Alumni Spotlight/Faculty: Dr. Annette Witherspoon

From Liberia · Head of the International Social Work Program, FAU · Alumna, International Social Sciences Master's (2010–2013)

Dr. Annette Witherspoon's connection to Friedensau runs in both directions. She is now Head of the International Social Work Program and a lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences, but before any of that, she was a student here, earning her master’s in international social sciences between 2010 and 2013.

“I actually finished my coursework in 2012,” she says, “but then I had a long internship with ADRA Germany, so I officially graduated in 2013.”

What stands out most from her student days is the diversity of her cohort: around eight students, each from a different country, all deeply engaged with one another's ideas. It was an era of landline phones in the dorm rooms, late-night calls, and long conversations about coursework. But one memory tops them all: the visa saga that nearly kept her from Friedensau in the first place. Working in Norway at the time, she discovered the only German embassy that could process her visa was in Ghana, so she flew to Ghana, was told to apply back in Norway, flew back, was told her documents had to come from Ghana after all, and ended up flying back to Ghana a second time just to hand over her passport before arranging for someone to collect it and mail it to her in Norway.

“What I remember most, and I still laugh about it with Irina today, is how complicated it was to get the visa to come here.”

The harder chapter, she says, actually came before graduation. Two internships, a short one in Liberia, followed by a longer six-month placement with ADRA Germany, set the foundation for her career, but the ADRA internship paid only a hundred euros a month. “Thankfully I was given a place to stay,” she recalls, and she picked up a small side job to get by. From there, her contract with ADRA evolved into consulting work on compliance and monitoring and evaluation across the Sahel region: Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.

Today, her role allows her to merge the two threads of her career: a social work background and a development studies education. “I often feel like I sit at the intersection of these two disciplines,” she says, “and that's what I try to bring into the program.” Beyond admissions and student support, she teaches the “Project Management in International Development” module and a Global Public Health workshop that began, almost by accident, as a session on the Ebola response, drawn from her own experience working with ADRA in Liberia during the 2014 outbreak. It has since grown into a broader look at behavioural change and the social determinants of health. Alongside teaching, she is now working toward her professorship qualification, with research focused on the interface between livelihoods, peacebuilding, and social cohesion.

Her advice to students comes from hard-won clarity. “There are many distractions and many priorities, and they're all valid in their own way,” she says.

“It's important to know exactly why you are studying, why you are here, is it an investment, what do you hope to achieve?”

Her closing message is simple: You do not have to do this journey alone.

“Talk to people, talk to your lecturers, they are genuinely there to help and support you,” she says. “Do not be afraid to ask questions and engage with them as much as possible.”