My trip to Prague from August 3 to 14 to attend ESSLLI 2026, supported by emergenCITY through the Female Student Travel Award, was an incredibly enriching experience. The interdisciplinary summer school offers a wide range of courses and workshops covering topics at the intersection of logic, linguistics, and computer science, catering to participants with a variety of backgrounds and levels of prior knowledge. It was my first time attending a summer school of this size, and it was at least as impressive and overwhelming as I had imagined. As a Master’s student sitting among PhD students and postdocs while internationally renowned researchers presented their latest work, I found the experience quite intimidating, especially at first.

Fortunately, the atmosphere was much more relaxed than I had feared. After all, everyone is in more or less the same boat when trying to understand some of the highly abstract material. By the fourth lecture of the day, everyone’s head is spinning, and no one understands every topic on the first attempt. This naturally leads to conversations with people who seem just as confused and overwhelmed during the coffee breaks as you feel yourself. Together, we often manage to make sense of the mathematical definitions and linguistic examples after all.

Round about 60 people in front of a banner with the ESSLLI logo
© Alena Chrastová

Officiall group photo of all participants of the ESSLLI 2026

The different perspectives and backgrounds that the other participants bring with them are particularly helpful in this regard. From mathematicians like myself to linguists and philosophers, from many countries across Europe and beyond, the ESSLLI participant community is highly diverse. This not only makes discussions about the summer school courses very fruitful, but also provides completely new impulses for one’s own research back home—and, in my case, new inspiration for the big question: What actually comes after a Master’s degree?

Because ESSLLI really makes you want more. More academia, more research, and more of this wonderful collaboration across disciplinary and national boundaries. If my future career path allows it, this will certainly not be my last visit to this summer school. And I very much hope that next time, I will be able to contribute to all the exciting research being presented myself.

About the author

Michelle (Micky) Geisler is pursuing a Master’s degree in Mathematics and Cognitive Science. Her research focuses on learning and problem-solving, both in humans and machines. At emergenCITY, she was involved in the development of the serious game Krisopolis, which provides an accessible introduction to topics related to disaster preparedness and disaster response.

Some of the ESSLLI participants on the evening of the solar eclipse. I was the only one who had managed to buy suitable protective glasses, so we took turns using the one pair.
© Michelle (Micky) Geisler

Some of the ESSLLI participants on the evening of the solar eclipse. I was the only one who had managed to buy suitable protective glasses, so we took turns using the one pair.