Mental Health: Resilience in International Transitions for Academics Abroad

Before booking a workshop, please make sure that you can attend for the entire duration and save the dates. When participants do not show up or cancel on a very short notice, other interested parties are denied a chance to participate.  For this event, the hygiene in the rooms of Hittorfstr. 16 must be followed.

Participant

For all doctoral candidates of all disciplines

Objectives

Developing an understanding of typical transition stressors and building a toolkit of sustainable strategies to manage stress in transition can help you build resilience and cultivate work habits that support mental health. 

In this workshop, we’ll explore common transition stressors and their impact on researchers in their work and daily lives. We’ll share our experiences, develop strategies to reduce and manage stress, and explore work habits that can make the difference between surviving and thriving in the increasingly global academic job market.

Content

Whether it’s navigating daily life in a new country, balancing your own cultural expectations against those of  your new environment, or experiencing a shift in or loss of support structures - there’s a lot to manage in cross-cultural transitions. Researchers and doctoral students who have relocated from abroad to work in a new environment arrive with high expectations for their own productivity, and along with their colleagues and employers, they often expect themselves to hit the ground running once they’ve found an apartment and unpacked their belongings. 

The stressors inherent in international transitions can make it feel harder to manage your research project successfully. You might feel like you’ve hit an invisible wall, or find yourself questioning your work patterns or project structure. When challenges arise – issues communicating with your supervisor, a snag in collaborating with a colleague, or a global pandemic – it’s easy to feel even more overwhelmed then you might have felt back home.

If there are free spots, we also allow postdocs to participate.