A PhD research stay at Palacký University brought together research, international collaboration and a new perspective on academic life. Working with researchers at the Faculty of Physical Culture, he found opportunities to build on his work in sleep health while exploring new directions for future collaboration. His experience also showed how stepping into a new academic and cultural environment can lead to unexpected connections, lasting impressions and new possibilities.
I had the fortune to be hosted by Palacký University in the Spring of 2026. It was my first time participating as an exchange student and I could not be happier with my experience. Firstly, the town of Olomouc feels clean, safe, very easy to navigate, and has an overall sense of calm that larger cities lack. The public transit system is excellent, and the town is flat which makes the option of walking easy, convenient, and often the preferred choice. The entire city is walkable. My family and I stayed closer to the city centre so I both walked and took the tram to get to the FTK campus.
My impressions of the campus are consistent with my thoughts of the city itself. Clean, open, organised and well appointed. The staff and students of my host faculty were kind, friendly, and interested in involving me as part of the Team. At no point did I feel like an outsider who was just ‘there’. The staff of the International Office went above and beyond to ensure that my time and experience within Olomouc and FTK were memorable, and positive.
During my placement at Palacký University, I worked with Associate Professor Aleš Gába, a leading researcher in the role of 24-hour movement behaviours in health, who acted as my academic supervisor, and collaborated closely with Dr David Janda, an early career researcher working in the same field. My research on composite sleep health aligned with and extended aspects of their work, particularly in considering sleep within a broader 24-hour movement framework. The visit also identified opportunities for continued collaboration, including applying the composite sleep health metric developed through my thesis to an existing Czech dataset of approximately 2,000 participants, as well as extending studies from my thesis with input from the Palacký research team. These opportunities align closely with FTK's research priorities and complement my broader research programme at AUT and within the Human Potential Research Institute.
All of the aspects of my trip and placement within FTK were very well communicated. The instructions and communications were always clear, and easy to follow. As a native English speaker with no Czech language background, I never had any concerns about a language barrier. Everyone that I met both in the school and in the city was gracious and patient enough to let me try my Czech (when I felt brave enough), then would generally reply in near perfect English.
In all, this experience was one of the most memorable and enjoyable of my entire academic career. The city and staff delivered an experience that was well above what I was expecting. Given the opportunity, I would gladly return back to the Team at Palacký University and FTK. Even within the stress of being in a new place, with new people and a different culture, I can describe my experience as having the ‘noise’ of subconscious stress just being turned down. It was a feeling that I was very disappointed to leave. Had I had the funding and time to extend my experience there, both my family and I would have gladly jumped at the opportunity.
