Our first exchange doctoral student at Unidistance Suisse

In 2023, UniDistance Suisse warmly welcomed its first exchange doctoral student. Andrea de Carlos Buján from the Abat Oliba CEU University (Barcelona, Spain), obtained funding from her home country to embark on a three-month research stay at the chEERS Lab under the supervision of Andrea Samson, associate professor in the Faculty of Psychology.

Andrea de Carlos Buján is doing her doctorate on the fascinating topic of "Humour and resilience in primary school students". She is involved in an extensive study involving 12 schools, 576 students and 23 teachers in Spain. The goal of the study is to better understand the relationship between resilience and sense of humor, specifically in pupils in the last years of Primary Education. In other words, it aims to explore the potential of a sense of humour as a defence weapon, a coping strategy, a protective factor, and a resilience-boosting mechanism. She contacted Andrea Samson, an expert in the field of humour, because she wanted to expand her theoretical and methodological knowledge during her research stay. Together they worked intensively on the analysis and interpretation of a part of her doctoral thesis project and they are currently working on a joint publication. In addition, they have submitted an abstract for an international conference of the Society for Affective Sciences, which will take place next year in New Orleans, USA.