Teaching in Göttingen, my first Erasmus+ mobility

The week of 15 January I spent my first Eramus+ teaching mobility at my old master’s programme Euroculture in Göttingen, Germany. On Tuesday, I gave a lecture on transitions, representations and connections in and of postcolonial Europe to a group of twenty enthusiastic students and some staff of the programme. It’s always nice to be back in Göttingen, where I studied in the fall semester of 2014/15, and to see friends and colleagues. The city has an old, historic city centre where, I noticed, many new shops and cafés have opened in recent years.

Teaching while doing research can be taxing, but also very rewarding. There’s no better way to test out ideas than to communicate them to students who know less about the field than you do. Plus, it makes the time spent on doing research more valuable!

I made the transition from student to teacher last year, after graduation. It took some time before I grew into my new role, to accept that people were now looking at me the way I had looked at my teachers before. By now it’s fun and easy, and certainly something I’d like to keep doing.

The Georg-August-Universität is one of Groningen’s partners in the U4 network, so warm ties already exist between our universities. During my visit, I could profit from those ties, and also reinforced them. Word about Campus Fryslân, the bachelor college and our master programmes has, in any case, reached the city and the university, as have the many flyers I have left on the train and in various places…

Jesse van Amelsvoort is currently conducting PhD research at Campus Fryslân on 'Minorities, Migration, Mediation'.