Last week I had the chance to attend, for the second year in a row, the V Congreso Nacional/VII Jornadas de Investigación en Formación: Fomentando la Interdisciplinariedad (JIFFI). This is a conference organized by University of Granada PhD candidates which aims to reunite PhD candidates from all thematic areas in all Spanish universities in one place which allows us to science is going in other areas that we don’t belong to. As we did last year here, in this brief note we will be telling you about this year’s experience. Sadly, only I (Elvira) could attend this year. But although it was sad to experience this without Vicky and Wences, I must say I still found it to be a very enriching experience and, as it happened last year, I can’t wait for the following edition.
On this occasion, I presented some advances from my thesis. Nico & I have been working on a very descriptive and interesting paper on gender in science in Spain, and I wanted to show some cool graphs I had been able to make (you can find the presentation here!). Moreover, this conference is all about interdisciplinarity and, in this work in progress I presented, that was exactly the kind of input I needed. Bibliometric studies can show many things, but it is always useful to speak to other disciplines such as history or sociology to understand some phenomena, and that is exactly what JIFFI allowed me to do. So, thank you!
Aside from that selfish approach, I also found the conference to be extremely interesting. I got to talk to people that work in things that I didn’t even know existed or that I didn’t even know where something that you could study. After three intense days of presentations and posters, I have many ideas running through my head that surely enriched my way of seeing the world and, very likely, the way I do science. I want to thank the organisers and the presenters for all the hard work. I think spaces like these are extremely important for people starting in academia like us, so I couldn’t be happier to get to experience this here, in Granada!
In a nutshell, last week I experienced the perfect mix of learning, working and having fun. Thank you to everyone who made it possible & see you next year!