After a super successful EAS symposium, I am organizing yet another conference session. For a change, this one is not focussed on a specific science topic, but rather is about the way we work in Astronomy and what we might (need to) improve.
Together with Victoria Grinberg (Uni Tübingen) I am organizing a splinter session on “Healthy Careers in Astronomy” on September 23, as part of the German Astronomical Society’s (virtual) annual meeting. The session aims to start a conversation about stress and mental health in our field, and some of our speakers will also share some resources on how to deal with such problems. We particularly hope that this will contribute to decreasing the stigma around conversations on topics such as mental health, stress management and career anxiety.
The idea for this was born out of the interdisciplinary Mental Health and Time Management workshop I organized in Potsdam in October last year … and a Twitter exchange. Victoria was interested, but too far away to participate in the local workshop. So we briefly discussed whether we might organize something similar for an astronomy audience, which eventually became a successful splinter meeting proposal and resulted in our session … which turned virtual due to the Corona pandemic.
We’re especially grateful to our speakers for agreeing to support this initiative! You can find more details here, and see the schedule below.
