Graduate School

GSGAS offers thematic research seminars, often led by lecturers with different disciplinary backgrounds. The national and international PhD candidates have different scientific backgrounds in terms of knowledge of concepts, theories and methods. One of the aims of the seminars is to bring all members together around a common starting point for their work and to familiarise all participants with the Leipzig approach to global studies and the approaches of ReCentGlobe.

Working groups unites PhD candidates and postdocs from related disciplines. Here, participants submit first drafts of chapters and receive feedback on empirical results and methodological approaches from both professors and their colleagues. The working groups also pool their efforts in organising international workshops.

The annual thematic summer school, which deals with questions of globalisation and transnationalisation, has become a trademark of the graduate school in recent years and is jointly organised by several units. It is divided into plenary sessions (with the participation of guest speakers) and numerous panels on various topics, which are organised by doctoral researchers and offer the opportunity to invite junior researchers from other institutions. The summer school serves as an interdisciplinary meeting place. The panels are thematically focused, but often include perspectives on the respective topic from different disciplinary backgrounds and present interdisciplinary projects. In this sense, the GSGAS Summer School is a platform for interdisciplinary exchange.

The annual winter retreat is an internal event where PhD candidates present themselves to the entire graduate school and report on their findings from the past year. The organisation of the winter retreat, which – conditional pandemic situation - takes place on a weekend outside Leipzig. It offers an intensive working format and the opportunity to assess the progress of the doctoral students' work. In this way, the winter retreat also serves as an instrument of quality assurance.

The colloquium offers the opportunity to present research projects and interim results achieved so far to the peer group from different disciplines. One aim of the colloquium is to train skills in presenting discipline-specific research to an audience that has an interest in the overall topic but is not in all cases familiar with the state of the project's research.