During the first reporting period, BIGSSS published two calls for its BIGSSS-departs PhD Program. The fellowships were successfully advertised internationally and were attractive to doctoral candidates worldwide: BIGSSS recruited nine ESRs in the first call and ten in the second call. The 19 ESRs came from 15 different countries and five different continents. Efforts to achieve a gender balance in early career research were supported with more than 50 percent female ESRs in both departs cohorts.
The first project period was characterized by processes of initialization and specification. All ESRs had to undergo an ethical clearance process to secure high ethical research standard in the BIGSSS departs Program. All research projects were cleared by the BIGSSS Ethics Committee which provided guidance and feedback to the ESRs beyond that and throughout the entire research projects. In the further course of the first project period, all ESRs have successfully defended their proposal defenses and received approval for their projects’ research designs, met the relevant curricular requirements, and started to present and discuss their projects with the scientific community at international conferences and workshops.
Moreover, during the first project period, the BIGSSS-departs Partner Days took place in February 2018. The Partner Days were a two-days networking event aimed at bringing ESRs in contact with representatives from BIGSSS-departs partner institutions and, on the management level, discussing ideas for future joint projects to further deepen the cooperation within the network. Since project start, BIGSSS has succeeded in extending its initial BIGSSS-departs international academic and inter-sectoral partner network from ten in 2015 to 13 partners.
The second project period was characterized by intensified project work, scientific exchange and networking as well as finalization and, of course, the Covid-19 pandemic. Following up on the ties, that ESRs have built during the BIGSSS-departs Partner Days in the first project phase, all ESRs have been planning to visit one of the partner institutions for academic exchange. Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 pandemic not all were able to realize their plans. Some of them were offered intensified opportunities for online exchange by the partners.
During the second project period, the BIGSSS Research Days took place in 2019 and 2020, a one-day-conference facilitating intense exchange between ESRs and BIGSSS’ faculty as well as across thematic fields. Beyond that, ESRs used possibilities to discuss and present insights gained from their research at international conferences and workshops.
Despite the severe problems relating to the pandemic, the majority of all BIGSSS-departs ESRs have submitted or successfully defended their dissertations to the public by now (autumn 2021). Almost all of those have already found follow-up postdoc positions at renowned, international research institutions in Bremen, Germany and abroad. We expect the remaining ESRs to finish their dissertation projects within the near future. From all research projects, so far 17 publications have resulted, most of them are accessible for the entire public as they have been published open access.
