Academia: Far from Home

PhD Academia: Far from Home

When you start studying , you are likely to get immersed in an international melting pot. This is what Peder encountered when he started working at the TU/e. He describes what this was like. Text & Images: Peder Isager, PhD student within HTI

As an early career researcher, uncertainty dominates many aspects of your working life. However, one thing is certain about academia: it tends to be a good excuse to see the world. I am a small-town boy from rural Norway. I have never considered myself the globetrotting type. Yet, somehow, since completing my master’s degree I have worked in three different countries, have friends in at least ten, and have lived away from my home country for over three years. Here is how that happened, and some observations I’ve made along the way.

Whether or not you travel, academia tends to bring the world to your doorstep. When I did my bachelor’s at the University of Oslo, my supervisor was a German, previously working at a Portuguese university. My master’s supervisor did her PhD at Oxford, and was collaborating with researchers from all over; many of whom I got a chance to meet as well.

Roughly half of my fellow master students were international. Classes were always in English and were taught by researchers from various countries.

When you travel you find that academia, everywhere, is a melting pot of scholar globetrotters crisscrossing each other’s paths. In 2017, after completing my master’s, I got my first taste of working abroad by taking

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep you feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” – J.R.R Tolkien

a job as a research assistant in Linköping, Sweden, for a summer. I stayed with a couple from Mexico who were planning on moving to the Netherlands, worked on a project with a post-doc from Australia, and played board games with colleagues from Italy, India, USA, Greece, Sweden, and Germany.

Linköping, it turns out, was just the first taste. After wrapping up my summer job I was offered a 4-year PhD position in Eindhoven. Upon arrival I was immediately

lowered back into the international melting pot of academia. Over the past three years I have worked in the lab with colleagues from the U.S., Germany, and Rotterdam (above the rivers is basically a different country, right?). Along the way, I have had the pleasure of striking up acquaintances with scholars from every region of the world; from South Africa to the southern U.S. to southside Czech Republic. I have had the honor of collaborating with researchers from over seventy countries. I have been in video conferences spanning four different time zones. I have visited Paris with my friend from Kentucky. I have visited Limassol with my friend from Turkey. I have visited Antwerp with my friend from Chile. All in all, it has been quite the adventure for this small-town boy from rural Norway.

“All in all, it has been

quite the adventure"

There are some downsides to this way of life. While the last years in the Netherlands have been some of the most stimulating and exciting in my life, it has also been three long years away from friends and family that I left behind in Norway. Friends and family that I PhD en miss dearly. I have made many good friends here in my time abroad, but I have also had to see many of those friends leave and travel far away again; sometimes all the way across the world. And while a work-life filled with globetrotting has been a pleasure and a privilege, it carries with - for me - a certain sense of being uprooted, being unsettled.

I am lucky. Once my PhD is complete, I have the resources and freedom to go back to Norway and settle into a more grounded existence. Not everyone who feels the same way is so lucky. It is no secret that job scarcity and fierce competition for positions is forcing young academics to move even when they do not want to. Even at the expense of their personal life. I certainly know friends who have had to travel beyond their geographical comfort zone to stay employed.

Fortunately for me, the Netherlands is placed snuggly within my own geographical comfort zone. However, I do not think the life of academic globetrotting is one I could lead forever. This small-town boy from rural Norway needs to settle a little closer to his hometown, I think. Still, I am eternally grateful for the travel opportunities I have had up until this point, and I look forward to all the journeys that remain. If I could, I am certain I would do it all over again.