication skills, self discipline, teamwork, problem solving skills, project management, and many, many more.
The final advantage I’d like to emphasize might not be as widely discussed, but in my opinion it’s incredibly important. You will grow as a person. Obviously, this shouldn’t be the sole reason for pursuing a doctorate, as there are many avenues for personal development, but it’s a significant and often overlooked, I would say, side effect. I like the idea that all the challenges and troubles that you’re going through are not in vain, but actually lead to a personal transformation.
You won’t be the same person after finishing your doctorate as you have been before. You’ll have acquired not only knowledge, but also a deeper understanding of yourself, of your strengths, and your limits.
It’s very likely that your communication skills with peers and supervisors will have improved. You’ll have developed resilience, self confidence, and many other skills I’ve just mentioned, all contributing to your personal growth and development.
So you have seen that there are a lot of pros and cons when considering doing a doctorate. And I think it’s important to consider those, that’s why we just talked about them, but I also think that a pro and con list alone will most likely not help you make your final decision.
However, there is another area you should check, which I would say is at least as important. Actually, one of the best predictors of whether your doctorate will be a happy experience or not is your motivation. Depending on the reasons you have for doing a dissertation it is more likely that you will have a positive experience or not. That’s why it’s well worth examining your motivation.
So let’s do a brief motivation check. I will ask you five questions and you can answer them either in your head or by pausing the podcast to record your answers as numbers. Because you will answer each question as a number. I actually do recommend writing down your numbers so that you can calculate them afterwards.
Ready? Let’s begin.

  1. First question. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you enjoy doing scientific work?
  2. Second question. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you enjoy reading scientific texts?
  3. Third question. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you enjoy scientific writing?
  4. Fourth question. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much did you enjoy doing your master’s thesis?
  5. Fifth question, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much of your time and energy are you willing to invest in your doctorate?
    The higher the numbers you have assigned, the greater your intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is a significant factor for success in your doctorate, because it indicates that you’re likely to enjoy most aspects of your doctoral journey and that you will have the determination to overcome obstacles and challenges.
    Now, if you assigned a very low number to one of the questions, don’t worry at all. It simply suggests that you might not enjoy that particular aspect as much, and it might require more of your time and energy to complete it.
    However, if you’ve given very low numbers to all of the questions, it might be a good idea to reflect on why you want to pursue a doctorate, if your motivation is primarily driven by external factors, such as obtaining a title, impressing others, improving career prospects, or earning more money. This could increase the likelihood of encountering difficulties and even lead to you dropping out.
    Don’t worry if your motivation is a mix of internal and external factors, that is entirely normal and it can still provide a solid foundation of doing a doctorate. And a small disclaimer, the five questions I’ve presented are merely indicators of the quality of your motivation. Five questions is not enough to really dive deep into the topic.
    So it’s a good idea to delve deeper into this subject by reflecting, by reading about the topic, by discussing it with others, or perhaps even attending a workshop that addresses this issue, this topic of motivation in more detail.
    Before I share some aspects with you for further investigation, I want to mention a few other factors you might want to consider when making your decision: Distinguish between what you want and what other people think is good for you.
    While seeking input from those who know you well can be valuable when contemplating a doctorate, it can also be a distraction, and it can complicate the decision making process. So keep in mind that others have their own experiences, they have their own agenda, for example they might not like the idea of you moving away, and they also have their own limiting beliefs.
    So take this into account when you discuss the decision with others. And pick a good time to do so, to talk to them, based on the clarity that you have already gained in regards to your decision.
    Now, before I end this episode, I’d like to leave you with some optional homework. Of course, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. But I want to suggest a few areas you might want to explore before making the final decision to PhD or not to PhD.
    The first area to explore is your funding options. Investigate what funding opportunities are available to you, such as scholarships, university positions that involve pursuing your doctorate (they’re common within graduate schools or also in the STEM subjects), university positions that don’t include the doctorate (they’re particularly common in social sciences and humanities in Germany), or employment opportunities outside of academia, or everything else you can think of funding your doctorate.
    Next, check the prerequisites for pursuing your PhD at a university in Germany and specifically at the FU Berlin if that’s where you want to go. Determine what academic qualifications you need, visa requirements, language proficiency expectations, age considerations, and any other relevant prerequisites.
    Explore the different paths to obtaining a doctorate. Understand the distinctions between doing it within a graduate school versus independently. Research the differences between cumulative and monographic dissertations and consider which approach you prefer and if it aligns with the norms in your field. And if some of the terms I’ve just mentioned, if you still don’t know what they mean, just use it as a starting point to investigate further.
    In order to find out what actually fits you and what you would like to do reflect on potential topics for your dissertation and your job opportunities. Make a list of potential supervisors who align with your research interests.
    And consider alternatives. What will you do if you decide against pursuing a doctorate? Or maybe you decide you want to do it, but it doesn’t work out as planned. What are potential alternatives and how attractive are these alternatives to you? Maybe they’re even more attractive than pursuing a doctor, so that gives you an answer as well.
    And don’t forget that making a decision can also involve setting conditions or exclusions. What do I mean by that? For example, you might say, I want to pursue my doctorate, but only if I secure funding for at least three years. Or, I want to pursue my doctorate, but only if I find a research topic within the next six months.
    Lastly, remember that deciding whether or not to pursue a doctorate is a significant decision. It impacts several years of your life and sets the course for your future career path, so take your time, gather information, and carefully consider all the factors before making your decisions. However, that said, also recognize that it is a decision that can be reversed.
    If you start your doctorate and find that it significantly differs from your expectations, or it makes you genuinely unhappy, maybe even to the point that it takes a toll on your emotional, on your physical well being. You have the option to reconsider your path. No one can force you to do a doctorate.
    Of course, it’s not a decision to be taken lightly, but knowing that there is room for change and reevaluation can provide relief and peace of mind before making the final decision, but also while you’re doing the PhD. Your well being should always be a priority in general, but also in your academic career.
    Thank you for listening to this podcast. I hope you found the guidance and insights provided in this episode helpful as you decide whether to pursue a doctorate or not. Regardless of your decision, we wish you all the best for your future.
    You have listened to an episode of the DRS podcast from the Dahlem Research School at FU Berlin. In today’s episode, your host was Dr. Marlies Klamt. Feel free to explore our other podcast topics, which range from interviews with individuals who have already completed their doctorates, to discussions on mental health during their doctoral journey, up to valuable information for doctoral researchers from abroad.

S02, Episode 4: Academic Writing with Dr. Anselm Spindler

In this episode we talk to Dr. Anselm Spindler, a writing coach and workshop facilitator. He shares tips and ideas for how to manage academic writing, how to deal with common challenges when writing your thesis, and what to do if you get stuck. We also talk about some of the writing events the DRS offers and how they might benefit doctoral students.

Highlights

„….share your writing with more people more often and sooner and use other people’s feedback to work on your text and to reflect your writing. Don’t just sit there and work on your own for a very long time and at some point in the end submit it. But yeah, talk to people about your writing and it doesn’t have to be your supervisor or even an expert from your field. In a sense, it could be anyone and it will be useful for your writing process and for your actual text“

from our interview with Dr. Anselm Spindler

Audio

Download or listen to the audio version of the podcast here.

transcript

Amanda: Welcome. If you could start off by telling me a little bit about yourself, maybe a little about your background and what you do now.

Anselm: Yeah, sure. Thank you for inviting me to your podcast. My name is Anselm. I live in Frankfurt, the southern one from your perspective, not the eastern one. And I got my PhD in philosophy. And I also used to work as a research assistant at Goethe University in Frankfurt, where I used to teach and do my research. Nowadays, I’m a freelance coach and workshop instructor, and I mainly work with PhD students who write their dissertations in any one of a broad spectrum of academic disciplines.

Amanda: Excellent. So, when you think about how you got from doing your doctorate to working as a coach, could you just tell us a little bit about that process or that transition? We’re going to talk about writing in just a moment, but I’d really love to hear a little bit about your career before we get started.

Anselm: I think the word transition is spot on. It was a big transition for me. At some point during my doctorate, especially in the early stages, I was really thinking and wanting to be in an academic career. So, at some point, I really thought that I will be in the university my whole life basically. And that’s why I’m doing the PhD. But things went a different way. And I went a different way. So it’s a combination of these two factors. And I really enjoy what I’m doing now because I’m still in contact with the academic world. And I really like writing and academic writing specifically. At the same time, I feel I’m in a good place because I am no longer working in the academic world. Because I think it it really wasn’t for me in certain aspects of it anyway. And yeah, it was a big transition.

Amanda: Thank you. So when you think about writing, what motivated you to work with students who are stuck or having challenges with writing. And maybe you could tell us a little bit about those challenges that doctoral students face. And a little bit about why do you think that this is something that you enjoy working with?

Anselm: I think the main idea behind my work is that the workshops create a space where you can talk openly and freely about your writing process. And I always felt that this space was missing in the academic world, or at least very rare. People talk a lot about their writing or their text in the academic world, at least in my field in the humanities. But they are typically very complicated and charged situations. So you’re talking, giving a talk at a conference or you’re presenting your work to a funding institution, or you’re talking to your supervisor who will be grading your PhD. And so these situations tend to be a little bit overloaded. And I felt, and it’s my experience from what people report in my workshop, a simple space where you can talk about your writing without having to present your work to others, without being judged or graded is really helpful and is really surprisingly rare in the typical working environment of PhD students and it was in my working environment back then. So the idea was just to create this kind of space.

Amanda: When students come to you and they say that I’m having trouble with writing or I’m stuck, what’s really happening? What are the problems that they’re facing? It’s a big word, I’m stuck. But what is it really that makes people get stuck when they’re writing?

Anselm: Yeah, it is a big word, but I think it’s really accurate in the sense that people do feel stuck. And it’s really unpleasant for them. And the roots of the problem are really varied. You have been asking about challenges. In my experience, there are two main challenges, you could say. The first one is – it’s logistical, if you will. So simply finding the time to write in a demanding working environment, which the university is. And the other challenge is a little bit more psychological, I think. It has to do with dealing with expectations. And also with the simple fact that a PhD is a kind of exam. You and your work will be evaluated. And for most people, the stakes are really high in terms of their academic self-understanding, in terms of academic careers. And also in terms of the personal energy and time that they invest. And that can make the writing really difficult because so much is coming together when you’re writing a PhD. It’s not just any old text.

Amanda: So imagine that I’m a student and I’ve come to you and I have a problem. Maybe I’m having trouble writing the actual text, maybe I’m having trouble finding time. Maybe I feel frustrated as you just said with this feeling of, oh, it’s got to be really good. Do students often know what they’re dealing with, or do they come to you and just say, I don’t know what’s going on?

Anselm: That’s a really good question. I think, because many people who find that their writing isn’t going as well as they would like, they have a certain tendency to focus on solutions. So what do I need to do in order to get back to into the flow of writing? And I think I find it very understandable because it’s an unpleasant situation to be in. But my approach is to invite people to simply start by talking a little bit to me or to someone else about their problem and really describe it in detail. What is it that’s not working? How often does it happen? What could the possible causes of the problem be? And I think there’s a variety of reasons why people do get stuck and sometimes they are, a bit more mundane. Sometimes they are a bit deeper actually. And it’s really worth spending some time investigating what is my situation, how do I feel? Sometimes people overlook how they feel in a particular situation. And like I said, it’s a challenging working environment and it can have all sorts of effects. I think once you started to investigate a little more closely what the causes of the problem might be, the solutions are really not that difficult to find. It’s more about really spending the time with yourself in a way and explaining yourself and situation to someone. And oftentimes people find those solutions really quickly once they’ve started to describe the problem to someone else.

Amanda: That sounds like it would be really helpful. And I think it’s something that a lot of people probably deal with, being alone, but having the feeling that there’re not so many people around in their work that they can really talk to about these things. And that brings me to your workshops. So what you described sounds a lot like it would work in a coaching setting of one on one, how does it work when you’re in a group of people? And in these workshops that you have at the Dahlem Research School or in other settings, what do you do to help people who are already facing challenges with their writing?

Anselm: Yeah, it really is a different setting if you compare it to the coaching, like one on one situation. And there are different workshops for different challenges, in a sense. So I’m offering workshops on specific writing techniques, for instance, and also on specific parts of the text like the introduction and the conclusion. And also, a workshop on self-organization and academic writing, which in my mind includes writer’s block and procrastination. In my mind these are connected with the broader topic of self-organization. But what my workshops have in common is on the one hand that they are really based on a practical approach so people have a chance to work on their current writing project in the workshop in one way or another. So they typically make some progress with their actual project, and it’s not just theory input to take home. And another thing is that the workshops are designed in such a way that people have the chance to get quite a lot of feedback and input for their specific writing project and their specific situation. Input from me and feedback from me, but also from their peers. And that’s the third point I’d like to make. I’m working under the assumption that the people who come to my workshops are already experienced academic authors. They have written texts, they have acquired quite a lot of knowledge about academic writing in their field, they have a lot of experience already, so they’re not beginners. Part of the idea of the workshop is to really mobilize that experience and share it with others in order to decide what the next steps in my project might be. And a lot of it is already there because people bring so much into the workshops, in terms of writing strategies, things they’ve tried out. Maybe they did work, maybe they didn’t work, but maybe it works for someone else. And so it’s a lot about sharing experience and getting feedback from other people who are also academic professionals and academic authors.

Amanda: I really love that. I think that is so important also for so many researchers early in their career really second guess themselves. And I love the idea of having them support each other because I think that also, as you said, gives them the idea, reminds them that they really are experts in their fields and not all just at the very beginning. You have tons of knowledge and experience already even at the beginning of your PhD.

Anselm: And also, I think it connects to what you said earlier that many people who write their PhD have the feeling that they are maybe not isolated but basically working on their own. Which may be also have to do with the fact that in academic working culture the idea is that you have to do it on your own, which is not mistaken, obviously, but it can lead to a feeling that you’re really alone with your problems and in my workshops and probably in yours as well, people discover that other people, sometimes from completely different academic fields are really struggling with the same problems. That feels good in itself. And you can also share the burden of looking for solutions. You don’t have to come up with all the solutions by yourself.

Amanda: That is so important. And really, I think one of the aims of the workshops at the Dahlem Research School and in the Berlin University Alliance altogether is to get everybody to come together and experience and see we’re not alone, and there’s so much that you have in common with others, even if you feel like you’re really stuck and alone. And so that is one of the things why I really like to encourage people to come to the writing week or the retreat. And for the writing week a benefit of it is that you can join unlike the retreat at any point in your doctorate, that’s correct, right? Do you want to tell us a little bit about the writing week and what you do there?

Anselm: Yeah, sure. It’s a full week. It consists of, on the one hand, writing workshops slot, rather short three-hour writing workshops on different topics that have to do with academic writing or different aspects of academic texts. And in the afternoon, it’s basically writing time for the people. The participants actually work on their texts in writing groups or writing tandems. And they can also attend coaching sessions there, which take place in parallel to the writing sessions. That’s the main idea to have some input and workshops and exercises on academic writing on one hand. And on the other hand, it may sound simple, but just time to write. And to also have connected time to write like a full week. A lot can be done in a full week and typically in their everyday life, these kinds of weeks are, for many people rather rare. They do a lot of stuff in the university and the university is very good at inviting people into all sorts of projects and attending talks and then sometimes it’s difficult to have a concentrated block of time for your writing. In my mind, it’s a way of really prioritizing your writing. My writing project is really important. That’s why I’m spending the full week on it. And that’s what the writing week in my view is really good for.

Amanda: Can you tell us a little more about tandems? You mentioned that before, but I would love to hear about that. And maybe a little bit about why you think they’re useful and helpful for doctoral students.

Anselm: I find that question really interesting because my impression is that sometimes people have different views about why they are useful. One thing some people say very quickly is that a writing group or writing tandem is good because it stimulates their discipline, so they stick to whatever their writing plan was. And to be honest I’m rather skeptical of the term discipline in this context because it suggests to me anyway that people are somehow unwilling to do their academic work. And that’s just something I don’t see. It’s people are doing a lot of stuff and they are certainly not lazy and that’s somehow in my mind connected to the idea of discipline. What I think, and that’s my alternative suggestion, an alternative to the discipline discourse, if you will, I think writing groups and writing tandems provide structure and resonance. And by structure, it is very simply, when will I write this week and for how long? And by resonance, is there anyone out there paying attention to what I’m doing? And I think many people who have difficulties in their writing project. They are not lacking discipline, but they are lacking and what they want is structure and resonance. Some feedback from other authors and really some structure in which to work. And if I can add just one more thought to this. Many people many PhD students are also engaged in teaching. So they’re teaching seminars and obviously and naturally they have an arranged time for the seminar. So my seminar is on Thursdays at 10 o’clock and that’s very natural because they want others to come to the seminar. And for some reason people don’t do that as often for their writing. So why not say my writing time is on Tuesdays from 10 to 12. These kinds of structures are really helpful to support continual writing habits and a writing group is the easiest way to do it because it’s fun to meet others, you have a chance to talk, you don’t feel alone. It’s very easy to arrange in times of video calls. And yeah, it’s just another way of sharing the burden of self-organization.

Amanda: That’s fantastic. I love this idea that students shouldn’t think that they don’t have this discipline because I hear this a lot in my work as well. People say I’m good at this. I’m bad at self-organization or, I don’t know what I want from my life and my career. And I often think, how much time have you given yourself to actually sit down and think about these things? Or do you have time to be organized? If you don’t give yourself the time, then it can be a huge challenge. It doesn’t mean that you’re not good at it. I think this is so important. And so I want to pick that back up. It’s not that you’re not doing a good job. It’s that you’re so busy that you haven’t actually have to sit down and make space for writing in order to be able to say that you are stuck.

Anselm: Yeah.

Amanda: I want to ask you, what would you suggest? What kind of, we mentioned a lot of mindset, ideas or how would you change the way you think about it? Are there, setting time aside and maybe a writing group, other techniques or tools that you would suggest that students try if they’ve gotten stuck? Anything else where you’d say this, maybe one or two small things or big things that you say would be worth trying out if they feel like they’re having trouble writing?

Anselm: I’ll start with my favorite one. I’m not sure if it works really well for most people, but for some people in my experience, and it’s creative writing. And it’s something that academics, in my experience, don’t do so often. And it’s something that is not just fun to do, but I think the deeper truth behind it, if you will, is that writing really is a matter of training. So if you see an academic who is pretty good at writing something, an academic text, under pretty much all circumstances, like between two seminars or between a seminar and a conference, I have one and a half hours to spare and some people are able to write something during these one and a half hours. And it’s not that they are geniuses. They might be, but I think they have a lot of experience and a lot of training. It’s a bit like like juggling or speaking French. The more often you do it and the more stuff you try out, the easier it gets. And this is also true, I think, of the transition from non-writing to writing, and that’s what many people find difficult. And creative writing, just, for instance, writing a short story, a really short one, just without any preparation, just gets you into the flow of writing, the words begin to come, and then it might be easier to work on an academic text. And it also introduces it may introduce some variety into your writing just like trying out stuff with really low stakes. And it’s fun, and I think it’s instructive.

Amanda: What ideas do you have to get someone to start doing creative writing that maybe has never done that before? Because that sounds like a really great way to get into writing if you’re maybe having some trouble with it to take the pressure off of it. What are some things that you might suggest that students could do who don’t know where to start? And they say, oh, creative writing, that sounds great, but how do I do it?

Anselm: That’s a great question because it has to do with creative writing specifically, but I think it’s also connected to an interesting aspect of academic writing. I think what’s really challenging is the situation where you are sitting in front of an empty sheet of paper and you have a pen and you think now I’m going to write something creative. And this in itself can be a really challenging situation because like you said, you don’t know where to start. And what I find makes this transition from not writing to writing easier is to provide some structure and a specific task just in order to get started. For instance when I do creative writing in my workshops, there are really strict time limits. Sometimes one of the exercises we do is called five-word stories and it’s short stories that people write in 90 seconds, which is an amazingly short amount of time. And the good thing is that you don’t have time to think too much. You simply begin to write and that’s actually what most academics or many academics in my experience find really difficult to simply start writing without thinking first. Oh, I have to read 68 books about the topic before I can even begin to think about writing, then I have to come up with a really good project outline and so on and so forth, which is in for academic writing. It’s the natural process but it can make it really difficult to connect with your creativity and to say, I’m simply going to start writing something and I will later look at it and see what needs improving or what might still be missing. Just setting yourself and coming back to creative writing, setting yourself small and simple and doable tasks. Yeah, a short story, for instance, which contains five keywords that you’ve picked earlier. And it makes it easier to choose from the infinite variety of possibilities that are out there. And once you have more experience, you could decide to write more freely and just go to the park with your notebook and write whatever comes to your mind.

Amanda: I have a question about this idea of just writing. I know a lot of people when they start or they said, Okay, when I started writing, I felt stuck because I was thinking. Okay, this has to be really good, and I have to use it. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the benefit or not ,however you see it, of writing. Stuff that you’re going to get rid of, needs everything that I write to be good or is it okay, in academic writing if I find myself writing tons of material that I don’t use or is that not a good approach. What do you think about that?

Anselm: Again, that’s a good question and a difficult one, I think, because on the one hand this idea that my text has to be really good and it has to be a text that others approve of my fellow researchers, the fellow experts in my field. I want them to maybe, even if they don’t agree with me, agree with what I want to say specifically. I want them to say that the text is simply good academic quality. And this expectation, which is justified, makes sense in the system, but it can really block up your creativity and really limit the scope of possibilities that you even consider in your research. And maybe you have tons of ideas, but you’re really narrowing down the range because you think all people won’t like that. And that’s a silly thought and it’s not going to work anyway. And getting yourself to simply start writing might be a way of exploring these possibilities and only later to really edit the text and produce what will be the finished product. And I think that’s only one side of the issue. The other is you mentioned that some people choose to write a lot of stuff that they will not use in the end. I find that a really useful technique. Partly because you’re probably be writing in two documents, if you will, literally or metaphorically. So you’re writing stuff under the assumption that not necessarily everything of it has to go into the finished text. And this can make it easier to explore things and to really find what you want to say in the writing process. And sometimes people get stuck because they are writing text under the assumption that the actual sentences they are writing will be the ones that the readers will later read and evaluate. And this adds a lot of stress to the writing process. And I think it can help to really divide the different stages of the writing process and say, I’m in the early stages. It’s about exploration and not about polishing the text or revising the text or checking it for mistakes. And yeah, that can help get into the flow of writing and really explore your ideas. And at the same time, there’s one more thought I’d like to share because some people also do use this technique of producing a lot of text and then they themselves in a situation where they have produced a ton of notes and find it really difficult to decide what goes into the text and what not – what does not go into the text and this too can be a real challenge too, if you overdo it with this technique and, so to speak, if you reduce a lot of notes, you might feel lost at some point snd may make it more difficult to come up with a text that leaves certain things out. For some people it’s hard to leave stuff aside.

Amanda: I really enjoyed hearing you talk about the possibilities of doing things maybe one way or another way and I think that’s really important for students to hear because it’s often possible for students to feel like, „I’m doing it this way, but someone else is doing it that way. And am I doing it the right way?“ or, „I’m writing a lot and my colleague is only writing when they know exactly what they’re going to say.“ And I think that it’s good to hear from others that there are many ways to get to the same goal. And in connection to that, I would love to know the answer to a question. There are a lot of students in my workshops that come up and ask me, „What digital tools do you use?“ I get asked, „I don’t do writing workshops, but I get asked this question a lot anyway. What writing tools should I use? And how should I approach tools?“ And I would love to hear from you a little bit about what you think about writing tools. Do you have digital tools that you love to work with and that you suggest students test out or try, or are you more of a pen and paper person, and what do you think the benefit is of both of those or either of those?

Anselm: I get that question too, in my workshops: „Which tools can I use?“ or „Should I use even?“ And I believe that you should use the tools that are useful for the specific task you have or for the specific challenge that you want to overcome. And I have two examples for that. The first one is the difference between handwriting and machine writing, if you will. You were talking about handwriting in your question, and I think it is a useful tool or it can be. Writing by hand in specific situations, because one feature of machine writing with my computer or with my laptop, is that I have the ability to edit my text while I’m writing it, and I still have a clean document. It still looks very good. And if I do that in handwriting, if I keep crossing out words and then writing something new, it gets messy really quickly. And one way to take advantage of this difference could be that you say it’s a good thing in handwriting that I can’t edit my text all the time. And that could help me to tell my inner critic to spend some time in the cafe and come back later. And during that time, I have time just to write something and to write a complete version of the text before going back and rereading it and editing the text. Handwriting can really help to differentiate between different stages in the writing process. The second example that I thought of is collaborative writing where you’re writing a text together with others. And there’s a ton of digital tools out there for this and they all have different features. In my view, it’s really useful to spend some time in the group to figure out which tool is best suited for the writing purpose and the kind of group you are. Maybe you want to work in a document simultaneously. Then there are some tools that provide this service or this function and others that don’t. So make your choice on the basis of the kind of task that is ahead of you and the kind of group you are. That would be my general thoughts on writing tools. Try to describe what you need and then pick your tool.

Amanda: I think this is great advice. I feel like it’s really easy to get excited about all these apps that are out there. And then, in the end, do we actually need all of the functions? This is a huge issue in productivity. You can really easily feel like, „Okay, now I’ve got to learn this app and I don’t actually need it, or do I even need all the things that it’s offering me?“ So fantastic.

Anselm: Can I add something to this? Because you’re making a really important point, in my view, because sometimes it is suggested that these tools are useful and making things easier, but sometimes it’s the opposite. They make things a bit more difficult, and it’s only later in the process that I even know or learn about that. And one example that just came to my mind is that I once had a PhD student, or she was a postdoc actually whhen she was in my workshop, and we were talking about digital writing tools. And she said that she was writing her PhD with Google Docs and it was really late in the process when she discovered that it’s not possible to download the document once you have crossed a certain number of pages, and it caused her several heart attacks and it was nerve-wracking. She only discovered it really late in the process and it can be really unpleasant. And just the thought of having all your text deleted because of some software glitch is terrible. And so like you say, it’s not evident that all the programs help all the time. So it’s a really good idea to think about what do you want it to do, and which software really does what you do want it to do.

Amanda: This is very important advice and a good approach. I think a solid approach to digital tools. So I have just two more questions for you. And the first one is. What do people say when they leave your workshops? And I’m going to ask you this, I know it’s a little bit of a challenging question to answer as a trainer, as a workshop facilitator, but I think sometimes students are hesitant to participate in workshops because they don’t know what am I going to leave with knowing how to do. What takeaways do your participants have when they leave your workshop? What do they say about their writing process or about their experience?


Anselm: One thing many people do is point to a specific writing technique or an idea or a tool that they learned about or rediscovered in the workshop, and they say that was really useful for where I am right now in my writing process. And what most people say actually is that it was a good group experience for them. It renewed their motivation to work and think about their writing project. It’s a lot of encouragement and a lot of feedback they take away. And just a lot of inspiration, and that’s typically what’s coming from the group as a whole and not simply or even mostly from me as a workshop instructor. And that’s actually what most people say. It was a good group experience and it connected me again to my writing and my research.

Amanda: That’s great. And I think I would say it is not always easy to do that. So I would say it does come from you as a trainer and that also underlines what you said earlier about the importance of working together in groups or group experience of talking to each other about writing. That’s great. So I have one more, my very final question for you. We usually like to ask our guests on the podcast if they were to go back to the beginning of their own experience in writing or in the university or in your case in your doctorate if you could give yourself advice. So you’re time traveling back to the very beginning, what advice would you give yourself, maybe about the writing process. Maybe about the whole thing from where you are today. And obviously we can’t change what we do in the past, but what would you tell yourself if you could time travel?

Anselm: Let me think about that. Maybe, yeah, there’s a number of things, but the one that stands out really is to share your writing with more people more often and sooner and use other people’s feedback to work on your text and to reflect your writing. Don’t just sit there and work on your own for a very long time and at some point in the end submit it. Talk to people about your writing and it doesn’t have to be your supervisor or even an expert from your field. In a sense, it could be anyone and it will be useful for your writing process and for your actual text.

Amanda: Thank you very much and thank you for the wonderful advice that you’ve given.

S02, Episode 5: Applying your Research to Society – Transfer and Profund

In this episode, we’ll hear from Anna Figoluschka, Founder Advisor, and Teresa Kollakowski, technology transfer officer at Profund Innovation at the Freie Universität Berlin. Learn what the transfer offices at the university can do for you as a researcher and find out about the benefits of having a chat with the transfer office team even if you don’t already have a clear idea of how to bring your research to the market. We also talk about how fields like social science and humanities can benefit from transfer support at the university. Listen or read the transcript below!

Highlights

„I guess, everyone who is in science or who’s doing his or her PhD right now, at least I imagine, is in science because he or she wants to have an impact. They want to invent something or find out some new things and make the world a better place. I know that’s quite often used phrase. But yeah, if you want to have an impact, society and the market need to know about your results. They have to get out of the drawer next to your desk and come to the public. And so, we will support you with that either in the way of bringing you together with companies or to support you to found your own company.“

from our interview with Profund Innovation

Audio

Download or listen to the audio version of the podcast here.

transcript

Amanda: I’m so excited to be here today with you guys. I’m going to just ask you to briefly introduce yourselves and tell me a little bit about who you are and why you’re here with us. I’ll start with you.

Teresa: Hello, I’m Teresa Kolakowski, working as technology transfer officer at Freie Universität Berlin at Profund Innovation. I support industry-university collaborations and help researchers to get in contact with enterprises.

Anna: Hello. I’m Anna Figulushka. I’m Founder Advisor at Profund Innovation, Freie Universität Berlin. I’m there for any student or alumni or PhD candidates who would like to find out if they want to found a startup. They can come up to me and I will try to find a funding program or will try to give them advice on a business model.

Amanda: That sounds very exciting. I want to just start off with this question: What is Profund and what is transfer? What do you do?

Anna: I can start with the Profund Innovation institution. We are there for the transfer of research ideas into society and economy. And to find interesting and good ideas in the university and outside of the university that may be the right ideas to found a company with. So we support any researcher who comes up to us and finds a connection to our own university, to see whether they can found a startup. We are a team of almost eight people that work in different areas of that topic, either innovation management or transfer management or startup support. We have a huge, nice building in Dahlem, close to the Freie Universität, which has 25 offices for startups and labs where researchers can still try to find the right formula for their idea and where we give them support of different kinds: their workshops or coaching or an office space to work together with their team. That’s what we do.

Amanda: If you guys could maybe just tell me really briefly: What is transfer?


Teresa: So I would say in general transfer means we have knowledge and technology transfer in the meaning of bringing your research results into society and/or the market. That you don’t just stay in your scientific community, scientific bubble, but that you make your knowledge accessible for other persons, for the public, for people like you and me.
That you can do either in the way of working together with other stakeholders or in the way of founding your own company.

Amanda: I would love to kind of ask you guys how you got into this and I want to start with you, Teresa. How did you get into the topic of working on transfer and why is this an important topic for you?

Teresa: Thanks for that question. Well, in my master’s degree I studied science and technology studies at Humboldt University, which was about scientific results and what we are doing with them. How to generate them and what does science do for society. After that it was quite clear for me to work at a university, at a place where scientific knowledge is produced, where I can work with scientists, researchers.
So I started working as Grant Advisor at Freie Universität four years ago. There I was responsible for the Department of Veterinary Medicine and the Department of Biology, Pharmacy, and Chemistry, and supported the researchers to apply for funding at the DFG Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft or the BMBF Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung for a European grant. All the stuff you can imagine that researchers have to deal with every day. I really liked that job, but I always asked myself what’s happening after that. So you have this three years project and what’s coming next. What do you do with the results? How to get it into society, into the market.
And then I saw this open position at Profund Innovation and thought: Okay, that’s my chance to change the position and support researchers not only with the grants and the basic research, but to also help them to bring their ideas, their results into the society market and do something with it, to have a use case, have an application. Do not just publish it in journals, but bring a product into the market or in the health sector, to do something good for society and heal infections or anything.


Amanda: Thanks. It’s very important because in our podcast series we’ve talked to a lot of people about the challenges of the academic job market. I really like to bring this idea that there are many ways to have a career even if you go into research. And I think this is a really interesting option for researchers who are thinking about what do I do after my PhD or after my doctorate. So I’d love to hear from you, Anna, as well. What got you into this topic? What made you want to work on this with students at the university?

Anna: Well, I didn’t study at Freie Universität Berlin, but I studied communication design. And I guess that is something that made me, or influenced me in that way that I always thought I want to work on something new or find something new. That’s what designers do. They find and they organize ideas. Sowhat I did afterwards were many steps. I worked at a pharmaceutical company. I worked for an IT service company and I founded three companies as well. The last one was an app and that’s almost six years ago. Since four years I’m at Profund Innovation and I’m supporting startups. Mainly startups coming from Freie Universität. Well, ideas that evolved from research at Freie Universität, but also any others can draw a connection. That is why I’m here and I’m really happy, that it’s such a creative work. Because on the way the idea may change and I’m always happy when it comes to a complete new perspective and to find a niche in the market.

Amanda: So when we think about transfer in general and this idea of starting a startup, what do you think you would say if there was a researcher, an early career researcher, who says: I see no connection between what I’m doing right now. I’m in a lab. How do I not have any cool ideas. So how is this relevant for me? What would you tell them to help them to understand to come to you guys, or maybe even that it’s worth having a conversation about transfer?

Teresa: Actually, it’s always good having a conversation because we have innovation scouts in our team. They help you to identify the innovation potential and use cases or applications that you might not have in mind because you’re thinking only of your lab or the researchers in your field. Our innovation managers will be happy to invite you for a coffee here, have a conversation, ask you if have you ever imagined that someone from another field could be interested in your results, because maybe it helps them to improve their ideas. And then, yes, sometimes you get new inputs. For instance, we had one researcher from the department of earth science working with dust in the atmosphere. And she always thought: Well, I’m doing basic research and there isn’t any application for that. But with the help of our innovation manager, we identified photovoltaic is quite interesting because the technique doesn’t work if dust is on the PVC. So that’s a use case she never thought of before. And now we think of working together with a company or bringing up a project together.

Amanda: That’s a fantastic example. I would love to hear if there are any other examples that you guys can think of where people came to you and maybe really had a hard time imagining this connection between startups or developing a cool idea outside of research. And they were able to come out with maybe not even a startup idea, but just a new idea, a benefit to them talking to you guys.

Anna: Yes, I can think of another idea. There was one PhD candidate. She was at the Department of Linguistics at Freie Universität, at the Department of Romanian Philology. She was working on parts of words and found out that the pronunciation in Vietnamese is so very difficult, so different to other languages and it’s so difficult for Vietnamese to learn German. And she developed a way how to teach Vietnamese people to learn German. And then she met her later co-founder. He was a data scientist and he said, „Oh, it’s possible to train an AI on how to learn German and make Vietnamese people learn German quicker.“ And so they worked together and now found a company called Silbi. And they’re training their AI model successfully and now found investors to invest in the company. That’s another example. And, of course, we know many more because there are coming a lot of ideas into our office.

Amanda: Very cool. Say, I am really new to this idea about coming up with an idea, and I’m not really sure, about how this might work. What process would I go through if I come to you? What might that look like to develop an idea into something long term?

Anna: As Teresa already mentioned, first it is maybe a coffee with the innovation managers on like: Hey, I’m working on a project at the lab or wherever in the university. Then the innovation manager would say: Hey, I’ve got a connection to an existing company, or why don’t you work in the area of renewable energies, for instance? And then, someone would come to me and we could already work on a business case, on a business model. We normally use the business model canvas, which is a training or model to easily evaluate whether your idea does fit into a market. You will find out whether there’s a target group. You will find out what stakeholders are there, which interest groups, and who would pay for the product in the end. What else needs to be done? Does it need development? Maybe a data scientist works on the development of the product or does it need a lab, or is it hardware which you need to be connected to any company in our network? We provide you with all kinds of contacts. We kind of give you homework and meet up again and again until we think: Alright, now it’s a good point to find the matching funding program. And there are quite a few different ones. There are different ones for the transfer part than for the startup part. For instance, for startup ideas there’s the Berlin Startup Stipendium. It’s a program that is for early-stage ideas. When you’ve already found: Yes, there’s the market for my idea. And you know already: Okay, I need to work on a prototype to test it in the market., then the Berlin Startup Stipendium is a really good thing. You get a grant, a stipend for up to four team members for half a year or even for 12 months. That’s around 2,300 euros. You get workshops and a lot of support from us and you get connected to our big ecosystem, which I haven’t mentioned yet. We call it Science and Startup. It’s the ecosystem of all three Berlin universities in cooperation with Charité. And we at Freie Universität Berlin have the healthcare and prevention startups in our cluster. There are two other clusters, which are technologies and materials. That’s of course connected to Technical University. And sustainability and society is connected to Humboldt University. And in cooperation with Charité we do the healthcare part. And then there’s another funding program. It’s called EXIST. There is the EXIST Founders Business Grant, which is a stipend for 12 months, which supports teams for up to three team members with a stipend of up to 3,000 euros for PhDs and material money of 30,000 euros and coaching money of 5,000 euros. And during the projects the teams are always in our house and our startup Villa and/or in other houses of other university and incubators, depending on where they apply. They have an office in the house and get access to all kinds of lab spaces and conference rooms. They get connected with mentors, coaches, and experts.

Amanda: So it sounds like a lot of possibilities for people who are thinking about this. Do I need business knowledge? Like, do I have to be someone who really feels like an entrepreneur or is it possible to do this if I feel like that I’m not really sure how businessy I am. Or maybe I have one foot still in research and I’m kind of thinking about it.

Anna: Well, I’ve met quite a few researchers who started a business without having done business before. So it’s good if you are driven. I mean, if you’ve got the energy to do it. Because doing or starting a startup is kind of starting anew, like new studies at university. It’s like a whole new thing. And you need to have some energy, but best case is that you wear all hats: You’re the idea giver and you’re the business guy and you know marketing and sales. But that’s not very often the case. More often it is that you find other team members who are experienced in business or sales or marketing and we help find additional team members. It’s possible to post a job offer at the university or at our network and it’s mostly possible to find a person that fits into the team.

Amanda: It sounds like you really don’t have to be the business person if you want to try this out. And it sounds like you’d be able to test it out a little bit, get to know you guys and you don’t have to decide right away that you want to do a whole startup. So I have a second question. And that would be. Imagine that I get involved and I start developing an idea. Maybe I go all the way through this startup founding or come up with this business idea, but it’s not successful. What benefit do I have as a researcher for trying this out? And maybe I tried out during my PhD or during my early postdoc phase. What is the benefit of it? If I don’t succeed, what do I get out of that?

Anna: Well, in my opinion, it is really like another education that you went through. And like you’ve had an upgrade on your education. That’s an experience that you will always need because you’ve been able to build up a network that you will probably keep for a long time and you will always be able to get back to people you met during starting up a business. And of course, if it didn’t work, maybe you will try again. Because that’s what a lot of people do. They fail once and try it again and do it better the next time. So that is, I think, what you get out of it.

Teresa: I wanted to add, that if you’re more into the transfer perspective from industry-university collaboration then founding your own startup, I guess that it’s quite similar. You get a new network because you will work with the company, you get to know people there, get new insights, also see what kind of jobs are available. Like who’s working in this company? Could I imagine myself working there? So having first contact with them. We also support you going to fairs and present your idea. For instance, we are having your prototype at this fair and then you could also meet new interesting people. Or you go to any network events we organize. For instance, we have Industry on Campus with a focus on green chemistry, where students and researchers from Berlin or any other place are able to meet startups, companies that engage in green chemistry. Just talk to them, get new ideas, new input, and learn something.


Amanda: Excellent. So it sounds like there’s a possibility not just to start a company, but also to sort of talk to companies that exist to find out a little bit about how I can bring my idea into existing structures? Did I understand that correctly?

Teresa: Exactly. So there are funding programs supporting the cooperation between small and medium enterprises in Germany with universities or research institutions in general. And we’re happy to support those projects. Also, if you don’t know any company working in your field, you can tell us your idea and then we are happy to have a look if we know anyone who’s working in this field. We bring you together, have a meeting and maybe a project arises and then we apply for this funding.

Amanda: Excellent. So maybe that’s also another option for listeners who are kind of interested in this startup idea, but they’re not really sure if they see themselves starting a whole company. Where they can find out a little bit more about what’s going on in the industry. If they’re not so sure how that might work, or maybe they want to bring an idea.
So you guys also do a couple of other things. You have a lot of services that you already mentioned. Is there anything else that you haven’t talked about that you think that I should know about, if I were doing a PhD at the Freie Universität and I was thinking about transfer in general?

Teresa: We also organize a lot of competitions. For instance, the Research to Market Challenge, where you can submit a short concept note presenting your idea and then, if you are selected, you will get through some workshops, get this knowledge Anna mentioned before, some canvas business model or a pitch training and you will have the chance to develop your idea further with the help of trainers and the help of our grant advisors. Or another competition is Forum Junge Spitzenforschung, which will open a new call this autumn and the topic will be sensors and data generated by them. There you could also hand in your recent research and hope to get funding and workshops with the trainers.

Amanda: It sounds like there are a lot of opportunities, but it also sounds like something where you could get really important skills, even if you don’t kind of go in this direction, even if you stay in academia. Because pitching your project and being able to get people excited about it, is something that you need to know across the board. So that sounds very cool. So what is the benefit of working with you guys versus just doing this by myself?

Anna: We’ve been in this area since 2006. Profund Innovation and the call to do transfer at university exists since 2006. So there is some experience . And we do see a lot of projects and ideas. So I think we are really a good address to go to as well as the other transfer and startup teams at other universities. So you should really just write us or call us and talk to us if you plan on developing your idea further, or if you just want to find out if this idea is eligible for any funding program. And I wanted to add a service that we offer, or at least a colleague of ours offers. Whenever researchers start, he or she should come up to us, or to our colleague. She does IP management and patent management. So if there’s any issue about where you could find out whether your idea is able to file a patent for or if you want to find out how to protect your IP, you should definitely go to our colleague Dr. Christine Reuter.

Amanda: Could you tell us a little bit about this IP process and patent process? Like what is important and what are some of the concerns that researchers have when they’re thinking about this process, what might be some of the questions?

Teresa: The biggest concern is „I will lose time“, because a patent isn’t published in a journal, as PhD students or researchers are used to, but there is a different process. So most of the people say, „No, I want to publish it because I want to submit my PhD soon. I want to have the certificate.“, and there we would recommend before publishing, to come to our colleague, Christine to talk to her about your research results. And also the patent process can be quite fast. So after you have talked to her and both of you decided you have a good result, you have something that is worth to go for a patent, then you can submit together with the other persons who were involved in the process of getting this research results, an invention disclosure. After that, Christine and her team will do some research like: Are there other patents in this field? If so, what content do they have? Is your content new enough or different enough to be a new patent? Is there an inventive step in your research results? She always says, research results can be patented if the guy in the lab next door would have never expected this result. If you go to him or her, tell him or her your ideas and he’s like, „Oh, wow. That’s totally new. I would have thought if I put A and B together, it’s C and now you say it’s D. So amazing.“ That’s worth going for a patent. So you submit this invention disclosure to Christine and her team. And after that, they do some research, have talks with our lawyer, the patent lawyer. And after that we will confirm or not confirm to take it. And after that it’s published, I think, 12 months later. But having in mind that also reviews at journals take quite a while. At least in life science I know stories where a paper took two years to be published. So compared to that it’s quite fast. Not slower than a paper, let’s say it this way. And for your track record, a patent counts as a publication. So that’s sometimes important as well.

Amanda: So if I publish something as a patent, one benefit of doing the patent is that I have a publication basically. What is the other benefit of getting a patent? Like, why do I want one? Why is it important?

Teresa: For most funding agencies, the probability of funding is higher if you have a patent. At least for the funding programs we support at Profund Innovation, which deal with transferring knowledge into industry. There it’s a plus point if you can show I have a patent on that.

Amanda: I would love to hear from you guys if there are any examples you can share with us. We love all examples, but I would love to hear if there are examples that have a connection to the social sciences, to the humanities, because I think that’s a little bit harder sometimes for people to imagine, you know, how do I fit in here? I think it’s a little easier for life sciences. And I know you guys are specializing in the life science and the health, as you mentioned. But if you have any, and when you’ve heard about it, I would just think it’d be really interesting for our listeners to hear about.

Anna: Yes, we all love to see more ideas evolving from the social sciences. And we are waiting for it patiently, but there are examples at least. Quite a few that are from the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Freie Universität. One, for example, is an app called Aumio, which is the meditation app for kids with ADHD. The founder studied psychology at Freie Universität Berlin and he was an ADHD patient himself when he was a child. And his parents were like: Oh yeah, we don’t make a big topic out of it. Just wait and see until it gets better and so on. But one day he discovered that meditation helped him a lot. So when studying psychology, he did his master thesis about that topic and did quite a few surveys and started to study on that and found out it really, really helps. So, he built up the startup idea and found team members in the business area and design. And designed this beautiful app with meditation, adventurous trips for kids. And came up with funding and made it to the health insurance company. All the big ones from Germany. That’s a well going startup right now. And there’s another idea that evolved also from the psychology department, which is an awesome app for chemotherapy. Normally, when they receive chemotherapy, they have kind of a chain of little beads and they can say: Okay,now I’ve gained another bead and I have chemotherapy one, then there’s the other therapy and I get another bead and so on. They developed an app for that because, of course, kids today find it way cooler to have a digital tool to see their progress. Developing that app, the idea giver did not only study psychology at Freie Universität but she was a nurse before. A children’s nurse at Charité. And she could also find out that of course parents were really kind of feeling helpless, supporting their kids. And then she also developed an app for parents and caregivers. So she made up a lot of content to help caregivers deal with this situation.


Amanda: That’s a great example of a connection to the social sciences, because I can think of a lot of ideas where people are talking about research, where they’re dealing with, you know, what do people, how do people behave, or what do they do, or what do they need? And I also really like that idea of connecting to a prior career path, because I think it’s easy for a lot of people to think: I’ve done all these different things. How do I put those two things together?

Teresa: Maybe I can add something to that question because it’s not only us hoping for new projects or more projects in the field of social science and humanities, but also the politics are going that way. The Federal Ministry for Research and Education will publish a call for social innovations in October, November. And we will be happy to have some info sessions on that as soon as it is published. I hope to have a lot of applications from Freie Universität.

Amanda: I have one more question for you, and that is: What have I not asked you that you think that I should ask you? And maybe there’s some questions that people come to you guys with and you really feel like that’s a question that you would love for everyone to have the answer to, because it gets asked so often. Or maybe there’s a question or information that you would love to share. And I’ll ask both of you.

Anna: Yeah, maybe people come up and wonder when is the best time to approach us. It’s always a question. I think we all would say: Whenever you feel like it. Whenever you think you’ve found something that is possibly a good startup idea or that could be interesting for industry partners, just give us a call.

Teresa: And maybe it’s not only the question, „When should I come to you?“, but also, „Why should I come to you?“ And there, I guess, everyone who is in science or who’s doing his or her PhD right now, is in science because he or she wants to have an impact. They want to invent something or find out some new things and make the world a better place. I know that’s a quite often used phrase. But if you want to have an impact, society and the market need to know about your results. They have to get out of the drawer next to your desk and come to the public. And so we will support you with that. Either in the way of bringing you together with companies or to support you to found your own company.

Amanda: So I just want to thank you guys so much for talking to us today. We’re recording this interview in the fall, but it’s possible that it might not be published for a little while. So for our listeners, you will be able to find information about what is coming up by visiting the links, which we’ll also provide, to the Profund Innovation website. Or by getting in touch with the team at Profund Innovation. Thank you so much.

LINKS:

Apply to the Research to Market Challenge

Register for Normen und Standards: Ein kleiner Überblick

S03, Episode 1: „It’s my job to make sure that students can complete their doctorates properly and quickly“

In this episode, Prof. Pagel was one of the two winners of the Supervisor Award 2022, which is an award presented annually by the Dahlem Research School for exceptional supervision of doctoral researchers. Prof. Pagel talks about what makes a good, but also a bad doctorate relationship, what he himself experienced during his doctorate and what one would have to do to win him over as a supervisor. He also talked about many other things, including micromanagement, answering emails outside of working hours and what doctoral researchers can do on their part to ensure a good relationship with their supervisor. Enjoy listening to the interview!

HIGHLIGHTS

„I’m not just here to give lectures, but one of my central tasks is to supervise doctoral students. And to turn them into real scientists with solid specialist training.“

„In the natural sciences, you have to realize that if someone starts their doctorate and after about a year and a half doesn’t understand more about the subject than the person supervising them, then something has gone wrong.“

AUDIO

LINKS

DRS Supervision Award

Workshops on Managing Research at DRS

Muster einer Betreuungsvereinbarung

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Marlies Klamt:

Welcome to the DRS Podcast, the podcast of the Dahlem Research School at Freie Universität Berlin. I am Dr. Marlies Klamt and today I am interviewing Professor Dr. Kevin Pagel. Mr. Pagel was one of the two winners of the Supervisor Award 2022, which is an award presented annually by the Dahlem Research School for exceptional supervision of doctoral researchers. The special thing about this award is that doctoral students nominate their supervisors themselves. If you also have an outstanding supervisor, you can find the link for the nomination in the show notes. I talked to Prof. Pagel about what makes a good, but also a bad doctorate relationship, what he himself experienced during his doctorate and what I would have to do to win him over as a supervisor.
But we also talk about many other things, including micromanagement, answering emails outside of working hours and what doctoral researchers can do on their part to ensure a good relationship with their supervisor.
And now I hope you enjoy listening to the interview!

Professor Pagel, could you please briefly introduce yourself?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: My name is Kevin Pagel, I am a professor of bio-organic chemistry at the Free University of Berlin. In our research, we mainly deal with the structural investigation of complex biomolecules, especially carbohydrates and sugars, which we look at more closely using various methods. In particular, we use mass spectrometry methods to determine the weights of the molecules.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: And you also supervise doctoral researchers.

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: I also supervise doctoral researchers. At the moment, there are eight students in my working group who are aiming for a doctorate.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: You are one of the two winners of the 2022 Supervisor Award from Freie Universität Berlin. What was your first thought when you found out that you were receiving this award?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Well, first of all, I was delighted to have received this award because I actually knew that it existed. And above all, I knew that my own students had to nominate someone. And of course it’s a very special honor when your own people nominate you for such an award. It has twice the impact.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: This prize is awarded for exemplary supervision of doctoral researchers. In your opinion, what constitutes good doctoral supervision?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Well, I think the most important thing when supervising doctoral researchers is to strike a balance between mentoring and providing support, but at the same time giving them enough freedom. Nobody comes to a university for a doctoral position like this who isn’t intrinsically motivated anyway. And that’s why I’m not a big fan of giving people too many guidelines. First and foremost, it’s about really getting the best potential out of everyone. And that includes giving students a certain amount of freedom.
At the same time, of course, you have to make sure that no one drifts off course and that everyone keeps their focus. And that really is a big challenge. So taking good enough care, but not taking too good care.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Yes, I definitely agree with you. When you think back to your own doctoral studies, what experiences did you have with your doctoral supervisor? Perhaps there was something that you particularly appreciated about your supervisor or perhaps something that you remember negatively, where you say I want to consciously distance myself from them today?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: In my own doctorate, I actually experienced exactly what I am now trying to convey to my own students. Because I had an incredible number of opportunities. I had a great deal of academic freedom and I was also able to determine the topics I worked on to a certain extent. But what was always there was the infrastructure and the resources to actually carry out the experiments. And that was very, very productive. Because, as I said, as a young person in particular, you are bursting with ideas.
It would be downright stupid to cut it all off and limit it and not let people do it. And that was definitely the case during my doctorate. I was able to express myself very, very well and had a lot of academic freedom.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: I asked you what you think makes a good doctoral relationship. What do you think constitutes poor doctoral supervision?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Well, I think the fine line between too much supervision and too little supervision cannot be overestimated. You really have to find a fine balance. I see it more often in my day-to-day work that supervisors go into micromanagement and then make really, really detailed specifications about what should be achieved when, what should be written down and how, and so on. And that often leads to any creativity, which is the greatest asset of the young people we work with, simply being cut off. And that’s exactly what we really need to prevent. And then the whole thing can become very, very productive.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: You’ve already mentioned the balance between providing support as a supervisor and at the same time giving doctoral researchers their freedom. What problems can the doctoral researchers you supervise turn to you for help with and where do you perhaps also say that this is the limit, that this is something they have to manage themselves?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: In my experience, one of the biggest problems that students have in their day-to-day work is writer’s block. This is really the thing that occurs most frequently by far, that the data is there, the experiments are done, everything looks great. We’ve had presentations and meetings about it and now the publication can actually be written and then it starts to get tough. And that’s exactly why we’ve actually established a kind of master plan, a kind of system for how to ultimately turn the data into a publication. This follows a relatively clear pattern of what should be written down and when.
In other words, it usually starts with a concept sketch, then the illustrations are created, then you have a meeting with everyone involved, then the illustrations are used to knit a red thread for a publication, which is then underpinned with the appropriate words in the next step in order to turn it into a publication. In my experience, this is very, very helpful for students, especially those who have major problems with writing. And in my opinion, that really is the biggest challenge for doctoral researchers at the moment.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: That sounds great. So I can imagine it as a kind of handbook?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: There’s even a PDF and a presentation.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: And you get that right at the beginning of the doctorate or only when you start writing?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: No, I give this presentation in the working group seminars at regular intervals, also elsewhere. And the students can of course also download it from the website. And it exists here, it’s all over the internal folders. And people are familiar with it and know that it exists.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Yes, great. I think it’s a really great idea, because I know that writer’s block can be a real hindrance and can drag out the doctorate unnecessarily. Even if the supervision is going well in principle, that doesn’t mean that there won’t be any conflicts. After all, a doctorate is a time when there are numerous challenges and often crises. How do you deal with it if there is a crisis between you and one of the people you are supervising?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: I actually try to resolve conflicts relatively openly. In this context, resolving conflicts openly also means that everyone is allowed to have their say. It’s not always easy, but there’s little point in carrying such conflicts around forever. And I then usually try to have a clarifying conversation with the people concerned. This has actually always worked quite well so far because, as I said, intrinsic motivation is inherent in all doctoral researchers, which is why it has always worked quite well. Occasionally there is friction between the members of the working group, but this can usually be resolved relatively easily.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: In other words, you would invite the relevant employees to a meeting and try to clarify this together at the table?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Exactly. A meeting is then arranged and then you try to talk to each other and solve the problem. It’s actually relatively trivial things that are usually involved. It’s about authorship, about publications. It’s about who gets to go on which business trip or who is nominated for which award. But all of that can usually be resolved. So it’s rare for really deep conflicts to arise.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: And do you sometimes have to make decisions that you think I would rather not have made?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Well, there are decisions that can be unpleasant because sometimes you just can’t decide things properly. That’s just the way it is. I would say that I’ve never had to make a decision that really made my stomach hurt. Not even afterwards.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Assuming I wanted to do a doctorate with you and asked you to supervise me, what would I have to bring to the table for you to accept me as a doctoral candidate?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: As a rule, the requirements are actually relatively low, because you have to imagine that if you dive really deep into a research project like this, you usually don’t know what it’s about beforehand anyway. So there are no experts at doctoral level, at least when the students are just starting out. That’s why the skills, methodological and analytical skills are very, very important to me. In other words, the basic knowledge should be halfway there and creative thinking and so on should also be present. As far as the actual techniques are concerned, you learn everything on the job. You don’t have to bring too much with you.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: You mentioned methodical and analytical skills and creative thinking. How do you check that this is present in a person?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: As a rule, almost nobody in my working group starts a doctorate without having seen the person in a different context beforehand. These are either research internships that people complete as part of their studies. These are presentations at conferences. You’ve talked to the person in question in other ways. And you get a really good feel for whether it works and whether people are capable of doing it. I wouldn’t feel comfortable giving applicants any tests to find out what they are particularly good at. I don’t think that would do the job justice either.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Do you occasionally accept people via initial applications? In other words, people you haven’t been in contact with before at conferences or who you don’t already know from your Master’s degree, for example?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Yes, that has actually happened several times. There has also been a situation where we advertised a position and several suitable people applied. And then there were two new doctoral researchers and not just one. That was actually quite good.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Great, if you have the funds to hire both of them, all the better.
One question I’m always asked is, if I apply to someone now, to a professor who doesn’t know me yet, and I’d like to do my doctorate with that person, should I send them a fully prepared exposé? Or do I first write who I am, maybe send a CV and then ask if there are any projects I could work on? Of course, this is also subject-specific, but what about you? Do you prefer more concrete ideas or is it more important that the person fits in with you and your working group in principle?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: It’s actually unusual to come with fully developed ideas, but it’s more the case that you develop ideas together and also try to decide together where the person fits in best based on their own skills. So it’s actually more the case that I talk to suitable candidates, give them a short presentation and simply show them what topics we are researching in the working group. And then we try to identify a topic together and work out together in which direction it could go. Of course, you often have guidelines from larger research projects as to which areas to research. However, these positions are advertised in such a way that they explicitly state what the doctoral position is for.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: And what do you do if you have a person in front of you and you say that the CV fits well, the skills fit well, but I somehow have a strange gut feeling or I don’t like the person, I can’t say exactly what it is, but something bothers me. Would you still put them on the shortlist or would you say that’s a direct exclusion criterion?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Well, if the person is suitable and there are no formal objections, then it definitely makes sense to shortlist them. There are rules about that. There doesn’t always have to be perfect harmony in a working group. There can also be… Minor conflicts can also be managed. That’s not the problem. Everyone doesn’t always have to be a perfect match. And in any case, you should also take such applicants into account.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: For whom are you not the right supervisor?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: What’s problematic is when people really expect very, very detailed supervision every day. I know there are colleagues who do this, who issue very, very detailed guidelines, where it is really clear week after week what the students have to do. I can’t do that and I don’t want to do that either, to be honest, because it’s far too restrictive for me. In other words, if someone really needs a very, very detailed work plan and supervision, then I’m probably not the right person to talk to. I provide resources, I provide the monetary means to carry out the experiments, but I’m not going to check exactly what people are doing every day.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: How often do you talk to your doctoral researchers about their projects that are relevant to their doctorates?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Well, of course we have a working group seminar. That’s what everyone does. We get together once a week. There’s usually a presentation and we talk openly about topics. I meet with the doctoral researchers at least once every six months and keep a record of the whole thing with a plan. But of course we also try to exchange ideas as best we can in our everyday lives. That means I also go to the lab or to people’s desks and talk to them and try to get a feel for where things are going wrong and where they are not. It’s actually a habit I picked up a bit from one of my postdoc’s supervisors. She was very busy, had a very, very large working group and still managed to go round once a week and talk to everyone for five minutes. And that really is a great thing. I also really appreciated that.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: In other words, you actually always have an overview of who is standing roughly where and can then also see if things are stuck somewhere and the person is simply not making progress.

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Yes, absolutely. I mean, you have to. It’s relatively important, because the end result should be a doctorate and a failed doctorate doesn’t just reflect negatively on the doctoral researcher, but also on me. It’s actually my job to make sure that the students can complete their doctorates properly and quickly.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: In an ideal world, definitely. Unfortunately, the experiences that my coachees have with their supervisors are not always like that. Especially in doctorates in the humanities and social sciences, it can sometimes happen that you don’t have any contact at all for two years if you are doing an external doctorate. From this point of view, a weekly exchange, even if it is only short, is of course very ideal and very good for the doctoral researchers.

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Yes. It has to be said that many of the doctoral projects in my department are directly linked to larger third-party funded research projects. And there is always a kind of reporting obligation for these. This means that if the doctorate doesn’t work, the research project won’t work either. And then, of course, you get into trouble at some point when these reports have to be written. That’s why it’s in my own interest to make sure that something sensible comes out of it.
The most important thing is that you see it as a bit of a job. I mean, that’s why I’m here. I’m not just here to give lectures, but it’s one of my central tasks to supervise doctoral researchers. And to turn them into real academics with solid specialist training. And of course you want to do that well. And you have to think about the best way to do that.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: And what does that give you on a personal level?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Above all, it’s really nice to see how people mature. They often come to me when they are just starting their Master’s degree, at the beginning of their Master’s degree and have very, very good theoretical knowledge and are totally fit. But in many other areas, academic writing, thought structures and so on, they lack a bit of experience.
And when you really supervise people for three, four or five years, sometimes over these different stages, it’s really great to see, especially when they then go out and acquire major funding projects themselves, take up great positions and write great publications.
One of my first doctoral researchers has actually become a junior professor. That’s really great to see, of course. It’s a bit of an accolade.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Now, a good relationship between doctoral supervisors and doctoral candidates is a two-way street. Perhaps you have a few tips for doctoral researchers on what they can do to build a good relationship with their supervisor and then maintain it. So what can I do specifically as a doctoral researcher to ensure that my supervisor is happy with me and what should I perhaps not do?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: In any case, what is always very, very useful is to seek contact, to seek discussions. Not all the time, but I think it’s very important to keep in touch. What always goes down very, very well is actually developing your own ideas and concepts. I also see this with my colleagues. It’s something that goes down very well everywhere if the doctoral researchers really immerse themselves in the topic.
In the natural sciences, you simply have to realize that if someone starts a doctorate and after about a year and a half doesn’t understand more about the topic than the supervisor, then something has gone wrong. And interaction often takes place on this basis. And that’s really great fun, because you’re dealing with experts once people have got to grips with a topic.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Does that mean you still learn a lot from your doctoral researchers?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Absolutely. So it’s not just the subject matter, but sometimes it’s simply the creativity, the train of thought that is completely different from my own. And sometimes you scratch your head and ask yourself, what is this actually about? And then at some point you realize it’s a really great idea, let’s do it.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: How do you deal with the fact that you are now working on publications together with your colleagues, for example, and you have different working styles or different approaches? For example, if you have a deadline for a paper, there are people who do everything at the last minute and others who try to finish as far in advance as possible. How do you deal with this when you have different approaches?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Yes, I actually adapt a bit to the needs of the doctoral researchers. I actually experience this on a daily basis. There are students who come to me with their manuscripts four weeks before the deadline, simply to have enough time, and I then try to process them quickly. But if the house is on fire and a paper has to be finished within three days at the very end, then I get stuck in too. It’s just very different. I actually try to meet everyone’s needs in that respect.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: How do you handle communication after official working hours, i.e. in the evening, at weekends, on public holidays?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: I actually saw this once from a colleague in England. I don’t have this in my own email signature, but I tell my employees this and they all know it. Sometimes it suits me very well to send an email at nine in the evening. But that doesn’t mean that I expect it to be answered at nine in the evening. Just because it suits me doesn’t mean I expect the others to do the same.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: In other words, you also rely on clear communication in this case and say that I do it and don’t set an implicit example, which is what it is in principle when you set an example, but I make it very transparent that it’s something I do because it fits into my daily routine, but that I don’t expect anyone else to do the same.

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Exactly, that’s how I actually communicate it. Everyone in my working group actually knows that too. Especially when you have a family, you often have to answer certain things in the evening. Or you’re on a business trip and you quickly reply from the train and so on. And everyone knows that I don’t expect anyone to reply to an email at eight o’clock on a Friday evening. That’s clear to everyone. If I get an answer on Monday morning, that’s perfectly fine.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Do you see a change in the role of doctoral supervisors? I’m thinking of a longer period of time, such as the last 10 or 20 years, but perhaps also the last few years due to covid.

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Yes, I think the trend over the last 10 or 20 years is that hierarchies have generally become much flatter. In the past, it was often seen as my doctoral student. Today, the view is actually more that you work together with the doctoral students and that you build things up for each other and so on. And that’s not just the case in my working group, I think it’s the case everywhere, that it’s all becoming a bit flatter.
Due to covid… We’re not even feeling the direct effects so much here at doctoral student level. We’re seeing it more with Master’s students, because they’re just slowly finishing up. And it’s mainly the practical skills where more supervision is needed at the moment. That is noticeable.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: How do you explain that?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: It certainly has to do with the fact that far fewer practical courses could take place in the laboratories themselves during the coronavirus period. Practical work was already massively restricted. Another major problem was that students were no longer able to interact with each other as actively because they no longer saw each other. There’s simply a difference between making appointments by phone or online and simply meeting in the corridor and talking about things. And that already leads to major restrictions and especially the research internships, which are quite common here, where students sometimes work on a topic in a working group for 15 weeks, were already extremely limited during the corona period. And you notice that.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Mr. Pagel, is there another important point that we have forgotten that we should definitely address?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: I think it’s really important… At every stage of academic training, there are certain criteria that are used to measure or evaluate. It’s about publications and grades and things like that. And I sometimes have the feeling that one aspect that is much, much more important in other European countries is falling behind, namely the ability to organize your own funding. In my opinion, this is actually still a little underdeveloped in Germany. I know this from international colleagues, where it is quite common for doctoral students to be much more actively involved in writing applications, in writing their own grant applications and so on and so forth.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Is that something you are also trying to actively promote?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Absolutely. I also help people to write their own proposals. This skill becomes extremely important later on, especially if you want to stay in science, because a great proposal that you get through sometimes counts as much as five good publications or ten. This is a very, very important criterion for your future academic career. And you can’t start practicing this early enough.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Is that also a point that you address at some point when someone tells you that they have decided that they would rather go into industry after their doctorate, that they just want to get it over with as quickly as possible, or that they are really aiming for a professorship, that you then also try to support people in different ways and provide different kinds of assistance?

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Absolutely. Of course, it’s really important to focus a little on the professional goals of the person in question. Sometimes I even assign topics in this direction. So it does happen that someone comes to me and says I want to do a doctorate and then do this and that in industry. Then we sometimes even select the topics where the whole thing would fit well. Because the research that is required in industry or the skills that are required there are not always completely the same as in an academic laboratory.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: Mr. Pagel, thank you very much for this wonderful interview.

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel: Thank you very much.

Dr. Marlies Klamt: After this very informative conversation, I would just like to remind you once again that you can also put your supervisor in the running for the Supervisor Award. This happens once a year and we provide information about the deadlines on the website and in the newsletter. So it’s best to register directly so that you don’t miss the next round.
On the website for this episode, we also link to the Supervisor Award page, where you can see who has won the award since 2011, if you’re curious.

S02, Episode 3: Mental Health during the Doctorate with Scholar Minds

Content Advisory: This episode features a discussion of mental health challenges and positive strategies to deal with mental health. There is a very brief mention of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling with feelings of self-harm or suicidal thoughts, please reach out to the Seelesorge hotline in Germany at 0800 1110 111 or get emergency help by calling 112. Additional resources for mental health are available in the links below.

In this episode, we talk to Sandra Neumann of Scholar Minds about mental health during your doctorate. We’ll discuss how to manage the challenges of doing a doctorate and what strategies exist to help you! We’ll also learn more about Scholar Minds, a ECR-led initiative for mental health during the doctorate, and how you can get involved.

Join us for a workshop session with Scholar Minds (online) – the dates and times are available in Lounjee here.

Highlights

„I think the most important message for us to convey is, please don’t [wait to] come to us when you are already suffering. Come to us when you feel like, „Oh, I’m not sure. I think I need, maybe I need to be there in a preventative manner.““

„I think mental health should be, call it however you want to call it, but should be part of a curriculum. It should be […] included in the PhD you’re doing, be it a graduate program that includes fixed courses or when you do an individual PhD“

from our interview with Sandra Neumann

Audio

Download or listen to the audio version of the podcast here.

Links

Transcript

Please note: This is a machine-generated translation that has been (minimally) edited for readability.

Amanda Wichert: Welcome. We are here today with Sandra Neumann, a doctoral candidate at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain at Humboldt University, and she is one of the founders of Scholar Minds, which we are going to learn about more today.

Welcome. So the first question that I’d like to ask you is if you could tell us a little bit about Scholar Minds. What is it? And where did it start? And what do you do with your organization?

Sandra Neumann: Yeah, Scholar Minds is actually an initiative which is nonprofit. And we founded ourselves pretty much at the start of the Corona Pandemic because we realized that a lot of people really were asking for events to talk about mental health and to make aware that people are suffering at home, especially during this very month of strict isolation.

And so Scholar Minds is an initiative from early career researchers, and we are really including postdocs here as well, who are in the early stages as well as PhD candidates. And we want to both have, or want to foster changes both on the individual level. Meaning that we want to approach early career researchers with talks and events, and at the same time also trying to make changes on the institutional level really, and try to talk to principal investigators, graduate schools on how to improve creating awareness for mental health really.

Amanda Wichert: You’d mentioned this expectation survey and I would love to hear more about that and maybe you can fill us in on what that is.

Sandra Neumann: Yeah, Scholar Minds has very different goals. I think the first goal that I already mentioned was that we want to create awareness for mental health, and we can do that through very many different things.

And one thing is like having events and then talking about mental health. And another aspect is to do surveys. And we actually did two surveys now, and I can talk about the first one because we are still analyzing the second one. And here we really looked into satisfaction with the PhD and mental wellbeing.

And we also looked into how was it before the pandemic versus how is it now? And I think just to name some of the findings that we have, is that within our sample we had approximately 16% who had a mental health disorder before starting the PhD. But what is alarming is that then 50% of these 15 had another.

diagnosis, which was connected to their PhD. So that really shows the vulnerability, really, that comes through being in this PhD program when not being equipped with the right competencies and maybe support for resilience. And what we also found is that, and I think that is really not surprising, and this is really built with other studies that are coming up now, is that the pandemic really decreased satisfaction with the PhD training and that the mental wellbeing also changed for the worse for over half of the sample. And I think when you talked about expectation management, one thing that we ask in the end, and this is very much the same in the first survey which we did in 2020, and the second one in 2021, is that we ask, „So you enter the PhD, and then how is it compared to what you expected?“

And here, actually over 60% say, „It’s actually worse. This experience that I thought I would have is actually worse than I thought it would be, being in this PhD training.“ And I think this really gives us insights on how to design these PhD programs and how to advertise them, to really give realistic expectations on what this PhD will be like. Maybe what are the working hours, what are things that you need to maybe be in interaction with your supervisor and so forth. So there are really so many implications from this question.

Amanda Wichert: That’s really interesting, and when I think back, we have another podcast season where we interview PhD students and ask them about their PhD experience or graduates actually. And we asked them a little bit about, „What is the difference between what you expected and what you actually experienced?“ And so far, the answers have been everything. So that’s a very interesting study and I’m sure really useful in application.

So my next question for you is, what are some of the most common challenges that doctoral students face? What are they when they maybe when you guys interact with them or when you meet with doctoral students, or when you guys think about your own challenges, what are the challenges that they’re facing? And particularly, what about the environment is challenging? So being in the system or the structure of the PhD?

Sandra Neumann: Yeah, I think that’s a really good question, and I think every stage of the PhD comes with its own challenges. I think the first challenge is, and this is connected to this expectation management, is when I start the PhD, what is really expected of me?

Should I work endlessly? How fast should I finish projects? Am I supposed to communicate with, like my colleagues? Should we work together? Should each individual work? And then really having this ratio of competition and collaboration and also this individual contract with your supervisor.

So what does your supervisor expect from you? And then going into the PhD and then thinking about, okay, you have to at some point finish and there are certain criteria that you need for finishing, which could be, for example, publishing. And that entails a certain timeline because it’s not that you submit something and then it’s published a week later.

So really then, during these long periods of being in publishing processes, which can be also in terms of becoming harsh criticism, to really being up for the challenge and really enduring the criticism you might receive. And then yeah, toward the end, just really seeing still the worst of the PhD work you did maybe throughout several years.

And then you know, who in these very challenging times, when it comes to working environment, who is the person you might potentially talk to about these problems? Can you talk to your supervisor or will the supervisor then potentially perceive you as weak or not up to the task? How open can you be about your own struggles?

So there are really lots of different challenges when it comes to the PhD.

Amanda Wichert: I think that’s what you said. Just the last thing was really interesting because that’s something we would like to know. How do you approach colleagues or even your supervisor when you are having difficulties or challenges?

Can I ask for help? And maybe why do you think that’s such a challenging thing? You mentioned already, we don’t want our supervisors to think we’re weak or beyond that, what do you think makes that such a difficult thing for people to do and how can we overcome that?

Sandra Neumann: I think the first thing is that in the academic world, now it’s known as the mental health crisis, so that in general, people are suffering more or coming out more with that they’re having a mental health problem, which is great, but it means that the system has to learn and also supervisors have to learn to deal with it.

But it’s not like having a physical problem where there’s something to fix it, and then you are basically fixed and healed. Having a mental health problem is way more difficult and way more delicate to approach. So as a supervisor, I can imagine it is very difficult to when someone tells me, I might face depression or anxiety.

So as a supervisor, what should I do? Should I, because I have to not only have the person in mind, but I have to have my lab in mind, my laboratory that I’m working in. So it’s very different factors. So the knowledge about what to do in these cases, should I provide help? Should I say maybe you need to find professional help, has this person already has professional help?

So it’s a topic that requires a lot of knowledge to deal with and I’m not sure that all like of the supervisors we have to talk to are already aware of how to actually deal with it. And then I think it’s very like super individual. Is this like a connection between a supervisor and a PhD candidate that happens once in a month? Is it something that happens weekly? So how much trust do I have in this relationship, to keep me safe in this relationship? And then to really be open and talk about the mental health problems.

So I think something that I find helpful is to, if I’m comfortable sharing it with someone, who would it be in this environment and maybe starting, for example, with a colleague that I feel comfortable with. So basically looking for allies because I think it also needs to be separated between. Are these mental health challenges that come up because I’m in this environment or are these mental health challenges that come up because of something else? Maybe I have problems with my partner. Maybe I have a physical problem that might have led to mental health challenges.

So I think it’s also important to discern that and really think about, okay, in that case, what do I actually need? And I think that’s also important to think about. Why, like what’s the reasoning for me to tell it? Do I need support in terms of do I actually don’t know how I can get support? Which could be quite likely when, for example, you do a PhD, but this is for example, not the country you’ve been grown up in and you don’t know about the system and so you’re actually looking for help or you just want to give a notice and say, „Hey, sometimes I’m not coming to the meetings because I have maybe social anxiety or something.“

So I’m looking for understanding. So what’s really the rationale, the rationale of why I’m doing this? Which is very difficult when you are in emergency situations. So sometimes it’s not clear from the beginning. But if it is, I would think about first, who is the first person I want to have? Do I need allies? And then the second thing we, what is basically, the reasoning of me telling it?

Amanda Wichert: So that is, I think, really helpful because it’s something that we actually would advise a lot is if you’re having a problem and you want to address it, to think about what do I want from the other person? And I think that’s fantastic advice. You guys have mental health offers that you also offer. So one source of support could be my colleagues and my supervisors, but I could also go to Scholar Minds. What do you specifically offer? And what can I do? Say I am a PhD student who needs support? What can I get from you guys?

Sandra Neumann: Yeah, so what we offer are mental health toolkits. And what that means is that we offer this, for example, for graduate schools where, for example, if you feel like maybe your graduate school could profit from this, if you can approach your graduate school and then your graduate school can contact us.

And then we offer this for groups of PhD candidates where, over the course of four weeks, we have four sessions. And then we talk about all kinds of things that are helpful to maintain your mental health because I think the most important message for us to convey is, please don’t come to us when you are already suffering. Come to us when you feel like, „Oh, I’m not sure. I think I need, maybe I need to be there in a preventative manner.“

Because if it’s already in a state where you are like, „I think I’m in a deep depression,“ then I think Scholar Minds can direct you to psychotherapy help. But this is really not what we do. We are more on the preventative side and to really make sure that you maintain your mental health. And in that sense, we are doing a lot of mindset exercises. So we are looking together at what our core beliefs in our work and maybe how to challenge them. And we are looking at imposter feelings, which in high-achieving individuals, such as many academics, are common feelings.

And we want to tackle them and think about how to. It’s not about losing these feelings, it’s more about finding acceptance with them and coping at points where they are very strong. And we’re also making exercises on why am I actually doing this PhD? What is the vision behind it? What is my goal in life? Is this PhD a step toward an academic career and do I want to follow that? Or is it one step and then the next step is a career in industry? Is it really necessary that I put all my heart and soul and time in it, or can there be a ratio because I have other things in life like my family, my friends, my personal development that also should have a space in there.

And then we also have really psychoeducation. So we are just talking about how do I recognize depression? How do I recognize anxiety? And because these are the most prevalent disorders among PhD candidates. And maybe how can I, if I am seeing that a colleague is not doing well, how can I approach a colleague really and ask if he or she’s not doing well?

Amanda Wichert: That’s really interesting. So what would you suggest, maybe you could give us like a few really brief tips. Say, I noticed that my colleague is really struggling and I want to reach out to them and ask them maybe can I support them or I want to try and help them in some way. What would you suggest that I do?

Sandra Neumann: I think the first thing is really to, when you offer to give help, I think first of all, it’s important to create a safe space where this person feels that he or she can talk about it. Maybe it’s not the right place in the office where everybody else is, or in the team meeting, but maybe it’s a place where you go for a walk and a coffee.

And if the person is comfortable sharing, then really it’s about listening. And it’s not about giving advice, if I were in your situation, this is what you have to do. No. It’s really about accepting, listening, and really asking the person if the person needs advice at this point, and not being afraid. I think some people have this misconception that when they ask, things will turn bad or worse, but the reality is that sometimes just having this open ear and just normalizing it can be really helpful already.

And then I think, this is what I said earlier, okay, now we are allies in that. And then what’s the best step for you to move forward because the person is the expert of his or her experiences. So we have to trust in that. Obviously, if and I think that’s a very serious topic, if thoughts and ideas of suicidal actions come up, then this is where the purely listening part stops. This is where you have to openly say, „Look, you told me this and that, and this is something where you are endangering your life.“

And this is basically where my only listening stops. And I think this is where we need to get someone professional. I can get you there. I can call, for example, an ambulance, but this is where you also have to protect yourself. I think this is the last part. When someone gives you this information, you have to still protect yourself first.

Because at the end of the day, you have to also make sure that you are not then going into a mental health crisis because you’re taking on all the burden of your colleagues.

Amanda Wichert: I think that’s really important. What you’ve just said is also to protect yourself. And I think that is probably an important aspect in this environment and in academia where everyone is really maybe struggling and having a hard time, in some way or another. Is there a good way that you recommend approaching maybe a supervisor or a PI if you notice that, maybe you think that it would be really helpful for your team to have your toolkit or to get an intervention from you guys, but you’re not really sure how to address it with your supervisor?

Do you guys have suggestions on how to bring that up with the supervisor that’s maybe not as experienced or that doesn’t have as much knowledge as you mentioned earlier, which is really important in understanding how valuable this could be?

Sandra Neumann: Yeah. I think one thing in general that we experience is that if we call it mental health, it gets way easier rejected. Instead, when we call it self-care and self-management, this is something that is easier digestible, and so this could be one way of phrasing it and saying, „Hey, I think we as a team may need some self-management. This could be helpful, something in this direction.“

And I think one thing we need to be really honest about is that this might always be challenging to talk about and to expect that it might be difficult and there might be a „no“ first, because then maybe the supervisor goes back into the team meetings and then realizes for him or herself, maybe actually we might need that. So maybe in one meeting, just planting a seed and then being very persistent about it. And just asking maybe again, and then also maybe showing the website again, asking for allies. So I think making this change, and this is something we as Initiative also more and more realized, making changes in terms of mental health is not something that comes overnight. It’s a process and like being open and talking about it, it’s just the first step. There are so many more steps to go.

Amanda Wichert: When we spoke earlier, you mentioned this project or this idea that I really wanted to touch on while we’re talking and I think it connects to this idea of changing the way we think about mental health. And that is this idea of CVs of failure. And I think, as you mentioned earlier, one of the issues that we have with mental health in academia is really this pressure to do really well and to not make mistakes or to do things that aren’t perfect, or really this lack of, let’s say, space to fail. And maybe if you want to talk a little bit about the CVs of failures and maybe why it’s important for us to be aware of the fact that even successful people have failed.

Sandra Neumann: So the event that we are doing once a month is called Growing Up in Science. And there we invite supervisors or principal investigators from the Berlin, the wider Berlin area, but we also had them from different countries now. Then we asked them to present their way from being a PhD candidate to becoming this principal investigator.

And we specifically asked to not show us their success stories, but show us how it really was. And this could entail, it was pure luck that I got into this position or I applied for 50 professorships and then I got one. Or it was just about the right time, because a new field opened up and this was my chance.

And there are so many different reasons and quite often, it makes this experience so much more enjoyable when you see that others struggle too, and that, I don’t know, principal investigators also took more than these three years to finish their PhDs and that there was family in between, that they got children and that they didn’t shift from country to country because they thought about this, but because life happened and it makes experiences. Yeah, so much more normalizing for everybody. And I mean, there is the saying that successful people have just failed more. And I think this is something that we also want to portray, is that, yeah, you will fail and it’s totally normal and you will learn from it. And even as a principal investigator or supervisor, you still make mistakes. We are not robots. We are all humans. And it makes it easier to talk about mistakes because I think in general, in academia, we don’t have a culture of being allowed to fail. I remember when I started my PhD, every email I wrote, I meticulously, I like spent hours and hours writing emails because I was so afraid to make a mistake.

And then I received emails back from people who are high up in the hierarchy, and I realized, okay, they also make mistakes. But there is not really this culture of being allowed to make a mistake. And I think what this series, we want to show is that it’s okay to make mistakes. Everybody failed and they still made it up the hierarchy.

Nonetheless, though, it doesn’t take away the fact that it is really difficult to come into these positions of being principal investigators because there is this bottleneck that there are not, at least in Germany, not enough positions. So I think this is something that still needs to be told here, that just because you failed doesn’t guarantee you’re gonna become a principal investigator. At least in Germany, that’s not just how it works.

Amanda Wichert: Yeah, I think the statistics are 3% of PhD students become professors, or at least those are the ones that I have. I also think it helps, like you said, if you know that’s out there as opposed to being surprised when you learn about it, maybe right before you finish. Yeah. What do you think would have to change for people who are not getting support to get support? Maybe we mentioned this in an earlier conversation we had, and this is an issue of course we have across the board in our workshops and in our, I do a lot of mental health workshops as well, and the people who come, it’s self-selecting. So often the people who show up are, I always say, „You guys are the, you’re doing this already. You’re the ones with the gratitude journals and who are taking these classes,“ and it’s really hard to reach that group of people who aren’t looking for support. So what do you think would have to change to get those people to be involved?

Sandra Neumann: Absolutely. I think that’s really a challenge to get these people in. I think mental health should be, call it however you want to call it, but should be part of a curriculum. It should be told, or it should be included in the PhD you’re doing, be it a graduate program that includes fixed courses or when you do an individual PhD, that like really.

Be it a course that you have to take, but it has to be something that is there throughout your PhD journey. I think what I found really helpful, what we had in the, I think, in the first year of our PhD, was that we had counseling. So regardless of what your needs were, you just had this counseling where you were asked, „How are you doing? What are your challenges?“ And this was there for everybody so that you really reach everyone. And I know we had this for one year. And then it wasn’t available anymore because it was too expensive. And if I could dream up a solution, I would say yes, we would need this every half year, every six months, for every PhD candidate.

And some people might be like, „Yeah, I’m doing my gratitude journals, I’m fine. I have it all covered.“ But there might be people who have not even realized that they have a problem or that they need support. So having this monitoring in a very valuing way, like always asking, „How are you doing? What are your next challenges?“ could already go a long way. If we could, for example, it could also be incorporated in a way that every lab has this. So there’s one person who is like the mental health advocate, and this person is then responsible for checking up every six months. But obviously, then you also have to pay for this.

So I think there is where the systemic, yeah, challenges come in, that these extracurricular activities also cost money.

Amanda Wichert: That’s always the question. How do we convince the system to value different things that aren’t maybe just producing science? So I have one more question for you, and that is, I have two actually. The first one is, what haven’t I asked you that you think that I should have asked you? What do you think would be really important? Is there anything you want to share with the listeners?

Sandra Neumann

I think I want to just maybe highlight it once more because I think I said it earlier, but I think I want to say it again, that mental health is not something that should become a topic when you feel like things are not going well. Mental health is something that, like your physical health, that you go to the gym for weekly, should also be a weekly appointment for you and should be a check-in, should be a walk, should be going to the sauna or having a massage. Anything that helps you to release stress and maintaining your mental health. I think this is something I want to give to the audience. If I could give myself advice, I would give that to myself.

Amanda Wichert: That’s a question I also like to ask, what would you, if you could travel in time back to the beginning of your PhD, what would you tell yourself in that time? Maybe in relation to mental health?

Sandra Neumann: Yeah. Work less, enjoy more. I think when I talk about expectation management, I think why it is such a topic to me is because I felt that in the beginning I wasn’t sure what was to be expected. And I think if someone would’ve told me, „Hey, it takes a lot of years anyways, and it doesn’t matter if you work 10 hours on it or eight hours on it, or 12 hours, then what?“ That would have been a big relief for me and that there are so many things in this process that I cannot control. And I think having this idea of these are things I can control and these are things that are not up to me and having this liberty of saying, okay, I, I choose tasks. There are things I have to do, but there are things I can choose and I’m not taking on everything. I’m taking on what I can take on. And that I am giving back responsibility to my principal investigator and saying, if I’m taking this task on, which other task should I then not do because I’m not able to do it in the time that I’m having? That would have been nice to have more of this self-confidence, which I have today, but I didn’t have six years ago.

Amanda Wichert: I think that’s really interesting to hear and important because you can only do so many things in the day. So the last question I have for you is, how can people get involved in Scholar Minds? So maybe someone’s listening to this and they think, or they’re reading it and say, „I really want this sounds so cool. I want to do this.“ How do they get involved?

Sandra Neumann: I think it’s very easy. Just contact us. We are on Twitter, Berlin dot minds. We are also on Instagram. You can Google us. Just Google Scholar minds and you will find us. We have a homepage and really you can, you can join and then decide if you want to organize events with us. We have a yearly mental health conference. If you’re interested in doing that or if you’re interested in giving those mental health toolkits or organizing growing up in science, or if you say, „Okay, no, I’m more interested in public outreach. I want to design tweets or Instagram posts,“ that’s also possible. So there are really many ways of being and helping us. So just reaching out and then we’ll see what, how it goes from there. So there’s really no pressure. It’s more about going for a goal together.

Amanda Wichert: Cool. And maybe I’ll add because sometimes students ask me, „Oh, I don’t know if I could really do that. I don’t know, am I good enough or do I have enough knowledge, maybe I don’t know enough about it.“ It’s, I understand it’s okay to just contact you even if you’re not an expert.

Sandra Neumann: Definitely. I’m a psychologist and like psychotherapist in training, but like a lot of the people that aren’t scholar mites have no professional connection to mental health whatsoever. And even if you only decide you want to come to the weekly meetings and be there, that’s also totally fine. We are open to anybody who just wants to make a change and wants to create awareness.

Amanda Wichert: Thank you so much. So thank you for talking to us, for sharing your experience.

Sandra Neumann: Thank you for the opportunity.