One-off conference

Márton Végh ​writes about his experience at the World Congress of the International Association of Political Science Students (IAPSS) in Madrid.

“I am grateful for the UCU Honours Programme for the generous contribution to my registration fee and travel expenses for participation in the World Congress of the International Association of Political Science Students (IAPSS) in Madrid. Most participants were studying for or have just finished their Master’s degree, but quite a few Bachelor’s and PhD students were also present at the congress. During that week I met (and in some cases also made friends with) a lot of interesting and engaged people from all around the globe and had conversations which opened up my perspective in terms of possible research topics and career paths in political science.

I found it very inspiring to listen to advanced undergraduate and graduate students presenting their own findings, because they often set such great examples of conducting research without having obtained a PhD yet. Listening to them especially helped to expand my horizon regarding methodological questions – how and when to use statistical analysis, interviews, discourse analysis or mixed methodologies and what is usually feasible for young researchers with limited experience, time and resources.

The conference helped confirm my decision that later on I would like to continue studying in a research-oriented Master’s programme in the field. Participation in a conference open to Bachelor students is thus something I can only recommend to any University College Utrecht student intrigued by an academic career path, regardless of their field of study.”

An enthusiastic mail from a UCU student who attended the annual neuroscience symposium at Cambridge University with the focus “Neural Networks in Health and Disease” (September 2017)

“To start out, I can only say that the entire experience was amazing. It was such a wonderful thing to be able to hear all those scientists talk about their most current research. Of course, some talks were too removed from my current level of knowledge for me to fully understand them. Nonetheless, it was a great exercise to constantly try to at least get their global message. (It was also a bit of a relief to hear other attendees say that they found them difficult too, if the topic was very new to them).

However, I still found most talks accessible, and I really cannot describe how stimulating it was to learn about brain networks in a research domain different than the one I am used to. This really tickled my curiosity and made me want to be able to start 5 other theses (or wish that I had more hours in a day to read all those amazing papers).

I also loved talking to graduate students at the poster session. It made their research quite accessible and allowed me to grasp concepts I had previously struggled with (as the students were often very enthusiastic about explaining their projects). This part was a lot of fun!

To me, the highlight of the symposium, was to be able to a talk with  a couple of researchers whose work I adore. They were super approachable and we spoke for over an hour. They even gave me some advice on what steps to take in the future in order to pursue a PhD. It was nice to be reminded that those whom I look up to are also human (which I tend to forget when reading their work).

I also managed to end up having a dinner with a bunch of PhD students who shared their experiences with me. This gave me a little more of information on what to expect for my future, which was quite comforting.

Again, I am super grateful for this little scholarship (not sure if I can call It that). This was a deeply valuable experience to me.”