Soon after I entered the Colégio do Espírito Santo for the first time, I met fellow doctoral students I knew from the previous EAS conference or from activities in Germany and Austria, as well as last year’s hosts Eva-Maria Tralle and Andreas Lehmann-Wermser. They lead the Doctoral Student Forum once again. While chatting, I shyly scanned the other people hanging around. Probably, they were Kaarina Marjanen, the third host, and the other DSF attendees. I had read their project descriptions and was keen to know the people who wrote them.
We started the activities with an introductory round. In pairs, we told one another about our research topic, about our university and a bit about our private lives. I teamed up with the student sitting next to me, who might have been just as excited as I was. Almost immediately, our conversation found a flow we could hardly stop when it was time to present our partners to the plenum.
After getting to know each other, we split the sixteen students into two groups to delve into everyone’s projects. In our group, we discussed diverse topics such as the use of apps to learn intonation on string instruments, deep listening as pedagogy, or cultural diversity in music teacher training. The projects differed in their progress, too, ranging from their initial phases to advanced work that already informed publications. Appropriately, Andreas Lehmann-Wermser introduced us to publishing in the late afternoon, an aspect of research most likely all of us will deal with sooner or later.
On the second day, we gathered according to our own interests and discussed topics that concerned us, like links between music education and policy making, or qualitative research methods. We also prepared and practiced pitches to present our posters during the EAS conference the following day. I liked the opportunity to try and condense my research into an understandable speech of sixty seconds, to get feedback from peers and hosts and to feel their support. Unfortunately for the audience and for some of us, the poster presentation itself was disturbed by noise from stage preparations for the concert in the evening.
Additionally, the hosts provided us with opportunities to discuss our projects in private with distinguished researchers. Besides offering personal meetings with themselves, they found a mentor for most of us who was experienced in our research areas, who was willing to talk with us about our research, and who attended the main conference. I benefited substantially from conversations with Kaarina Marjanen, Andreas Lehmann-Wermser and Sabine Chatelain.
I value participating in the Doctoral Student Forum especially for the insight into European dissertation projects in music education, for advancing my skills in presenting, and for the relationships and friendships I could establish and deepen during the organized activities, shared lunch and dinner, and the subsequent EAS Conference.
Christoph Marty