German PhD Students Join Erasmus Programme at Atlantic and Share Fascinating Insights into Biodiversity in Farming

Earlier this month, Sanja Osieja and Deborah Schneider from the Nürtingen-Geislingen University of Applied Science and the University of Hohenheim joined the Presentation Skills for Academics Erasmus+ programme. The two women are researching the business aspects of biodiversity farming and its climate impact.

Sanja and Deborah graciously took time out to speak to us about their course experience and overall impression of Galway and Ireland in oft-dreary November.

I started by asking them about their journey to the Atlantic Centre of Education, course choice, and learning goals.

So we heard a lot of positive experiences from our colleagues and we decided to do the presentation course because we want to attend some conferences next year and also present our work there. 

The application with the school was very easy, but with our home institution, it was a little difficult because we needed to get a lot of formalities done, we had to get a lot of paperwork done.

When asked whether they would feel more confident about giving presentations having completed the course, Sanja said:

Yes, I think we had some practice. That’s always good. We improved. We heard some new feedback, different feedback, feedback from very experienced teachers. I think that was good, yes.

And Deborah added:

We learned some skills to improve our presentation. We also learned some pronunciations that we did not know before.

The women praised the warmth and friendliness of Irish people, spoke of their love for Galway, and were unanimous when singling out the Cliffs of Moher as the highlight of the week. Sanja said:

It’s great that the Christmas market is just across the street. I think it’s a very nice Christmas market. So it’s nice to visit Galway even in the cold season because I think many people think like, oh, it’s November or December. The weather is going to be so bad here. We had lovely weather. It was very warm. And also it’s great to visit the Christmas market.

Biodiversity in Farming & Marketing

The two PhD students work on a Project from the Nuertingen-Geislingen University (NGU) called “BioDivRegio – Erforschung von Konzepten zur Inwertsetzung von Lebensmitteln aus biodiversitätsfördernder, regionaler Landwirtschaft“ which can be translated to “BioDivRegio – Research into concepts for the valorisation of food from biodiversity-promoting, regional agriculture”. You can click on the website here.

They also participate in a graduate college called “Leverage Points for Biodiversity Enhancement in Agricultural Landscapes (HABIT)” which is a cooperation between the NGU and the University of Hohenheim (UHOH). The research belongs to both institutes and is a joint project. Read about other interesting projects on the transformation of agriculture for more biodiversity here. 

Deborah and Sanja shared some insights into their joined research project.

Well, we are both currently working on a PhD project. And Deborah does more of the quantitative research. She, for example, does research on the willingness to pay on the part of the consumers. And my research is more like qualitative, and I do research on storytelling and how we can use storytelling to use it to market biodiversity friendly product, especially pasture-raised beef.

We work together with companies in our project and advise them on how they can benefit from our results. We try to make the research results applicable to businesses.

There are several subprojects. Our subproject is about the marketing and the consumer research, but we also have one sub project that develops indicators and tries to work together with the farmers and to encourage them. We want to look at the whole value chain.

Sanja and Deborah are one year into a research project that may last up to five years.