Collaborating Across Universities and Disciplines – Looking Back on the PostdocLab Experience

In which respects has participating in the PostdocLab programme benefitted your research or your academic career? 

Danique Deimel:

Participating in the PostdocLab has been great for my academic profile. We organised a public lecture at the College with two international guests that attracted a large and diverse audience. We contributed to several conferences together and had lots of opportunities to exchange ideas with other scholars. Our regular project meetings were a real driver for developing, sharing, and sharpening ideas.  

Philipp Kadelke: 

First, I was able to improve my skills in applying for funding and managing these funds in practice. For example, I learned a lot about finding, hiring, and supervising a research assistant. Second, working in a group broadened my horizons with regard to research activities in the Ruhr region. I was able to establish contacts that will be useful for future publications. Thanks to the financial resources, we were able to organise an expert workshop, which also helped to build academic networks.

Valentina Nachtigall: 

Participation in the PostdocLab programme significantly strengthened both my research profile and my academic career. Building on our complementary disciplinary expertise, my group partner and I developed a new research direction at the intersection of our fields, which has evolved into a coherent and timely research agenda on AI in science communication. We conducted two empirical studies and initiated a third. In addition, we jointly prepared a journal article and a full conference paper. Beyond this, the programme provided the structural and intellectual space necessary to establish a sustained interdisciplinary and international research partnership. This enabled me to strengthen my publication pipeline, expand my international network, and sharpen my profile in an emerging area of high relevance.

Pascal Alscher: 

Participating in the PostdocLab programme has benefitted me in several ways. On the one hand, the programme gave me the opportunity to initiate and formalise collaborations with two outstanding scholars in the field, laying the groundwork for long-term research partnerships. On the other hand, it allowed me, for the first time, to independently design and conduct a research project, including managing the administrative and financial aspects.

Which insights have you gained specifically from collaborating with one or more colleagues from another UA Ruhr university, and from abroad? 

Valentina Nachtigall: 

Beyond valuable feedback on research ideas, study designs, materials, and manuscript drafts – as well as the exchange of working routines and research tools – the most important gain for me was a deeper awareness of how disciplinary perspectives shape research questions and interpretations. Collaborating with colleagues from communication studies and from abroad exposed me to theoretical frameworks and analytical approaches that complement those in educational psychology. Immersing myself in these perspectives broadened my conceptual thinking and sharpened my sensitivity to how disciplinary lenses guide exploratory analyses. As a result, I designed my second study in a way that is clearly rooted in educational psychology – focusing on how students learn to engage critically with AI – while still integrating insights from the interdisciplinary collaboration. The latter enhanced both my openness to other approaches and clarity regarding my own academic profile.

Danique Deimel: 

Working with Elisabeth and Pascal has been great because they look at the topics that I have been working on for years from different angles. Without the PostdocLab, I probably would not have stayed in such close contact with them. They both have distinct methodological strengths, for example in meta-analysis and longitudinal data, and keep pushing our thinking forward. I hope we can continue to support each other and maintain the momentum even after the funding has ended. 

What were the key findings resulting from your project? What goals have you achieved? 

Pascal Alscher: 

When starting the project with Elisabeth and Danique, we quickly realised that we shared a common interest in the role of classroom climate for civic learning outcomes, such as political knowledge and democratic attitudes. Traditionally, it was commonly assumed that an open classroom climate benefits students relatively equally across backgrounds, schools, countries, time periods, and civic learning outcomes. Our work challenges this assumption by showing that students in the same class perceive classroom climate very differently, and that both individual factors, such as civic literacy, and contextual factors, such as the country, play an important role.

Valentina Nachtigall: 

The project yielded two central empirical findings from our studies conducted with high-school students and university students in the Ruhr region. First, we found that across both university and school samples, students engaged more critically with AI-generated content about scientists and research than anticipated. Many demonstrated awareness of the limitations of generative AI and expressed a clear preference for authentic, human-generated content. Second, school students who were less critical in engaging with AI-generated images of scientists assessed their AI-related self-efficacy significantly higher than those who engaged more critically. This finding opens an important line of inquiry regarding how overconfidence in AI-related skills develops and how both realistic self-assessment and actual AI competencies can be fostered in educational contexts. We wrote a journal article and a conference paper based on our findings and we organised an interdisciplinary symposium on AI in science communication in order to strengthen exchange at the intersection of AI, education, and communication studies.

What would you recommend future working groups in the PostdocLab programme? 

Philipp Kadelke: 

I would recommend future working groups to clarify before the start of the funding period whether members want to work on a specific research question or examine a broader research topic from different perspectives. I would also advise agreeing on a jour fixe early to ensure regular exchange. 

Danique Deimel: 

Make the most of the flexibility that the programme gives you. The PostdocLab offers plenty of space to try out different formats, and the coordinators are genuinely supportive. My main advice: do something that connects you with people beyond your own group (e.g., events, conference formats, networking). And do not be shy to ask what is feasible; in my experience, there is often more support and openness than you might expect.

Nina Schuster: 

I recommend future working groups to plan how to use their funding as early as possible. It is probably a good idea to schedule a workshop at the beginning of your collaboration. At the same time, I see a risk of overly high expectations regarding research results. Working groups composed of members who have not previously been involved in a joint research context cannot be expected to generate their own research results solely on the basis of the PostdocLab funding. The funding is not sufficient to finance the research as such, but rather can be used for independently implementing complementary measures that support existing research collaborations. We were able to cover the costs of student assistants, publications and a workshop, in particular.

Has anything changed in your approach or way of doing research throughout the 1.5 years of participating in the PostdocLab programme? 

Elisabeth Graf: 

What has changed most for me is the strength and depth of the network I am now part of. This is true for the ties within our working group, but also the broader network we have established. I greatly appreciate the exchange with colleagues who have extensive experience in civic education research, particularly with large studies ─ it has broadened my perspective considerably. At the same time, through our activities and by organising symposia at conferences, we had the chance to connect with many other researchers in the field. Civic education research is still a relatively small field, but scattered across different disciplines and scientific communities. I feel that through our research group, we have had the chance to bring them together. 

Philipp Kadelke: 

The PostdocLab made me realise how much time it takes to plan and carry out scientific work. It changed the way I approach doing research, encouraging me to consider not only the subject matter but also the people / scholars involved. Thanks to the programme, I also learned how essential regular communication can be, and this is definitely something I want to incorporate in my future work.