People of MINGZ: Academic Tutor Lisa Amelung

10. Juni 2022

Foto: UHH/Amelung

Unfortunately, the MINGZ has to say goodbye to Lisa Amelung – but not without letting her tell us about her experiences during almost four years as an academic tutor.

My name is Lisa Amelung and I’m a doctoral candidate at the molecular plant physiology group of the biology department. In my research project, I’m focusing on gene expression and chromatin changes. During my Master’s program, I spent some time in Boston for an internship, and I really enjoyed working in an international environment.

Being a MINGZ tutor enabled me to get to know people from all around the world. I had learned about the academic tutor positions while I helped organizing a conference for the biology PhD candidates in Hamburg and applied right away. For almost four years I helped international MIN students with questions about getting a PhD journey in Germany and living in Hamburg.

Knowing the right people

The problems current and prospective PhD candidates ask us for help with are very diverse. Some are fairly simple, such as administrative questions about admissions and semester tickets. Some are a lot harder, like refugees from Afghanistan or other places looking for funding to continue their research. Some find out about us online and contact us directly, but by now many grad school coordinators and supervisors also know about us and refer the students to us. And by now, we in turn know the right people who can help them in different situations, so we can tell the PhD candidates where to go.

“We’ve been there ourselves”

Of course, things became more difficult once the pandemic started. Especially when there’s a language barrier, it’s much easier to communicate in person, but thanks to video chat we were still able to help. And often it seems to really be enough for the PhD candidates to hear that you know and understand their struggles, for example when they are scared that their contracts won’t be extended, and they run out of funding. They find out that we’ve been there ourselves, and that everything worked out in the end. For many of them it’s a big relief to hear that.

Making a difference

Recently, I had to leave my academic tutoring job because I started a coordinator position at DESY. But there are many great memories that I’ll take with me. Once I had a long email conversation with an international PhD candidate in Hamburg who was trying to bring his sister to Germany for her PhD as well. And months later, the two of them were suddenly standing in my office. She was so grateful for my help and wanted to thank me in person. It was wonderful to see that my advice had made a real difference in someone’s life.

Our current MINGZ academic tutors are Lara Sophia Kaiser and Kathrin Böckmann. Please feel free to reach out to them with your questions via tutor.min@uni-hamburg.de!

Or visit our website for more information.