The day started with negotiation training.
We were put into roles and needed to apply different negotiation styles. The most interesting message I took from the session is that you should never enter a negotiation believing that there is a fixed “pie” to be split, and that one side will win the bigger slice. You and your counterpart will care about different aspects of the negotiation. Listen to the other person and understand their priorities, then do your best to defer on those negotiating points that are more critical to your partner.

After that, Harvard met Cambridge in a wonderful evening talk.
Jessica Lynn Corsi, graduate of the Harvard Law School and PhD Candidate at University of Cambridge lectured about how humans could decrease 50% of violence in 30 years. An inspiring message.

For her vision, Jessica Corsi uses approaches from social psychology especially the “Stanford Prison Experiment” to complete the academic law-perspective. For all students at Magdalene College this evening it was a motivating moment of interdisciplinary work and how this could change the world.

The greatness of the topic was also underlined by the not ending the drive of the students to ask Jessica Corsi about her vision. There was an inspiring atmosphere where students and the professor reflected upon small and big changes of law and it’s influence on violence reduction.

Especially for me, as a psychology graduate and a law student, Jessica Corsi opened up a new possible career path. Connecting both fields – psychology and law – is a rarely seen phenomenon in Germany. Through the talk I gained a more precise view on the academic disciple of law in UK. In the UK, the taught law is more discussion based and more about the big picture than in my home country. The interdisciplinary approach is inspiring and something that I will take back to Germany.

Today the academic excellence and, for me, a life-change fell together in Crips Court Auditorium in the heart of Cambridge.