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EASP – European Association of Social Psychology

Travel Grant Report by Marco Biella

23.07.2018, by Tina Keil in grant report

University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy; Attendance at the EASP Summer School 2018 in Zürich, Switzerland

EASP Summer School 2018 in Zürich in total, 3 pictures
EASP Summer School 2018 in Zürich

Thanks to the EASP Travel Grant I had an excellent chance to attend the EASP Summer School 2018 in Zurich (1-14 July 2018). I am very pleased that I had this opportunity.

At the Summer School, I had the opportunity to be part of the workshop on Motivation and Control taught by prof. Ruud Custers and Baruch Eitam. I was expecting the excellent expertise of the teachers, but I wasn’t expecting the passion they showed during our daily meeting. During all meetings, we had challenging and very constructive discussions not only on the topic of the workshop but also on current directions of our field. One thing that I found really surprising is that the teachers of my workshop actually met during a previous edition of the summer school. This gave me the feeling that the European social psychology community is a very united group of researches. I consider this as a sign of the very high value of being part of the European Association of Social Psychology.

The keynotes were extremely interesting too. I was really interested in the talk on “Mobile Psychological Science” by Matthias Mehl. I was really impressed by the innovative approach he uses and by how aware he is of both potential applications and limitations of his research. Something I found really useful was the possibility to have keynotes from all workshops. This provides me an overview of topics relatively far from mine that helped me to expand my interests.

I enjoyed the discussions with colleagues from my and other workshops. Such discussions helped me to see every topic from multiple perspectives and to deepen my previous knowledge. Being part of the summer school really gave me the feeling of being part of a very important movement and a high-level research community. Such feeling is something that will help me, as any other junior researchers, to move on with my career and face both possible setbacks and desirable achievements.

Moreover, I want to mention the project my colleagues and I developed during the workshop. I think that the project has a good potential and I feel that we need to push it forward. After the summer school, I will keep in touch with my colleagues and I will try to keep working on the project we developed. The development of such project has been possible only thanks to the incredible passion the teachers transmitted us. They were really inspiring! I think that now I see them more as mentors than as teachers.

I am coming home very inspired and with new eyes through which look at my research questions. I am very committed to keeping in touch with all new colleagues I met because I think that part of the value of the summer school stems from long lasting relationships and exchanges that won’t end with the summer school itself. Working together as a community will help us to improve the whole field and to produce research products of the highest quality possible.

The incredibly valuable opportunity I had will definitively impact my research attitude and make me a better researcher.