Join the General Assembly Online and Help Shape the Leibniz PhD Network in 2027!

The General Assembly will offer hybrid sessions, allowing you to participate online wherever you are. If you cannot travel to Mannheim, we warmly invite you to join remotely!

Our 11th General Assembly takes place on 9–10 November 2026, hosted by GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Mannheim. It is an opportunity to meet fellow doctoral researchers, exchange experiences and help shape the Network’s next steps. We are looking forward to meeting all registered doctoral researchers there!

Get involved in your Network

The Leibniz PhD Network is open to all doctoral researchers across the Leibniz Association. Whether you are already active at your institute or are discovering the Network for the first time, your ideas and experiences are welcome.

The General Assembly is a great place to start: meet the people behind the Network, learn about its activities and explore how you would like to contribute. You can join working groups, bring forward a topic you care about or take on a representative role.

Stand for the next Steering Committee

At this year’s General Assembly, we will elect the 2026/27 Steering Committee. All Leibniz doctoral researchers interested in taking an active role are encouraged to consider standing for election. The committee has eight positions:

  • Two General Spokespersons: Represent doctoral researchers’ interests within the Leibniz Association and beyond, communicate with relevant bodies and partner networks, and handle the Network’s administrative responsibilities.
  • Five Section Spokespersons: One for each Leibniz section. They connect doctoral representatives across their section, share information, bring concerns to the committee and support communication with the working groups.
  • One Treasurer: Manages the Network’s budget, keeps track of transactions and reports on its finances, working with the responsible contact at Leibniz Headquarters.

Together, these eight members coordinate the Network’s activities and put the General Assembly’s decisions into practice. Section spokespersons represent the section to which their institute belongs; election votes are cast through institute representatives or appointed delegates.

Interested in standing for a position, joining a working group or simply learning more? Come along to the General Assembly and get to know us. You can also contact spokesperson@leibniz-phd.net beforehand.

Information to join online

Find the programme and event information on the General Assembly webpage.

We look forward to meeting you—in Mannheim or online—and hearing your ideas for the year ahead!

Comparing the #MeToo Movement to Power Abuse in Academia

Article 3
Performance Only in Hollywood
Searching for the Agency of Support Structures in Academia

 

← Read Article 2

Once, a director’s phone call could end an actress’s career, and the film-making industry ran for decades on that consuming fear. After a century and one loud year in 2017, Hollywood workers cultivated the conditions to answer back: a union with teeth, a press hungry for the story, a public willing to believe the smaller – yet known and widely loved – voice. This did not instantly bring justice, not reliably; but it created a lever which can be pulled. German academia has spent that same century perfecting the opposite art: the high levels of hierarchy that never have to explain themselves, and in the rare cases they do, all happening behind closed doors, in a complicit silence. And sadly, a doctoral researcher screamed at, threatened with a ruined future, harassed, has no lever at all: no famous name, no structural body to fight their cause. They only have the established institutional processes, slow and fully dependent to the power abusers. These processes lacking autonomy and agency are worth tracing, because the gap they leave is a scandal that never quite becomes news. 

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Comparing the #MeToo Movement to Power Abuse in Academia

Article 2
The Casting Couch of Research Groups
Profiling Abusers and Victims in an Enabling Environment

← Read Article 1
Read Article 3 →

When the Weinstein allegations broke in 2017 and #MeToo went global, most people received the news as the result of an accumulated misconduct in the entertainment industry: powerful men, vulnerable young female actors, and a culture that protected the former at the expense of the latter. Even though it rapidly spread to other sectors concerning the public sphere like media and politics, fewer people connected the same dynamic to a place that looks nothing like a film set, the research group. 

Research institutions run on a remarkably similar machine to the one that fostered the abuse in Hollywood, albeit minus the glamour. A small number Continue Reading

Join Us for the 11th General Assembly of the Leibniz PhD Network – Registration has Opened !

We are delighted to invite doctoral researchers from across the Leibniz Association to the 11th General Assembly of the Leibniz PhD Network, taking place on 9 and 10 November 2026 at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Mannheim.

The General Assembly provides an opportunity to connect with fellow doctoral researchers, exchange ideas and help shape the future of the Leibniz PhD Network.

Further details, including the preliminary agenda and registration form, are available on the General Assembly webpage.

General Assembly Webpage

Registration is open until 21 October 2026.

We kindly ask all PhD representatives to share this announcement with the doctoral researchers at their institutes.

For general questions, please contact spokesperson@leibniz-phd.net. For questions about the venue, please contact lena.rembser@gesis.org.

We look forward to welcoming you to Mannheim!

Comparing the #MeToo Movement to Power Abuse in Academia

Article 1
No Incident Is Isolated
Rethinking How Academia Hears a Single Complaint 

Read Article 2 →

A few years ago, the world watched an industry built on charisma, gatekeeping, and closed doors come apart in public. #MeToo did not begin as a movement. The term has existed since 2006 but was popularized after the Weinstein allegations broke in 2017, revealing over three decades of sexual crimes which led to his immediate firing and eventual conviction. Throughout the years, the list of victims grew one private settlement at a time. Treated at first the way institutions always treat these things: as unfortunate, as unusual, as an isolated incident, as a matter between two people destined to be settled quietly behind closed doors and kept out of the trade press. What eventually broke that pattern was not Continue Reading