Issue 7, December 2006 - DAAD

Issue 7 - December 2006
Welcome
Alumni Meeting
Talks
Janice Muller
Richard Kuipers
Dr Ditta Bartels
Jens Schröder
Lyn Harrison
Dr Paul Foley
Fiona Allon
Elite Universities
Tuition Fees in Germany
Scholarships to Germany
interesting cultural program which included excursions to Speyer,
Strasbourg and Zürich. My German language and social life benefitted
through being paired with a local Freiburger under the ‘Tandem Partner’
scheme. I concluded my talk with some statistics about German students
in Australia including that Germany now ranks ninth in terms of numbers
studying here across all sectors.
Dr Paul Foley
How an academic experience in Germany can change a career direction
(neuroscientist to medical historian)
I travelled to Germany in late 1995 as an ‘accompanying spouse’. My wife
had been awarded an AvH Fellowship to pursue medical research at the
University of Würzburg. Despite the legendary abruptness of (some)
Würzburger, we felt at home very quickly: Würzburg offers everything we
could wish for in terms of culture, entertainment, retail facilities and, of
course, Franconian wine and beer. I initially enrolled at the University as a
Magister Artium candidate in history as the most economical means of
improving my German, but had graduated within six semesters and
commenced my Doktorarbeit at the Institute for the History of Medicine,
from where I graduated summa cum laude in 2001. This allowed me to
return in 2002, this time as an AvH Fellow myself. Equally important was
that I came to know a university system which is much better than its
reputation in Germany; unfortunately I fear that much of the intellectual
variety and challenge which I experienced will be lost in the rushed attempt
to emulate American universities. In short, both my wife and I regard our
time in Germany as amongst the happiest years of our lives; our original
one year stay was ultimately extended to five. We both maintain the
contacts and friendships established during our two Fellowships,
continuing to visit Germany every year.
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Fiona Allon
Berlin: Open City?
Since German unification more than a decade ago, Berlin has been
celebrated as both a cosmopolitan city and a social and cultural project for
demonstrating the diversity and openness of the ‘new Germany’ - where
”open” means “ready” for change, receptive, and forward-looking. Debates
about Berlin’s identity, its dire financial predicament, and its future as a
culturally dynamic, open and “creative city” are ongoing. Of course, this
fascination with the “creative” and “cultural” is certainly not unique to Berlin
- the discourse has been taken up with great fervour all around the world
as countries start to think seriously about the post-industrial futures of their
cities.
I’m interested in Berlin’s openness not just in terms of the glossy ‘world
city’ rhetoric, but in what it means for groups of people to actually live