On the way to the top
The advancement of junior researchers in the National Centres of Competence in Research allows a meteoric rise up the career ladder. Thanks to the workshops, conferences and congresses organised by the NCCRs, junior researchers remain in continual contact with outstanding academics.
At the prestigious World Trade Institute in Bern, 35 year old Marion Panizzon is studying new migration partnerships, with the support of the NCCR International Trade Regulation. Thanks to the integration of junior researchers in this relatively young field of international economic law, she has already been able to make a name for herself as a researcher and to lay the cornerstone for future partnerships in Switzerland.
Labour migration and the transfer of expertise and lives of researchers living in foreign countries are not meaningless concepts for the 35 year old Swiss national. Marion Panizzon experienced all of these issues first hand in her early childhood. Her father took the entire family with him to Chicago in the U.S.A. where he conducted his research, something which today would qualify his daughter as a "quasi-migrant". Her father's research sojourn was possible thanks to the support of the SNSF. And his daughter soon discovered how the realities of life in Chicago were dependent upon how much you earned, whether you were born in the U.S.A. or elsewhere, whether you were allowed to stay for an unlimited period, or had to leave the country again after a specific period.
These early migration experiences left a lasting impression on Marion Panizzon. Today, having herself become an academic with a doctoral degree and as an aspiring law professor, she works precisely in this area. Marion Panizzon is also co-project leader and assistant lecturer at the University of Bern and works at the prestigious Bern World Trade Institute (WTI). In the NCCR "Trade Regulation – Framework Conditions of International Trade: From fragmentation to coherence", she and her team study which agreements on migration partnerships already exist today, how these are organised and whether they could also serve as a template for Switzerland.
"As a postdoc student with an individual research grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation or any other funding program, I could have opted to write my doctoral dissertation more or less behind closed doors," comments Marion Panizzon. "But without my involvement in the NCCR I would have missed out on valuable contacts with other academics and particularly with international organizations."
In the NCCR Trade Regulation, postdoc students like Marion Panizzon lead projects themselves and bear a great deal of responsibility above and beyond the boundaries of their research. They are responsible for transferring knowledge, managing contact with the media and supervising graduate students or foreign researchers involved in the team. The NCCR Trade Regulation encourages research teams to organise meetings and conferences and seek contact within international organisations, the Swiss Federal Administration, NGOs and the media. Contacts like this clearly increase the practical relevance and focus of the research more than other grants, stresses Marion Panizzon.
The transfer of knowledge within the NCCR has been crucial for Marion Panizzon in developing a network. As a result, she was able to work during her postdoc studies, for three months at the Centre on Migration Policy and Society (COMPAS) at Oxford University and offer a change of perspective to her research in Bern on migration agreements. She also managed to gain the interest of the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) in Geneva, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the Federal Office for Migration in her research, something she admits she would never have dared do without the practical focus required in the NCCR. Marion Panizzon is convinced that active discussion leads to more innovative research results than the individual funding instruments provided by the Swiss National Science Foundation, or other grants could ever achieve. The constant exchange within the NCCR research network and competition among postdoc students, many of whom come from abroad, fosters flexibility and requires a different mindset.