Gianna Maria Eick

1 INTRODUCTION National welfare states have long been in crisis. This is linked not only to trends such as demographic ageing, technological change, and fiscal retrenchment but also to exogenous shocks such as the Great Recession, the Covid-19 pandemic, or Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Attending (and presenting!) at a conference where the audience consists mainly of established scholars in the subject area – in this case, student evaluations – can be quite intimidating for an early career researcher. Despite my initial concerns, my experience at the Advance HE Surveys Conference 2018 at the beautiful Cloth Hall Court in Leeds was positive throughout. It was an excellent opportunity to get my feet wet at a large conference in the UK.