Switching Academic Disciplines and Moving to Basel
It was my husband who introduced me to Basel. I met him during my studies in Maastricht. He grew up in Basel and his parents still lived here. I always loved coming to Basel, I thought it was so beautiful and sophisticated. After finishing my Master’s degree I worked as an alumni tutor at the University College of Maastricht teaching courses in academic skills and writing. During this time, we decided we wanted to move to Basel. I was lucky enough that an interviewee of my master thesis had a dear friend and colleague in Basel working at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in the Society, Gender and Health Unit. Today, Elisabeth Zemp is my PhD supervisor.
Elisabeth warned me that my PhD project “Incidence and Pathways of Adult Asthma”, though situated within the Society, Gender and Health unit, would be a PhD in epidemiology. In my master thesis I did assess and write about some epidemiological studies, but my background is in the social sciences and I had never done any epidemiology. So it became clear that I would have to learn a lot about epidemiological methods.
Different science, different language
Starting my PhD was exciting and overwhelming. Moving to a new place and into a new academic field was a challenge, but one I felt totally ready for at the time of my arrival. However, after a few weeks, it dawned on me just how much I would have to do and learn. In my first week I was given the PhD proposal together with some pieces of key literature. I was keen to get stuck in, since I have always loved reading and getting into a new topic. I started with the proposal. I read the first page, and then re-read it. I did not understand much at all. I thought maybe I should try one of the key articles instead, hoping that it would be more detailed and easier to understand.
This is where I started to see a major difference between the social sciences and the natural sciences: in the natural sciences authors did not seem to give the broad and long literature review and background to the topic that I was used to from the social sciences. Also, there were a lot of numbers presented in the results but without any reflection on what they meant — maybe, I thought, this would be dealt with in the discussion section. I did find some concluding comments there on what all of these numbers meant. However, I did not really gather much explanation on why they had made their conclusions. Maybe this was just a badly written article? So I tried the next; unfortunately, same story and no luck. This is when I started to get quite worried.
It was not until I enrolled in the three week summer course in Epidemiology in Florence that I realized that I had been trained to read articles completely differently to epidemiologists. During this course we were given a short article and asked to highlight the most important parts. I went ahead and highlighted the aim of the study, the hypothesis and the concluding comments. I did not highlight anything in the methodology or the results section. When I looked to my neighboring students, I saw that they had only highlighted text from the methodology and results section.
I had obviously been taught to read texts in a completely different way — for them it was very important which method was being used and whether this was appropriate for addressing the research question. Their focus was also on the results. Were they significant? And what did they indicate? I myself was rather interested in the reflection of the author — what is the background of this topic? What has already been researched? What knowledge gaps exist and how do these authors try to fill them? What would I have done differently? In the discussion section I was interested to see what they themselves believed that their results had shown. How could the results be interpreted? How do they compare to other literature and what does it all mean in a broader context?
A new way of thinking
Looking back on this, I think all of these questions are important in science — social or natural — but I realize now that these two fields have very different academic cultures. This “way of thinking” was probably the hardest thing to overcome when I started my PhD. I had always been very fast at reading academic texts and understanding complex theoretical concepts and for the first time in many years I was challenged with the very thing I thought I was good at.
I then decided to set up my course plan together with my supervisor. I applied to become part of the Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+) program: a Swiss training and networking program for PhD candidates in the field of public health which enables free access to many SSPH+ courses. As I did not come from a background of epidemiology, it turned out that I would have to take 37 ECTS. Now that is almost a semester’s worth of courses!
And indeed, I did end up spending most of my first year of my PhD, taking courses. I took almost all the core courses of the Master Program of Epidemiology offered by the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute. This was a fantastic experience and I learnt so much! People are always shocked when I tell them how many ECTS I have done. But why not seize the great opportunity to take courses, many of which are completely for free!?
Speaking of seizing opportunities, during one’s PhD in Basel another thing to really take advantage of is the Transferable Skills Program. Courses are offered for free to all PhD and postdocs of the University of Basel and they are all of really good quality. But you have to be fast as they book out within minutes of opening. The spring semester 2017 course registration opens on January 25 at 09:00 am, so you should be sitting in front of your screen ready to book!
Don’t be afraid, just do it
Is it possible to successfully change your academic discipline? Well, I am finalizing my PhD, have published my first paper and have learnt many new things — so the answer is YES! Is it scary to move to Switzerland? Well yes, just like every new place and every new move, it takes courage and getting used to. But with some patience and effort to learn the language and get to know the culture it is an absolutely lovely place to live in. During the summer months you can go swimming in the Rhine (YOU HAVE TO TRY IT) and go skiing or snowboarding in the winter — there is so much to see, I promise you, you will not get bored! And last but not least, the University of Basel has a fantastic reputation as a research institution — so go for it!
The University of Basel has an international reputation of outstanding achievements in research and teaching. Founded in 1460, the University of Basel is the oldest university in Switzerland and has a history of success going back over 550 years. Learn more
