Dealing confidently with adversity: Turning adversity into opportunity

Are you tired of constantly fighting battles as a researcher? Are you sick of struggling with incidents like delays, material shortages, experimental accidents, absence of collaborators, and other adversities? Fighting the odds uses up your resources, drains your energy, and causes stress and anxiety. The fact is, that’s how research works: it is unpredictable – restrictions, obstacles, and errors are an inherent part of it.
 
Instead of fighting, in this workshop, you will learn how to welcome the unexpected and how to use adversity to your advantage. You will overcome the conventional and limiting understanding of the research process as a well-planned A to B procedure, develop creative research strategies instead, and learn how to “go with the flow”. 
 
Besides providing theoretical inputs and instructive stories of scientists dealing with restrictions and adversity the workshop is based on experiential learning: With playful exercises from improvisational theatre you discover fruitful ways to deal with the unpredictable and annoying, be it your data, your methods or your fellow researchers. You find creative strategies to move your current project forward and you will motivate and inspire each other and have fun. 
The workshop aims to make you adopt a playful attitude: This gives you a sense of empowerment and makes you approach challenging situations with flexibility, spontaneity, and confidence - qualities that are essential for both success and for resilience in the academy. 

Participants will:

• Understand your thinking patterns and impasses 
• Explore characteristics of creative problem-solving and how it can be sparked
• Feel confident and relaxed dealing with chance, adversity, and errors
• Elaborate own creative strategies to solve current obstacles in your research project
• Strengthen your resilience

2 May 2024 9:00 - 17:00

24 April 2024 RAA-E-30

2 May 2024 KOL-N-1