
Success Story of Dr. Britta Hoyer
After receiving my bachelor's degree in English Studies and Economics from the Ruhr University Bochum in 2007, I went to the Netherlands for my master's program. In 2008, I successfully completed my Master's degree in International Economics and Business Studies at the University of Utrecht. I then stayed in Utrecht to start my PhD in Theoretical Microeconomics. After four years of learning and gaining experience, with many conference visits and a three-month stay at the University of Cambridge, I submitted my doctoral thesis on “Network Formation under the Threat of Disruption” in November 2012 and defended it in June 2013.
In December 2012, I started a postdoc position at the Chair of Institutional Economics and Economic Policy at the Paderborn University, held by Prof. Burkhard Hehenkamp. The chair had just been established, so I had a lot of creative freedom in research and teaching and was able to continue my research on networks while also discovering new fields of research for myself. I developed my own courses on the topic of networks and got to know new co-authors, always with the full support of the chair. In 2014, I had the opportunity to become part of the Collaborative Research Center 901 “On the fly computing” based at the Paderborn University, which had just submitted an application for the second funding period. From then on, I worked for both the chair and the CRC. Since the CRC was interdisciplinary (computer science, economics and cultural studies), this gave me the opportunity to explore completely new and interdisciplinary research fields that dealt a lot with the topic of matching. The chair and the SFB enabled me to attend many conferences, gain a lot of experience and take part in some further training courses by the end of my time in Paderborn. In addition, I became more and more involved in organization and management, as a postdoc at the chair and as part of the representation of young scientists in the CRC, which sparked my interest in science management.
With the support of the CRC and Prof. Hehenkamp, I was able to take the MBA in Higher Education Management and Research Management at the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück. This has strengthened my interest in the field and in December 2021, after nine very enjoyable years at the Paderborn University, I finally moved to the Graduate Academy at the University of Tübingen as a postdoc funding consultant. Here I was responsible for organizing the interdisciplinary training opportunities for postdocs until May 2023, as well as for advising postdocs on questions related to the postdoc period and career development. In June 2023, I became head of the Graduate Academy at the University of Tübingen. In this context, I am responsible for coordinating and developing the training and counseling offers for doctoral candidates and postdocs at the university, for networking the individual offers, and for advising on applications for funding for scientists in early and mid-career phases.