At the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg, it’s a good tradition that the department organizes some sort of present when PhD students defended their dissertation. When I defended in May 2024, the department gave me a marathon in the Swedish mountains: 44.6km long, 1400m up, 1400m down. Having done a few “normal” marathons, I was excited (and nervous) about this new challenge.
During preparation, I decided to connect this ultra marathon to another crowdfunding campaign for Scholars at Risk. Like running, research takes a lot of time, is exhausting, and often a constant up and down. But Scholars at Risk support researchers who face extreme challenges, such as personal threats, restrictions in academic freedom, or systemic repression and discrimination. Hence, I thought that I would collect some more donations while saying goodbye to Sweden. The marathon took place in August 2024, on the last weekend of my PhD contract.
The preparation in summer was rough, and the campaign was relatively small: my social media feeds were full of US elections, Olympics, and – on Twitter – radical right and explicit content. In short, it was hard to get attention for this cause and campaign. Ultimately, however, we managed to collect 1,300$, which I transferred to Scholars at Risk two days after the marathon. Thanks everyone who donated, shared the campaign, or supported it in any other way. Also a big thanks to my department for making me run this. Finally, the biggest thanks goes to my team of friends and family, who went to the Swedish mountains to support me.
The run itself was extremely challenging. I had prepared for a long run with many ups and downs, but I had stupidly missed that this would be a TRAIL: for almost 45km, it was a track of mud, rocks, roots, puddles. This is what happens if you don’t think ahead and don’t read the instructions… The run was physically demanding, but the mental challenge to focus on the track, not get distracted and avoid any slipping and tripping was huge. It was also fun.
In the end, I made it: the run and the campaign. Thanks again to everyone involved in this big adventure.
