Postdoc Appreciation Week: Leuphana participates with events

2022-09-09 The Postdoc Appreciation Week, an action week to honour the (research) achievements of postdocs, is being launched in Germany for the first time. The special thing about it: From 19 to 23 September, open workshops, trainings and talks from various German universities and research institutions will be held in a bundle for all postdocs. Leuphana is participating with two events. On the one hand, an event on science communication is open to female postdocs as part of the summer school "How many roads". Secondly, the Graduate School is exclusively offering the digital GradSkills workshop "The Balanced Researcher - From Understanding Stress to Building Healthy Habits".

A whole week full of offers for networking and further training for postdocs - this is how networks, research service and graduate institutions at numerous German universities are drawing attention to the postdoc phase and its challenges. ©Leuphana
A whole week full of offers for networking and further training for postdocs - this is how networks, research service and graduate institutions at numerous German universities are drawing attention to the postdoc phase and its challenges.

Particularly important questions are: What characterises the postdoc phase? And what are the special challenges during this time? Two Leuphana postdocs report.

New scientific positioning

Dr. Svenja Lemmrich has a doctorate in education and has been working at the Future Centre for Teacher Education since April 2021. Exactly one year after defending her dissertation, she describes her impressions as a postdoc. "Although I am still active in research and teaching, the postdoc phase is already very different from the time as a doctoral student. I worked in a fixed project team on the same topic for several years. That is no longer the case. That's why I first had to orientate myself as to what could now become my new topic, my own project."

The phase between the doctorate and the next career stages in science, up to the first application for a junior professorship or a lifetime professorship, requires conscious and targeted planning. In order to be able to carry out this orientation effectively in the first year, Leuphana has various information and support services available. "We regularly offer workshops and events specifically for postdocs to help them find their way in the academic field and to determine where they stand," says Dr. Nicole Justen, Leuphana's academic personnel development officer. "In addition, there is the possibility of individual counselling so that postdocs can concretely reflect on their own possibilities in this phase and thus make enlightened decisions regarding their career planning as early as possible."

Career planning as a postdoc in particular is perceived as more difficult than during the doctoral period, says Svenja Lemmrich: "As a doctoral student, I had the fixed goal, the finished dissertation, in mind. Now, planning towards a specific goal is much more difficult." She sees networking with other postdocs as an important and helpful step, so she looks forward to Postdoc Appreciation Week: "It's a super opportunity to meet other postdocs and see how others are working at this stage."

Non-university career planning

Dr. David Lam completed his PhD in Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science at Leuphana in 2020 and has been the executive director of the tdAcademy - Platform for Transdisciplinary Research and Studies project since August 2020. He sees the Postdoc Appreciation Week, organised for the first time in Germany, as important overall so that postdocs at universities are more strongly perceived as a group. He also reports some differences between the doctoral and postdoc phases. "I now have managerial responsibility for several student assistants and take on more administrative tasks and project organisation."

The biggest challenge in the postdoc phase, according to David Lam, is deciding how long to stay in the academic system to make it to a permanent position and when to leave. David Lam reports a "multi-prongedness" that one has to deal with as a postdoc. He is now in his second postdoc year and is writing his own DFG application as well as an application for a BMBF-funded junior research group in the field of social-ecological research. "Here I have received support with the application from the research service." At the same time, one has to keep an eye on professional positions outside of science. Finally, David Lam mentions the individual counselling provided by the academic personnel development department as well as the Graduate School's leadership certificate, which helped him both to prepare applications for professorships and to sharpen his own ideas and acquire skills that are important for business.