Retreat 2025
The second retreat of our RTG took place on November 26-28, 2025 at Victor's Seehotel at the Bostalsee. We had a varied program of scientific, social, and organizational activities.
The scientific program included:
Three sessions of talks from PhD students, followed by discussions.
A poster session in which PhD students and postdocs presented current research projects to fellow RTG PhD students, associated members, and senior researchers. This session started off with the newly introduced poster pitches, in which the presenters sparked the audience’s curiosity about their research in just one minute.
An inspiring keynote talk by Prof. Wendy J. Casper from the University of Texas at Arlington. Wendy is an internationally leading expert on work-nonwork balance. Her conceptual and empirical work are highly relevant for several PhD projects within the RTG. We were therefore delighted that Wendy agreed to join us online for an overview of her recent work on “Work-nonwork balance: What is it? How do you get it?” The keynote sparked a lot of discussion during the session and later during the day.
A meta science session organized by the PhD students on how to stay productive, motivated, and passionate about your research, featuring brief impulse talks by Cornelius König on "The Ups and downs of the PhD Journey", and Julia Meßmer on "Surviving Thriving in Your PhD through Flexibility and Balance". These were followed by small-group discussions in which PhD students asked senior RTG researchers about their ways to manage motivation and productivity. The session ended with an inspiring keynote talk by Kai Krautter from Harvard University on "(Too Much) Passion for Work.”
These activities were ideally suited to update all RTG members about the progress and new developments in the different projects. We also enjoyed the fresh input by the external speakers.
Apart from the scientific program, we enjoyed social activities that helped to strengthen the ties in the RTG. On Wednesday, the PhD students had organized a pub quiz that was lots of fun. The quiz tested everyone’s trivia knowledge including insider expertise about the Saarland. On Thursday afternoon, we did a torchlight hike to the Bostalsee, making the most of the November atmosphere.
Finally, we used the retreat to hold our annual assemblies (assemblies of the junior researchers, senior researchers, and the general assembly with all RTG members). In these assemblies we discussed organizational matters and future developments of the RTG.
Taken together, spending almost three days together at the Bostalsee allowed for deep discussions, feedback and exchange, and personal conversations. We’re already looking forward to next year’s retreat.
