Research stay in Portsmouth

© Klaus Gigga

Olga Tcaci (Chair of Econimics, esp. Economic Policy and Economic Research) completed a research stay at the University of Portsmouth from end of January to end of March 2024. She reports on this in the following interview.

Where were you during your research stay and for how long?

I spent a little over two months at the University of Portsmouth, Faculty of Business and Law from the end of January to the end March 2024 at the invitation of Ali Sina Önder, PhD. Ali is a senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth specializing in applied microeconomics and economics of science, with research articles published in leading economics journals.

How did the research stay come about? How much time has passed from the first idea to implementation? Were there any hurdles in planning your stay?

The first encounter with Ali occurred when he presented his current research work at the Brown Bag Seminar organized by the Faculty of Business and Economics during last year’s winter term. After that, we started our collaboration on our current project where we analyze the role of innovation complementarities in shaping economic performance of West German counties after German reunification in 1990. While our work continued through regular online meetings, nothing can compare to the richness of face-to-face interaction. Before and during my research visit to the University of Portsmouth, Ali was incredibly supportive in helping with organizational matters.

Furthermore, I am very grateful to acknowledge that the funding was made possible by the Funding Program Internationalization at the TUD.

What can you tell us about your stay in Cambridge? How did the collaboration with Ali Sina Önder work?

My research stay in Portsmouth was incredibly inspiring, albeit sometimes challenging, but also highly exhilarating. Right at the beginning of my research stay, our co-author Sascha Schweitzer, Prof. Dr. joined us for a week in Portsmouth. We had the opportunity to brainstorm and discuss at length our current and future research projects. As a PhD student, having this amazing opportunity to collaborate with such experienced academics is incredibly motivating. During my research stay, I had the possibility to present and receive valuable feedback on different research projects that are part of my dissertation. To speak to a crowd of researchers coming from different research fields was challenging. Simultaneously, I learned about the beauty of simplicity, as sometimes the best ideas are the ones that are simple to explain. Besides research, I also had the opportunity to
overtake a part of lecture from Ali and to present Bachelor student frontier research in the field of Economics of Innovation. This was a wonderful experience that once again convinced me about the importance of a research-oriented teaching. Overall, the research stay at the University of Portsmouth was a highly productive time, collecting experience from daily social interactions with colleagues.

What experiences do you take back to Dresden?

In addition to gaining valuable professional experience working with Ali, I also gaines insight into the UK university system, including PhD programs. I learned that compared to German PhD programs, PhD students in the UK perform more self-directed work. On the other hand, as a PhD student in Germany, you are encouraged to collaborate. Here, both systems can learn from each other, which is one purpose of such research experiences. Overall, this experience was not only academically enriching, but also personally rewarding, with hopefully strong ties having been created.