From East to West – an early-career researcher’s voyage across continents

One scholarship can open a research career. It can also start a years-long negotiation with loneliness, ambiguous job titles, and the quiet arithmetic of underfunded postdoctoral life. Early-career researchers who have made the journey from West Africa to East Germany and on to Western Canada describe what rarely makes it into the acceptance letter, and what institutions on both sides of the Atlantic could do differently.