This year’s Doctoral Retreat was held from June 30th to July 1st, 2022, at a lovely villa nearby Lake Constance. It was an excellent opportunity to bring together the people from Konstanz and Stuttgart.
Unfortunately, a few people could not make it to the retreat because of some cases of COVID-19. We hope the pandemic will end soon, and everything can finally return to normal.
On the first day, Frederik Dennig welcomed all participants to the doctoral retreat on behalf of the host. Then, each doctoral researcher presented the project report for funding period two and plans for funding period three sequentially. We had enough time to discuss possible ideas for collaboration. Overall, we benefited greatly from the exciting presentations and informative Q&A sections. During the dinner at Villa Prym, discussions continued in a less formal setting.
In the evening, we had delicious catering at Villa Prym and enjoyed the breeze and view of Lake Constance. It suddenly rained heavily at night, and we were lucky that we had already arrived at our accommodation.
For the next day, we had invited Matthias Merkelbach as our trainer for the topic of career planning. Since he was also affected by COVID-19, the workshop was organized in a hybrid form. Two other PhD students also attended virtually. The hybrid workshop ran smoothly; we learned a lot—such as how to prepare our personal profiles—and were provided with some valuable insights about the situation in academic and non-academic fields of German-speaking countries.
The two-day event ended with a boat trip to the port of Constance, where we enjoyed a ride with the Möwe, a small passenger ship for a round trip. The scenes are stunning even though it was a bit cloudy. We also noticed a Zeppelin was flying in the sky! We are already looking forward to the next SFB-TRR 161 event.
It was nice meeting you in person.
I am looking forward to the next SFB TRR-161 event!