The GROMADA Summer School – Learning in community
Personal impressions by Hauke Varoga, participant of the 2024 GROMADA Summer School and student at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hamburg
When I applied for the GROMADA Summer School, I was mainly attracted by the lecture programme and the opportunity to get to know the work of NGOs in the field of citizen science, and (legal) intervention in relation to environmental protection in armed conflicts. I was interested in meeting new people with different, as well as new and fresh perspectives (at least for me). Since my specialisation in law school was in public international law and European Union law, I thought that I would not learn so much new about public international law, as I was aware that prior knowledge of public international law was an asset but not a must for the application.
Fortunately, my application was accepted and, once the Summer School started, I slowly realised that I would benefit most from an impact that I had not identified as educational: community.
When the Summer School lectures started, I noticed that there was something different about them that I had never experienced before. It took me until the second day to get a real sense of what made the experience different from other seminars and summer schools I had attended previously. By the third day I was aware that what made the experience different was the sense of community and support that was present in every lecture.
Throughout the Summer School, everyone was supportive of each other, eager to learn about each other’s work. Everyone participated in the discussions following the lectures and workshops. This was a new experience for me: Compared to other academic experiences I have had of which some were characterised by academic elbowing, the GROMADA Summer School was unique since every lecture was attended by the other lecturers and reciprocal interventions (in the most positive sense) were made. It seemed to me that everyone was willing to support each other for the benefit of the other, and also for the common project. Having experienced German legal scholarship, training and practice as rather solitary, I never thought about the potential that community could have, not only for personal or group benefit, but also for the purposes of contributing to solutions, interdisciplinary work and research. This sense of community was not only present in the lectures on the part of the teaching body, but also among the participants. In the moot court in particular, this led to the best group work I have had in a long time, under such strict and tight time constraints, not only with my team partner, but also with the group intervening in favour of the position we were advocating.
Since then, I have not stopped thinking about the potential of communities in (international) law, but also about the challenges facing the global community today. I know for sure that this experience will have a lasting impact. And I am glad that I had the chance to experience the great potential of GROMADA.