Participants in the ADAPTED Innovative Training Network on Eradicating poverty: Pathways towards achieving the sustainable development goals' met at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany between 6 and 11 February 2022.
The annual meeting was the first of three such meetings that are organized over the duration of the ADAPTED programme. The objective of the meetings is to bring together the PhD researchers with all supervisors from host and partner universities, contacts at the African partner universities and representatives from the societal partners.
Two-day SDG Forum to present research and collect feedback
The first annual meeting consisted of three main activities. The meeting started with a two-day so-called SDG Forum, which gave all PhD students the opportunity to present their research project and collect comments from the participants.
Next, there was a one-day meeting with a representative from the European Union as part of the progress reporting on the ADAPTED programme.
Finally, the PhD students took part in two days of training with seminars on the political dimensions of the ADAPTED research programme, on the relevance of growth theory for unemployment and social protection, and a career orientation workshop.
As part of the social programme, the group of PhD students and supervisors visited the football stadium of Borussia Dortmund, where they were shown around by Dr Sarah Gemicioglu, a language specialist working at the Graduate School of Ruhr University Bochum as well as an avid Borussia Dortmund supporter.
What is the ADAPTED ITN network?
The network brings together 15 PhD students from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe who work as so-called Early Stage Researchers to obtain a joint PhD degree from two universities in the consortium.
Next to the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS)/Erasmus University Rotterdam, participating degree-awarding universities are Boğaziçi University (Turkey), Ruhr University Bochum (Germany), University Paris I/Sorbonne-Panthéon (France) and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (The Netherlands). The consortium works with a range of universities across Africa (including South Africa, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Cameroon), as well as a number of societal partners, to train the PhD students on issues related to eradicating poverty and the Sustainable Development Goals. ADAPTED is a training network funded under one of the EU’s Marie Curie Actions, which are intended to stimulate doctoral education and postdoctoral training across Europe.
From ISS, PhD researchers Ahmed El Assal, Guido Maschhaupt and Petronilla Wandeto participated in the annual meeting together with their ISS supervisor Wil Hout. PhD students Enkzhul Altangerel, Irene Among and Shradha Parashari, who are currently based at one of the European partner universities, are co-supervised by Andrew Fischer or Arjun Bedi, who participated online.