Work-life balance in academia is a topic I have been thinking about for many years. Since joining academia, I have combined multiple roles: researcher, lecturer, supervisor, wife, mother, and collaborator across institutions and countries. Like many academics, I have often…
Over the past semester, I started a new leadership role at my university. It is an opportunity I am grateful for and excited about, but it has also come with an uncomfortable realization: every new responsibility requires making room somewhere…
Academic careers can be rewarding, but they also come with a unique challenge: there is always more work than time. Between research, teaching, administration, mentoring, proposal writing, meetings, and service, it can feel impossible to stay on top of everything.…
One of my favorite parts of academic life is touristing around other university campuses (and visiting bridges in other countries). A research visit offers the opportunity to spend time with colleagues, discuss ideas in depth, work together on papers and…
In my previous post, I shared some of the lessons I learned from serving on a review panel for a competitive research funding opportunity. Several readers reached out afterward with a similar question: what actually happens on the other side…
Recently, I had the opportunity to review more than 20 proposals submitted for a funding call. The funding available through this program is limited, which means the competition is fierce: only a handful of projects will ultimately receive support. As…
Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) is an educational approach that connects students and faculty across institutions and countries through structured online collaboration. Rather than relying only on physical mobility, COIL creates opportunities for internationalization within existing courses by allowing students…
This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those…
Since Q4 of 2025, I’ve been supervising more and more Bachelor Final Project students from TU Delft. At TU Delft, this project is often referred to as the BEP (Bachelor Eindproject), and it has a very particular characteristic: it only…
In January of this year, something happened to my blog that every blogger quietly hopes will never happen: it got hacked. At first, I did not even realize it. There were no dramatic warning signs, no flashing red alerts, and…
Sign up here to get access to worksheets for your research that help you have more efficient meetings, reflect on your work, and plan your month. Suitable for anyone from Master’s thesis students to full professors!