Shortly after my most recent secondment at Kiel University, I had the chance to attend the Annual Meeting of the DGG – the “Deutsche Geophsikalische Gesellschaft” (German Geophysical Society), not to be confused with the “Deutsche Gartenbauwissenschaftliche Gesellschschaft” (German Horticultural Sciences Society). The DGG brings together geophysicists from academia and industry, in order to connect and share knowledge. A number of students also attended the meeting, some of whom even came as larger groups from their universities.

It was my first time attending such a meeting and presenting my work to national and international researchers in form of a poster. Explaining my project to scientists from very different backgrounds and seeing their interest in my work was a good experience for me.

When you come from the University of Bremen, as I do, geophysics is used almost as a synonym for marine seismics. While my previous studies covered the other geophysical disciplines (like gravimetry, magnetics, etc.), few people at the University of Bremen actually apply them. So it was almost surprising for me to see the number of presentations and posters not focusing on marine seismics. I attended a number of different plenary talks and sessions, from geodynamics to seismology to volcanology, and enjoyed the experience of diving into different topics that I don’t usually come across. For example, I discovered that it is worth checking earthquake records on the basis of historic newspaper articles in order to get a complete and verified earthquake catalogue.