After our energetic start we continued building support structures for PhD Students, reached out to our fellow PhD-Colleagues and launched a ÖH.Dok project funding call.
We have presented our work and agenda in almost every colloquium for doctoral students, which allowed us to reach out to doctoral students from all four doctoral programs at the Academy: Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Doctor of Science and PhD- in-Practice. The purpose of these visits was to introduce the ÖH and our work as student representatives. For us it was important to reach out directly to the students to find out the needs, wishes and concerns of the doctoral students. Based on those experiences we plan our engagement. Since the Academy does not provide workspace for most of the PhD students one of the major requests of the PhD students was to have workspaces at the Academy. In cooperation with professors at the academy we manage to organize some individual working places for students. Based on the success of this initiative we will continue and find working solutions for our precarious situation in the academy. In addition to organizing the physical workspaces, we started a virtual workspace where PhD students meet twice a week to work on their own projects in a shared and supporting environment.
We also hosted the inspiring writing workshop “Writing Queerly” with artist, writer and educator Linda Stupart (Cape Town). Another important achievement in our second year as representatives is that we successfully planned and carried out the first round of project funding for doctoral students. With this initiative, we can better support projects by students and hand over resources to realize exciting projects. The first call gave us the opportunity to learn and adapt further to the needs of the students in the future.
Our engaging work in the curriculum commission for Doctoral Studies continued. The strong presence of the ÖH in this context allows for a participation in the decisions on how our doctoral programs are structured. Here we can take strong stances in the interests of the students. One of our members represents the commission as co-chair in the curriculum commission for Doctoral Studies.
To celebrate our 2nd year and to have the opportunity to meet and exchange we also end this semester with a get-together. We hope to see you all on the 21st of June in the afternoon stay tuned for details.
Now with the upcoming elections, we are confident that we will continue a strong representation in the next legislative period of two years.