Cusanuswerk Annual Conference 2025 - Venlo

In June, I had the opportunity of attending the annual conference of the Cusanuswerk e.V. - Bischöfliche Studienförderung for the first time at Kasteel de Berckt in Venlo (Netherlands 🇳🇱). The Cusanuswerk is one of 13 institutions currently funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMFTR) with the aim of promoting gifted students in Germany.

This year's conference was held under the richly nuanced theme “Complexity” with two enlightening presentations by Dr. Marco Wehr and Prof. Dr. Markus Gabriel. The actual core of the annual conference, however, was the plenary meeting of the scholarship holders, during which we voted on proposals and nominated candidates for the next term of office.

In order to be able to accommodate the very high number of participants (over 700 students and alumni), some of the participants, including myself, were housed in professional tents. Exposed to nature and the vagaries of the weather (heat during daytime as well as thunder and lightning during nighttime), it was a nice adventure for us which turned out to be a clear highlight.

I particularly enjoyed the interdisciplinary exchange with students and doctoral candidates from very different disciplines ranging from theology, medicine, art history and physics to law, music and computer science. The discussions and impulses from entirely different intellectual worlds opened up new perspectives for me and once again impressively demonstrated the value of such networks.

To conclude, I would like to thank all the organizers, speakers and fellow scholarship holders who made this inspiring annual conference possible. I am delighted to be part of this community and I am looking forward to the things that lie ahead. One upcoming highlight will be my first Cusanuswerk academy, which I will be attending beginning next year.

#Cusanuswerk #Scholarship