Marianne-Plehn-Program Annual Meeting 2024 – Skills, networking, and good times!

Divided into three work­shops, we ex­plored vari­ous im­portant top­ics for our inte­gral de­velopment as re­searchers, guid­ed by ex­perts in the mat­ter: build­ing resili­ence for career shocks, the future of teach­ing, and sci­ence com­muni­cati­on.

Dr. Anne Schreiter fo­cused on creat­ing an open and safe space where we, as partic­ipants, could share career shocks from the past and ex­pecta­tions for the fu­ture. Through vari­ous dis­cussions and exer­cises, we fo­cused on how, tap­ping on our skills, strengths, and val­ues, we can build gov­ernance and resili­ence in our pro­fes­sional lives. The group guid­ed by Dr. Ma­reike Menne ex­plored the para­digm change to­ward learn­er-cen­tered edu­cati­on, par­ticu­larly in the con­text of the Ger­man higher edu­cation sys­tem. Dr. Sashima Läbe led a work­shop about de­velop­ing the neces­sary skills for effec­tive sci­ence com­muni­cation to ensure knowledge trans­fer, clari­ty, and en­gagement with dif­ferent audi­en­ces.

We also en­joyed a Sci­ence Slam in which four mem­bers of the MPP told us about their re­search, show­ing the broad range of inter­esting topics sup­port­ed by the MPP. The topics in­clud­ed hunt­ing li­chens to un­der­stand their re­sponses to cli­mate change (An­drea Goss, LMU), ex­plor­ing un­read letters from fe­male Italian trans­lators (Cé­line Pow­ell, LMU), us­ing inter­disci­pli­narity to break down the se­crets of pho­tosyn­thesis (Erika Keil, TUM), and travel­ing the world to un­der­stand the lives of 13 judg­es (Julia Klaus, FAU). The partic­ipants were awarded books and gum­my bears brought di­rectly from Bonn!

As a partic­ipant, I would like to thank the Elite Net­work of Ba­varia and the Studienstif­tung des deutschen Volkes for the op­por­tunity to partic­ipate in such an in­sight­ful week­end. Spe­cial thanks to Dr. An­ne-So­phie Käsbauer for a smooth or­gani­zation and to Ms. Frauke Pre­ißinger from the ENB, who took the time to an­swer our ques­tions about the pro­gram. I would also like to thank the friendly per­sonnel from our ven­ue, the Ta­gungshaus Sankt Ul­rich, for the great at­mosphere and food and for keep­ing the coffee flow­ing. And, of course, thanks to the other partic­ipants for mak­ing the event a spe­cial occa­sion. Look­ing for­ward to the 2025 MPP annu­al meet­ing at the Am­mersee!

Text: José Miguel, León Ninin, Marianne-Plehn-Program