Eric Teschke - Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne

Eric Teschke - Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne

The Alliance Doctoral Mobility grant was a great help to finance my visiting semester at Columbia University, which otherwise would have been quite unaffordable given chronically low French PhD student salaries.

Given the grant I could fully concentrate myself onto immersing into the Columbia community. I am leaving the economics department with a new chapter of my thesis, with many new friends and another city that I call home.

At Columbia I was most surprised about the friendliness and openness of the faculty. For instance, when I entered the room to attend a seminar by Joe Stiglitz he was there in advance and happily chatted with me about a long range of topics from our experiences in Paris via his latest research initiatives to current political topics. I am thankful and impressed!

I also gave something back to Columbia: I have been told that I contributed substantially to the social life at the department, by always being present, smiling, involved in any activity from lunches to soccer and organizing spontaneous bar evenings. I think many people were very happy to have had me at Columbia for one semester.

I want to thank Alliance for making this experience possible. I also want to profoundly thank my professor Jack Willis, who invited me while the world was still in the unsecure aftermath of Covid. He was an exceptional supervisor who granted me much more of his time and attention than I could have hoped for. His friendliness, academic advice and genuine support have both helped me to advance my thesis, and have made me very happy.