Candidate for the board: Anne Deininger

Name: Anne Deininger - Postdoc

Applying for the position of: Academic and skills development coordinator

Name of department: Natural Sciences (Aquatic Biogeochemistry)

Link to UiA profile

Why I am applying: I believe that UiAdoc is really important for making our time at UiA more successful – both personally, and professionally. It will strongly help us early academic professionals to establish better networks, finding more friends, exchanging professional ideas and solving problems typical during these kind of career stages. I would love to be engaged in establishing UiAdoc – it has been fun to work in the interim board these last months- and also meeting new faces at the different campuses of UiA. Especially I would love to give us postdocs a voice at UiA, and a platform to systematically improve our academic skills and improve chances to find permanent position after our post-doc (but also PhD) employment at UiA. Unfortunately, many of us are distributed on various campuses, institutes, and even other Universities in Norway (e.g. Oslo). I would love to give us the chance to meet, exchange ideas and potentially even collaborate in the future.

Previous experiences: Previously, I have been a PhD student in Sweden, Umeå University, where we have already had a department-internal PhD association. I would love to bring my experience from this association into UiAdoc. Typically, PhD and postdoc- years are roller-coaster rides – given my experience from my PhD time in general – and my first year as a postdoc at UiA I hope I can help improve communication especially between us “older” Postdocs and earlier Postdocs, as well as PhDs in general. Additionally, I really enjoy organizing workshops for career development and would love to provide us early careers at UiA with activities (seminars and workshops) to improve our professional skills, by using my own established network, as well as those of the other members of the UiAdoc board and/or UiAdoc members.

What I bring to UiAdoc:

• Experience as a PhD student, obviously 😉

• Experience from the UiAdoc interim board (working on UiAdoc statutes, presenting us at the TEKNA meeting)

• Experience as member of an international scientific board (American based Association for Limnology and Oceanography)

• Professional network outside academia (i.e. institute, and industry sector) and outside the Agder region (e.g. Stavanger, Oslo, Bergen, Tromsø) and internationally

• Understanding of what it means to move and settle in a different country than your own (being from Germany, doing masters in France and Spain, now moved to Norway, exchanges to e.g. Taiwan, Nepal, Americas)

• Huge believe in UiAdoc and huge motivation to get UiAdoc established for future PhDs and postdocs, as well as heard by and incorporated into UiA itself.