Semester opening with lectures, lively exchange and dancing mood

In the morning, all new first-semester students were welcomed, had the opportunity to get to know each other and the staff of the institute, and exchanged information about their expectations and wishes for the beginning Romance studies. After a guided tour through the Romance Studies collections of the university library and a joint lunch in the refectory, students from all other semesters joined them. 

The afternoon program started with a review of the past summer semester, which included a variety of seminars on vocabulary work, text linguistics, migration history, and excursions to Ludwigsburg and Ecuador. The first results of the current student survey were presented and discussed in the plenum before numerous lecturers presented their plans for the new winter semester, including seminars on sustainability communication, Argentinean military dictatorship and didactic textbook analysis as well as a Basque film evening, a language café, a colloquium on regional studies, a career-oriented lecture series and much more. It quickly became clear that there is a lot going on at the Institute of Romance Studies!

While the participants were already adding the first songs to the playlist for the evening, Prof. Dr. Jörg Requate, Mateo Chacón Pino, Annika Rink, Valentina Roether (all three from the IAG Climate Thinking), Marcel Hehr (PhD student) and Joslyn Petri (undergraduate student) presented their current research projects. In addition to new input, there was also plenty of room for conversation. In a tandem exchange, Romance Studies students and international students with French and Spanish as their first languages got to know each other and promptly arranged to meet again during the semester. Furthermore, students shared their experiences abroad and advised each other on how to organize graduation. The International Office and the Fachschaft 02 also presented numerous advisory services. The many new ideas and faces finally came together at the rich evening buffet for an after-work drink. The last item on the program was eagerly awaited: The Kassel-based brass band Boomhorns marched into the room with 11 people and even more instruments and made the crowd quake! So the institute danced late into the night.