Mar 14, 2023
Our PhD Students Abroad at the University of Warwick
Since January 2023, we, Maria Weickardt Soares and Sofie Roehrig, two doctoral students and research assistants at the Chair of International Politics at Technische Universität Dresden, are currently at the University of Warwick in England to study and work for here for the next six-months. This is facilitated under the scope of a a so-called cotutelle agreement. This is a doctoral agreement between two universities (in our case: TUD and the University of Warwick) to abtain a degree at both universities. In 2024, we will both go to England for another six months, so that we will also meet the doctoral requirement of spending at least one year at the University of Warwick.
At TUD we work in the trinational research project FRAMENET, together with Prof. Anna Holzscheiter (TU Dresden) and Prof. Özlem Atikcan (Warwick University). Two other FRAMENET colleagues (Tim Henrichsen and Kerem Öge) are also employed in Warwick, so we already knew some people before our stay in Warwick. Due to our respective PhD supervisors, we are officially based in different faculties at the University of Warwick: Maria is at the School of Law and Sofie at the Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS).
We are very excited about the opportunities that this stay abroad presents for us academically, professionally and personally. The university offers a variety of events and workshops, some of which are open to the public and which we attend regularly. For example, Sofie is presenting her work in the FRAMENET project together with Özlem and Tim at an upcoming meeting of the Centre for Studies in Democratization (CSD). Maria attended an event on vaccination inequity in the COVID-19 pandemic with her PhD supervisor Prof Sharifah Sekalala in early March.
We spend most of our time on the university campus. The campus offers a lot for the almost 30,000 students. The University of Warwick is an impressive campus university with a valuable and rich repertoire of academic literature, which helps us a lot in continuing our work and hopefully completing our PhD soon. In addition, the numerous common rooms, group rooms and PhD offices allow for an open and diverse exchange with other PhD students. Together with our fellow PhD students, we enjoy sitting in the PAIS PhD offices, going for a walk in the nearby park or getting to know the countless student associations. These range from sports and culture (e.g. documentary film and photography) to language groups and quiz groups. On Thursday mornings, you can also find us regularly at the Wolfson Research Centre at the University Library, where there is a weekly postgraduate exchange with coffee, snacks and Jenga games.
However, due to the so-called Cost of Living Crisis ("cozzie livs" in internet slang) here in England, our cost of living is relatively high compared to Berlin and Dresden, our places of residence and work in Germany. We also miss the varied menu of the cafeterias at the TU Dresden a little. Interestingly, Coventry, the county in which the University of Warwick is located, is one of the ugliest and least popular cities in England according to various surveys. So far, we can only disagree. We feel quite comfortable here, and the area has a lot to offer, especially for nature lovers. After the spring break in mid-February with 15 °C, winter returned, which brought heavy snowfall and bus delays of an hour, among other things. So we are already looking forward to the real spring!