Career Decisions: Finding One’s Way in the Academy

Many PhD students have a passion for academic research and teaching, and they would love to stay in academia, possibly becoming professors. Too often, however, they realise how many hindrances and unknown criteria appear on the way and give up. In this talk we interview different committed Christian academics who are in various stages of their careers facing a vast array of questions, opportunities, and challenges. Through this, we learn how a Christian can prepare well for an academic career.

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Anna Fiona Weiss has always been fascinated by language and therefore studied German and Latin for teaching at the University of Marburg. She then decided to stay in academia and wrote a doctoral thesis in the field of neurolinguistics. In her dissertation, she developed a cognitive model for predicting regressive eye movements during reading. After completing her PhD, she also completed her teaching degree with the 2nd state examination. Since 2019 she has been working as a Postdoc Researcher (Akademische Rätin) at the University of Eichstätt, until summer 2024 she also worked as a teacher at a highschool in Ingolstadt. Her research primarily focusses on cognitive processing of language (L1 and L2) and reading.

Christina Stier is a neuroscientist passionate about brain imaging, mental and neurological disorders, lifespan research, and interindividual variability. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Münster, Germany, in a city with a lot of bicycle traffic. In 2022, she completed her PhD in systems neuroscience on uncovering the link between brain networks and the genetic background of generalized epilepsies at the Universities Göttingen and Tübingen, Germany. During her psychology studies in Basel and Berlin, she gained insights into work in the health care system (child psychiatry, crisis intervention, and neuropsychology). She got involved with Cross-Current as a participant and mentor and led a Christian postgraduate group - initiatives under the umbrella of IFES Europe.

Alexander Fink is Director of the Institute for Faith and Science (Institut für Glaube und Wissenschaft) in Marburg, Germany (www.iguw.de). He studied physics at Bayreuth and St. Andrews (UK) universities and received his PhD at the Institute for Biophysics at the University of Regensburg. After working as an industrial product manager, he became the director of the SMD graduates' ministry (Akademiker-SMD, the German branch of IFES) until 2014. Since 2008, he has been a member of the ELF Steering Committee and has co-led the Scientists Network. He is the editor of the "Begründet-glauben-Podcast" (www.begruendet-glauben.org) and has produced three documentary movies, "Fascinating Universe", "More than My Brain", and “Is there meaning in suffering?” which were officially recommended for use in secular public schools. Together with his wife, Alexander enjoys raising his two children, preaching and leading a house group in his local church, and being a youth soccer trainer in his local sports club.

Per Ewert is the director of The Clapham Institute, Sweden’s leading Christian think tank and research institute. His PhD describes the political process which shaped Sweden into the world's arguably most secular-individualistic nation. Per is the author of seven books on the Bible, apologetics, relations, and the role of faith in society. He currently works on a post-doc study on internal secularization in free protestant denominations. He lives with his wife and four children in southern Sweden.

Karis Riley is a literary scholar of Medieval and Renaissance Literature. She was a postdoctoral research associate on the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge for the AHRC project Remembering the Reformation (2018-2019). She has a BA in philosophy from Wheaton College, IL (2012), a PhD in English Literature from the University of York (2016), and a Master’s in Classics from the University of Oxford (2017). She is currently preparing her first book which investigates the vital relationship between literary form and the history of emotion from the Plato to the Renaissance. She has published in Renaissance Studies, The Seventeenth Century, and Routledge’s Remembering the Medieval and Early Modern World series and has spoken at the Renaissance Society of America. Karis is married to Malcolm and they cofounded Trinity Church Central London in 2014, an evangelical church-plant and community in the capital city. She recently cofounded Graduate Christian Fellowship (GCF), a spiritual centre for London postgraduates to think, belong, and become mature apprentices of Jesus. She is a mother to two toddler girls.

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