Agency in Academia:

Target group: tba
In the 2023 DZHW Science Survey, 57% of the 11,356 respondents across disciplines and career stages reported that they had seriously considered leaving academia in the past two years. In particular, sSystem-related factors such as the WissZeitVG (Act on Fixed-Term Employment in German Academia), high workloads, and work-life balance issues weighing particularly heavily on early -career researchers.
This interactive workshop acknowledges these structural challenges while focusing on how researchers can still experience a sense of agency in their everyday work. Drawing on Albert Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, we explore how beliefs about our own capabilities shape both our chances of success and our responses to institutional pressures – not as a route to self-optimisation, but as a way of coping with feelings of powerlessness and , impostor phenomenon etc. Using tools for self-reflection and peer exchange, participants will identify drivers and obstacles of self-efficacy and develop concise, context-sensitive measures to strengthen individual and collective self-efficacy within their research environments.
Objectives:
- Understand core mechanisms of individual and collective self efficacy within the German academic system
- Reflect on personal engagement patterns as situated within this system
- Develop concise, context-sensitive interventions to strengthen self efficacy in one’s research environment
Facilitator: tba
Diese Veranstaltung findet in englischer Sprache statt. // This event will be held in English.