2019 Travel and Networking Grant Report

Vera Buijs

On February 2nd, 2020, I started my research stay at Heidelberg University. During my stay I participated in the lab of Cornelia Wrzus. As the main language was German, I had to dust off my language skills from high school. Luckily most colleagues were also proficient in English, so one on one talks were a lot easier.

I was lucky to be able to use data from the multi method ambulatory assessment study for my own study on interdependencies between family and friendship interactions. I am certain that the brainstorm meetings I had with Cornelia to discuss this study would have been much less fun in an online setting.

The intended stay was for three months, but unfortunately I had to abruptly leave Heidelberg after about six weeks already. My mother drove all the way to Heidelberg (about 8 hours by car) to pick me up, at first just for the weekend to see how the COVID-19 situation would turn out. I think you can already guess how that ended, one weekend became almost two years…

From there on the collaboration was continued in an online setting. Although this worked quite well, it caused some delays on the project, as we all had to deal with the corona situation at home, impacting both working and private life.

I am very happy that we managed to bring this project to a good end with an interesting publication in the European Journal of Personality. I am also grateful to the EAPP for allowing me to use my travel grant flexibly and being able to return to Germany in September 2021 to properly finish the research stay and say goodbye to all the lovely people over there.