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Events
- From 14 to 16 November, the Career
Days for Doctoral Researchers and Postdocs
will take place at the University of Jena. There you
will get an insight into career paths in science and
learn about strategies for finding a job in business
and society.
- At the event "Welcome
to the doctorate" on 8 November, the
Graduate Academy informs all new doctoral candidates
about the offers of University Jena for them. During
coffee and cake, they will also have the possibility
to share ideas on various topics and challenges
surrounding the doctorate. Afterwards, they can join
a pub crawl organised by the doctoral council.
- From 1 to 3 November, the Mental
Health Awareness Days will take place
(Symbolic picture above: istockphoto.com). Over
these three days, you will find various online
offers that aim to inform you and raise awareness on
how to deal with stressful situations in the context
of your research. In Jena, there will be an on-site
short workshop (in German) on "Introduction
to Peer Counselling as a Tool for Mental Relief".
- This year's Start-up
and Innovation Day will take place on 26
October at Trafo (Nollendorfer Straße 30). The day
offers the opportunity to learn more about
entrepreneurship, to network with people interested
in start-ups and to share best practice experiences.
In the evening there will be an exciting Science
Slam with an audience vote. The event is in German.
- On 20 October, the doctoral council is organising
a regulars' table for all doctoral researchers
of the University of Jena. The get-together is an
opportunity to discuss topics related to your
doctorate and to get to know other doctoral
candidates. It starts at 8pm in Grünowski
(Schillergässchen 5).
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Get
involved
- In
October, wage negotiations begin
for all employees of the federal states, which
include all university employees. Due to high
inflation, the unions are demanding a significant
increase in wages and are preparing for difficult
negotiations and possible strikes starting from
November. In preparation for the negotiations, the
trade union Ver.di has launched a survey
(only in German) among all employees on the amount
of the necessary wage increases.
- In June, the new doctoral
council of University of Jena, known as
DR.FSU, was elected.
The council represents the interests of all doctoral
researchers at University of Jena. A total of 13 new
representatives were elected to the Council. The constituent
meeting of the new council will take place on
12 October at 18.00h in the Auditorium (Johannisstr.
13). Anyone interested is welcome to join.
- The Network “Motherhood and Academia” has launched
a survey on "Non-discriminatory
funding/announcements". The aim of the survey
is to identify discrimination against parents in
calls for proposals. On this basis, they want to
develop recommendations for funding bodies on how to
improve their announcements. The survey is open
until 30 September. The survey
will take about 5-10 minutes to complete.
- The Graduate Academy is currently conducting a survey
on the supervision of the doctorate at University
of Jena. All doctoral candidates were invited
via e-mail to participate. Your participation will
help us to further improve the framework conditions
of doctoral supervision. We will raffle 10 book
vouchers worth € 50 among all participants.
Participation is possible until 30.09.2023. If you
have any questions, please contact Dr. Michael
Wutzler (michael.wutzler@uni-jena.de).
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Qualification
offers
There are still vacancies in the following online and
on-site workshops:
- Graduate Academy:
- Lehre Lernen:
- Service Centre for Research and Transfer:
- Competence Center Digital Research (zedif):
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This
may be of interest to you
- Researchers are increasingly being verbally
attacked and threatened on social media. A newly
established hotline on the "Scicomm-Support"
platform provides a first point of contact for
support in such cases. Telephone counselling is
available daily in German and English from 07.00h to
22.00h on 0157/92344804. (Illustration: Graduate
Academy)
- German academic institutions have reached an agreement
with the publisher Elsevier on a
licensing model: Starting next year, researchers who
use the university libraries will once again be able
to access articles from the world's largest science
publisher. The prerequisite, however, is that enough
universities participate in the agreement. It is not
yet clear whether the University of Jena will
participate – although it is quite likely. This also
demonstrates, as an essay in Times Higher Education
argues,
that libraries with physical book and journal
collections can still have an advantage in times of
digitisation – namely their lasting independence
from commercial publishers who can block access to
digital products in the course of negotiations.
- The Ministry of Education and Research has decided
to increase the scholarships of the 13
scholarship organisations by 100 euros per
year over the next three years. However, the overall
budget for the scholarships is not to be increased.
This is now being criticised by 130 scholarship
holders in an open
letter to the Ministry. They have also started
an online
petition demanding, among other things, that
the increase should not be at the expense of the
scholarships to be distributed.
- This year's IgNobel
Prizes were awarded last week. The IgNobel
Prizes honour research projects that use
scientific methods to investigate unusual questions.
This year, for example, the IgNobel Prize for
Medicine was awarded to a project that investigated
how many nasal hairs there are in the left and right
nostrils of dead people (answer: about 120,
age-specific differences remain an open question for
future research). The IgNobel Prize for Literature
went to a study that investigated when the constant
repetition of one word starts to become "peculiar"
for test persons (answer: for two-thirds after the
30th mention).
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News
from University of Jena
- Due to rising energy and
construction costs, the university needs to save
money. Therefore, several cost-cutting measures
were set in June: First, there will be a six-month
freeze on replacing expiring positions. The
extension of expiring contracts for researchers will
only be affected if they change from one career
level to the next (Master to Doctorate or Doctorate
to Postdoc). It was also decided that positions
where the contract ends in the next five years shall
not be filled again, as long as this is justifiable.
The university management had organised an online
discussion on these measures in June. A recording of
the event with english subtitles is available here
(login required).
- During a reading in lecture
hall 1, the anchorman of Germany’s biggest
national news show, Constantin Schreiber, was
attacked
by a left-wing activist who threw a cake at
him. The reason for the attack was Schreiber's novel
"The Candidate", in which a Muslim woman becomes
chancellor in Germany. The book was criticised as
Islamophobic. Schreiber now
said that he had decided not to comment or
write on the topic of Islam in Germany any more. He
also criticised
the hesitant reaction of the University of Jena. The
university immediately denied
this accusation. To reconcile, the university
invited Schreiber to an event on debate culture in
Germany – which Schreiber accepted.
- The University of
Jena has submitted three
new project proposals to the Excellence
Competition. The university had already
acquired one cluster of excellence in the last round
of applications ("Balance
of the Microverse"). A total of 70 projects
can be funded in the Excellence Competition.
However, all 57 previous clusters of excellence will
also be evaluated; if all of these clusters receive
further funding, there could be only 13 new
excellence projects. A university that has two
clusters of excellence can then also become a
university of excellence. Currently, 11
universities hold this title – in the future,
there could be up to 15.
- For the next four
years, the University of Jena will again receive
funding within the European Higher Education
Alliance EC2U. In this alliance,
the University of Jena is working together with
seven other universities to create a European campus
where academia and civil society are connected
through joint activities. The project is funded by
the European Commission with 14.4 million euros. In
the new funding period, a new virtual institute will
be founded in Jena and doctoral researchers should
be more involved in all areas.
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Latest
News from Jena city
- The university cooperates
with the municipal energy supplier to provide WLAN
in the city of Jena: This allows access to the
university's Eduroam network at 20 non-university
locations in the city (e.g. at the Markt, Holzmarkt
or Paradiespark). In return, the cooperation makes
it possible to access the WLAN at 120 university
locations with the city's Mein
Jena app. A new feature of the Mein Jena app
will also be a 48-hour ticket for conference guests
that does not require the app to be installed. This
way, laptops can also be connected to the city WLAN.
- At the beginning of September, by a narrow
majority the Jena city council decided
to support the civilian sea rescue ship MARE*GO
by sponsoring it with 10,000 euros (picture above:
David Pichler). The conservative Christian
Democratic Union (CDU), which rejects the
resolution, now wants to examine whether such an
expenditure is legal as a local city.
- On 29 September, the closing
event of the project "Arts and Science"
will take place at the Trafo. Within the framework
of the project, five artists have explored
scientific research topics and created works of art
based on their findings. At the closing event, these
works will be presented to the public for the first
time. Registration is required.
- Since the end of August, the student café
Wagner is open again. It is now
located on the site of the old children's clinic
near the Westbahnhof (address: Kochstraße 2a). The
café had to move because the actual building in
Wagnergasse will be completely renovated.
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