🔎 🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓 Comparative Alumnistics 🔎 🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓

As member of five academic alumni organisations* Richard Schubert has ample of opportunities to compare different approaches in alumni work and also to explore the possibilities of meta-networking, as for example via "mixed alumni round tables" he organises from time to time http://berlin-3d-art.de/politische_hintergrundgespraeche.htm. In a more theoretical approach he tries to use models from natural sciences to describe the interaction of different alumni groups, as he has done e.g. on a specific occasion using a two fluid model to describe the interaction of alumni/ae of the Bavarian Hanns Seidel Foundation and the Heinrich Böll Foundation https://www.hss.de/download/publications/Banziana_2016.pdf#page=37. This finally led him to coin the term Comparative Alumnistics, which is the area of social sciences dealing with the investigation of the different (academic) alumni groups/organisations, their differences and their interactions. A branch dealing a little bit more with practical applications would then be Applied Comparative Alumnistics (German Angewandte Komparative Alumnistik aka AKA). The whole field still being in statu nascendi. In the workshop during the Max Planck Alumni Symposium 2019 he will give an overview of Comparative Alumistics and his ideas of how to develop it further. Currently he also considers the possibility of founding an independent Institute for Comparative Alumnistics - though a step that needs careful preparation and in-depth coordination with other players in the field. The workshop could be particularly interesting for MPAA members who are also members of other academic alumni organisations and who would be willing to share their corresponding experiences in the open discussion following the presentation.

* Max Planck Alumni Association, Altstipendiaten der Seidel-Siftung, DAAD-Freundeskreis, Lindau-Alumni and Jugend-forscht-Alumni


Berlin, August 2019

http://berlin-3d-art.de/