Interview DRF Program with Beth Embry and Samanthi Dijkstra-Silva

© Samanthi Dijkstra-Silva

As part of the Distinguished Research Fellowship Program, Elizabeth Embry (Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at the University of Kansas School of Business) visitedSamanthi Dijkstra-Silva (Assistant Professor of Sustainability Assessment and Policy). The two gave a short interview about the experiences they made with the program.

@Beth: As one of our Distinguished Research Fellows 2024, you are now on your third research stay at the Faculty. What are the plans for the current stay and how has the collaboration with Samanthi developed in recent months?
Now that we have been working together for almost an entire year, we are in the final stages of analysis of our project, which is the main focus of this visit. We have the lofty goal to get this paper out to review or at least have a complete draft at the end of the stay. Additionally, during my last visit we set up our next study and data collection will begin during this time that we are together. And on the personal side, at the end of this visit my family is going to come join me and get a chance to see Dresden. My daughters are especially excited since they have heard me share so much from my last two visits.

@Samanthi: Let's take a look back at the beginning of your collaboration. What expectations did you have when you started working with Beth and what conclusions can you draw after a good year of Distingished Research Fellow cooperation?
Regarding expectations, I was just really hoping that we would work well together and I could learn from Beth in terms of the US-centric publication process. In addition to learning, I had hopes of joint studies for conference and peer-reviewed journal submissions. What I did not expect is that we had so many similarities in both our work and personal life and it was just really great to support each other through the struggles and juggles of this year.

Particularly during the junior professorship, there is a rather small group of peers. Working with Beth has been great, because it did not feel like I had to guide the process (like with PhD students) nor be the dominant contributor (like with full professors). Rather, it was a fruitful process of academic discussion, learning from each other during intensive working sessions throughout her research stays.

@Beth and Samanthi: The Distinguished Research Fellowship program is designed to bring together excellent researchers who have not worked closely together before and therefore do not yet know each other well. How was that for you? Normally, you tend to invite guests with whom you already have a close relationship.
Because the sustainability and management world is rather small, we first connected during an online meeting at the PhD Sustainability Consortium. We then followed each other’s work with a hope in the future to collaborate. The Distinguished Research Fellowship presented itself as the perfect opportunity to put our aspiration into proposed plan of action.

@Beth: One of the goals of our program is to bring the fellows into close contact with our early-career researchers. Have you been able to work with doctoral students or postdocs in recent months? And if so, how did the collaboration go?
During my visits, I have gotten to work with Samanthi’s team, which includes her six PhD students and post-doc. During my first visit, I hosted a session for the Saxon Doctoral Program in Management Research, where Samanthi’s Phd students participated, which allowed me to get to know them and hear a bit more about their work and passions. During the second visit, each PhD student shared a piece of their written work and I had the opportunity to work one on one with them to further develop this project. Additionally, given the early stage of development for one of the projects, I was invited to join as the method expert and look forward to continue to work with the team as this project progresses.

@Beth and Samanthi: What is your conclusion about the Distinguished Research Fellowship Program? How will your collaboration continue?
We appreciate the flexibility that this fellowship enabled for us to craft each visit to meet the unique needs and goals of our project. We now have a number of ongoing projects, some we mentioned earlier that are the focus of this visit. Additionally, we are awaiting the response of the joint professional development workshop that we submitted to Academy of Management, where we look forward to having more time in person to work. We are looking for opportunities for Beth to return to TUD and Samanthi to visit Beth at the University of Kansas.

© Samanthi Dijkstra-Silva