Goodbye to Prof. Francesca Bracci!

End of Guest Professorship of Prof. Dr. Francesca Bracci

By August 15th, the DAAD visiting professorship of Prof. Dr. Francesca Bracci (University of Florence, Italy) at the Professorship for Adult and Continuing Education at JMU ended. We – students and co-workers – wholeheartedly want to thank Francesca for coming on short notice and want to express our gratitude to her for sharing her perspective on adult education with us.

Managing the still ongoing complications of the covid-19-pandemic and the difficulties with teaching in a hybrid setting, Prof. Bracci came through and mastered it with ease. Her charisma and expertise always made her courses a great pleasure for students to attend. The same applied to the public guest lecture as well as the international workshop on “Fostering Critical and Creative Thinking in Higher and Adult Education”, which Prof. Bracci organized and to which both international and national colleagues and students attended with great interest.

In addition, a Massive Open Online Course [MOOC] on the topic of "Education/Training methods for adults in formal and non-formal contexts" is currently being developed together with Prof. Bracci. For this, Prof. Bracci has created a podcast together with some of her students, that, in turn, reflects her innovative thinking which inspires everyone around her.

How highly Prof. Bracci was appreciated by the students and coworkers can be seen by these quotes:

“Prof. Bracci gave us some great insights into her field, which was very enjoyable. She was also very welcoming and patient with us. If we didn't understand a certain topic, the professor gave us the time we needed to understand it in the end.”

“I liked the professor and her way of teaching. Also, the topics we covered were interesting.”

“For me it was a great pleasure to work with Francesca Bracci and to have lunch with her from time to time. Her perspective on adult education has given me many impulses for my own research. I hope we will stay in touch.”

Thank you again, Prof. Francesca Bracci, for sharing your expertise with us.

Thanks also to DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) for supporting the visiting professorship during summer term 2022 with means of BMBF (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research).