Travel

Administrative procedure

This section provides a summary of the major steps involved when taking a work-related trip. This is just meant to give you an overview on the general procedure - there is an entire law and a whole set of regulations to be followed. Your lab assistant and your fellow lab members will be happy to assist you (especially for new-comers this is advisable).

Planning a trip

All travel plans should be discussed well in advance (usually months before you want to travel). This includes to discuss whether a trip is needed and justified, as well as how it will be funded.

It is important that you apply for travelling in advance (Travel request form/ “Dienstreiseantrag”), the further you travel the more earlier you should fill in the travel request form.

Sign your Travel request form and send it to your lab assistant who will take care for the other missing signatures.

Please name the travelrequest form as follows: Year month DR destination name (eG.: 2022 10 DR Frankfurt Müller) (DR means Scientific travel)

As soon as it is signed completely you will get it back for doing the Travel report after the journey.

If your travel destination lies outside of Germany you have to fill in the A1 form, just available in the Intranet and it also has to be filled out in the Intranet. This does not apply to fellowship/scholarship holders, just to people with working contract.

Once a trip is approved, we generally expect you to plan your trip independently, but note that HU Berlin can purchase tickets for you. You can also get a share of the estimated cost already in advance Note that there are upper limits for hotels, airfare, and other modes of transportation (taxis can only be used under exceptional circumstances). Also note that there are specific rules if you want to combine a work trip with vacation (and such trips can usually only be partially refunded).

You find the required forms in their most recent version both in German and English language in the Intranet of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (https://intranet.hu-berlin.de) by typing "Mobilität & Reisen". Important: you will need to apply for access to the Intranet before in order to access the documents. If you are unsure about how to apply or how to fill the documents, please consult your lab assistant.

During the trip

You will need to keep records of money spent and present receipts for every item to be refunded (including train tickets or boarding cards). This does not include food/beverages/subsistence, as there will be a per diem granted for each day of travel.

After a trip

Once your trip is completed, you need to file a travel report (Reisekostenabrechnung), you can access the most recent version of the form via https://intranet.hu-berlin.de.

It is advisable that you do this together with your lab assistant or an experienced lab member the first time you file such a report. After your trip, you have 6 months to ask for reimbursement, except if you have received down payment - in this case, you have to do it within 14 days. Please send then your signed Travel request form together with the travel report and all receipts via email to our travel department. Reisestelle HU Berlin <reisestelle@hu-berlin.de>

Please name your mail to Reisestelle as follows: RKA_Name, First Name_GEO_Destination

(RKA means "Travel accounting/Travel report")

Responsible Travel

We work in many geographic settings, but we often focus on regions that are understudied. Such regions are typically far away from Berlin. In addition, as a lab we strive to enable young researchers to achieve their personal goals and the careers they envision. All of this sometimes requires travelling – for example to participate in international projects, to carry out field work, to establish and maintain collaborations, or to present at scientific meetings. Yet, the considerable benefits of travelling also come along with major environmental impacts, particularly climate impacts from greenhouse gas emissions. As a lab, it is our goal to minimize the negative environmental impact of our work, by always carefully weighing the costs and benefits of travel. Regarding travel, we therefore commit to the following principles:

• Evaluate the necessity of every trip and make it worthwhile. Please be conscious and highly selective when deciding for trips – and only carry out trips that matter. The most effective way to reduce the environmental costs of trips is to not take them. Whenever feasible, substitute in-person meetings with online options such as video conferencing (e.g., via Zoom, MS Teams, BBB, DFNconf – all of them available through HU Berlin). When you need to take a trip, please make it worthwhile. This can include making less frequent, but longer trips (e.g. field work), combining travels (e.g., field work and a conference) or waiting a year for attending a conference in a closer location (e.g. a conference in Europe vs. overseas). There are many discussion papers to help decide whether a trip is justified.

• Use more sustainable modes of transportation. What this first and foremost means is to avoid flying wherever you can. Air travel causes, compared to trips by car or train, much higher greenhouse gas emissions. The vast majority of travel-related emissions our lab produces are through flying (e.g., >90% in 2017-2019). Avoiding air travel, where possible, is therefore the easiest way to reduce our climate impacts. Short-haul flights are often easy to replace by train or car. As a lab, we commit to avoid short-haul flights for all destinations that can be reached easily by rail or car. Please also consider signing the voluntary commitment to refrain from short-haul flights “I won’t do it under 1,000 km”. However, it is important to highlight that it is the long-distance flights that cause the vast majority of our travel emissions (~70% in 2017-2019 from flights >10,000 km). Not taking such a trip (e.g. to an overseas conference) will have a much larger impact on your emission budget than all short-haul trips taken by alternative transport throughout your PhD or postdoc.

• Offset unavoidable emissions. We realize that not all trips can be replaced by other forms of interaction and that we will continue to cause travel-related emissions in the future. Thus, for unavoidable trips, we commit to carry out offsetting. We realize that offsetting is the last effective way of reducing the climate impact of our travelling, emphasizing the importance of the above points.