Leuphana University is a relatively small but highly entrepreneurial and sustainable university in the north of Germany (30 minutes by train to Hamburg), famous for its landmark campus building designed by the internationally renowned architect Daniel Libeskind.
Lüneburg is a very charming and wonderfully unagitated town—making it a perfect location for concentrating on your PhD—with lots of history and beautiful medieval buildings stemming from the town's incredible prosperity attained through the salt trade during the Middle Ages.
I was warmly welcomed and handed the key to my office by my host Prof Matthias Wenzel, to whom I am very grateful for the valuable feedback provided on my current research and the fruitful exchanges we had around the topic of future-making.
Besides some productive reading and writing days, I was lucky enough to attend two academic workshops during my stay at Leuphana. In addition to receiving extremely valuable input for my PhD, I also had the pleasure of getting to know the wonderful people and researchers of the LOST research group, as well as the bright early career scholars gathering at the Annual Meeting of Organisational Research (AMOR).
My research stay was a perfect opportunity for me to present my current PhD research, get valuable input, meet and connect with interesting scholars, and discover an academic system and culture at a different institution. For these reasons, I can fully recommend doing a research stay during your PhD—even if it's only a short one!
Alex Christian
PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh Business School
Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Group