Nottingham Archives - Knowledge People Performance

Goodbye UK, welcome (back) Germany

I’ve recently switched universities and moved from the United Kingdom to Germany. I’m now enrolled in a program with the title ‘Dynamic Capabilities and Relationships’. The graduate school is run jointly by the Europa-Universität Viadrina, situated in Frankfurt (Oder), and the German Graduate School of Management and Law in Heilbronn. We’re a team of six researchers: five PhD students and one PostDoc. The aim of the doctoral program is to create knowledge about how organizations achieve and sustain competitive advantage in rapidly changing environments through relationships with other organizations and stakeholders. You can see the people involved in the picture below (photo credit: EUV press office, Heide Fest).

15_04_2011eoegad-kolleg_dcr

I’m excited to be part of this newly established program and, luckily, will be able to continue the work on my original research proposal which I developed in Nottingham. It suits well within the realm of the program, primarily because my focus has been on organizational efficiency and relationships from the very start.

I want to take this chance to thank my previous supervisors, John Richards and Iain Coyne, for their great support. Both of them have guided my thinking and my professional development significantly.

The Nottingham Spanish Language Meetup

In an earlier blog post, I mentioned that I would become more proactive about the organization of a Spanish language meetup in Nottingham. There used to be two groups which have now merged into one. We are meeting on Wednesday nights from 7 to 9 pm at Edin’s. If you are interested in joining the group, you can check out our events here. We are looking forward to welcoming like-minded people who are equally interested in Spanish language and culture.

via meetup.com

Looking for a Spanish Language Meet-up in Nottingham

I am a big fan of Spain and Latin America. I have spent several months studying in Spain and Cuba, and I worked in Ecuador for a while. Some of my friends are similarly interested in the Spanish speaking hemisphere which allowed me to do some more traveling in Mexiko, Colombia and Venezuela while they were there. Over the past year, I attempted to locate the Spanish speaking community in Nottingham. However, I was not particularly successful. Last weekend I decided to become more proactive about the issue. According to Gumtree, there seems to be one group meeting on Monday nights in the city centre. The waiting list for Nottingham on Meetup consists of 295 people. This makes me think there is plenty of untapped potential. If you have heard of any regular meetings, please do let me know. If you have any suggestions regarding the organization of a meet-up, I would also be happy to hear about them. I was thinking of bringing people together in the Bar de Nada maybe once a month.

UoN Traveling Researchers Scheme

The University of Nottingham, with its campuses China and Malaysia and more than 8,000 international students, truly deserves to be called an international university. The administration is now taking advantage of all the students from abroad and has introduced a Traveling Researchers Scheme which I joined recently. If you are traveling frequently (which I am ;-), you may meet with prospective students in their home country and chat with them about studying in Nottingam. This includes advice on how to get the applications right and options for funding studies in the UK. In a way this scheme seems similar to many ambassador programs on social network sites. I frequently visit Germany and North America and I will be happy to meet with anyone interested in studying here. The International Office hosts a blog on which current meeting opportunities are published.