In her opening address, Prof. Dr. Cordula Artelt, Chair of the NEPS Annual General Meeting, particularly welcomed the new Head of Department 3 “Longitudinal Education Research” of the LIfBi, Prof. Dr. Corinna Kleinert, as well as Prof. Dr. Michael Gebel, new member of the NEPS Network and Scientific Head of the Operational Unit “Returns to Education Across the Life Course”. 

After the activity reports given by Prof. Dr. Cordula Artelt and the Director of LIfBi, Prof. Dr. Hans-Günther Roßbach, the attending participants discussed further aspects of the governance and departmental structure of NEPS and LIfBi as well as potential lines of research that could serve to pool the existing interdisciplinary expertise of the nationwide NEPS Network even more effectively than before. These and other aspects regarding the strategic advancement of NEPS and especially also on the study design as of 2018 are to be discussed in more detail at the forthcoming NEPS strategy workshop to be held at the end of May.