Diversity-Orientation in PhD Student Support

Göttingen University has incorporated diversity-orientation as cross-sectional task. This includes a reduction of discrimination and thus the continuous improvement of frame conditions for teaching and learning in higher education, research, and post-graduate education. GGG is involved in this process with regard to PhD students.

A survey in course of the Stifterverband’s diversity audit titled “Designing Diversity” revealed that Göttingen University already has 150 offers on diversity-related topics. These offers deal with various aspects of diversity and, to some extent, with these aspects’ intersectionality. In the past two years, Göttingen University’s goals and measures have been coordinated and shaped based on already existing offers, in order to further strengthen diversity-oriented organizational culture and structure.

GGG has already dealt with diversity aspects in PhD student support and counselling for quite some time, as especially the transitional periods from graduate to PhD student and on to postdoc are important steps in a young academic’s career. Our goal as graduate school is to support you as PhD students with your various backgrounds and to provide the frame conditions that allow each and every one of you to optimize your skill set and use your talents in the best possible way.

Thus, we have adapted the university-wide diversity strategy for the support of PhD students and our daily work at GGG. Our diversity concept is now available online: Here we explain the importance and distinct advantages of diversity-orientation in supporting young academics and describe how and why our counselling offers are arranged with regard to intersectionality. With examples from our qualification program and funding measures we also show which offers are designed for specific target groups or across all target groups and explain the logic behind this design.

The diversity concept itself is but a first step, and many elements are already implemented in our activities. Proven and tested measures will be kept and connected with new measures, so that GGG’s various offers are no longer individual items but embedded and connected, and shaped in a diversity-oriented way.

Our diversity concept is not rigid, but intended to learn and grow, to be discussed and developed – and your experience and needs are of essential interest to us! Please contact us at ggg@uni-goettingen.de if you want to contribute or comment in any way.

Furthermore, we are in constant contact and exchange with other graduate schools and have implemented a task force on „Diversity Aspects in Supporting Young Academics“ starting in 2019 within the UniWiND project. By nationwide contact and exchange with universities, we want to engage in a mutual learning process, identify best practices and finally be able to give recommendations for action.