UNICA Doctoral Education Webinar: “The impact of international experience in the academic careers of Doctoral candidates”

Organised in cooperation with Chaperone

Activities in the area of Doctoral Education are back! After the break due to the Covid-19 pandemic, UNICA has decided to resume its activities in this important field taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the online format. To this purpose, UNICA is launching in 2022 a series of three webinars aimed at analyzing and sharing experiences on how and what we can do to prepare our doctoral candidates to become performing leaders.

The three webinars will address the following topics, respectively:

1. The impact of international experience in the academic careers of Doctoral candidates
2. Career management skills: why we need them and how to develop them
3. Career beyond Academia.

The webinars mainly address Professionals in Doctoral Education, Heads of Doctoral Schools/Programmes, Supervisors, Managers as well as Vice-Rectors but are also open to PhD candidates, post-docs and young researchers.

First webinar: “The impact of international experience in the academic career of Doctoral candidates” | 18 January, 14:00 – 16:00 pm CET

Did you miss the webinar? Watch the recording!

This first webinar, organized in cooperation with the consulting company Chaperone, intended to highlight the added value for the career development of doctoral candidates to get to know different research environments and research approaches, to be integrated in other teams, to communicate the thesis results however preliminary to other groups, to establish and reinforce collaborations. The webinar also aimed at providing an overview of how institutions and funding agencies (i.e. governments, Erasmus+ programme, etc.) are encouraging placements and secondments at other institutions.

Presentations

• Internationalisation as a strategic priority of doctoral education and its impact of early-stage researchers, by Alexander HASGALL, Head of the EUA Council for Doctoral Education
• What does internationalization, or the lack of it, mean to academic research and researchers?, by Joana MOSCOSO, Chaperone
• International experience – important for Early Career Researchers?, by Agnieszka ŻYRA, President, European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (EURODOC)
• International experience: What’s in a name? Big and small opportunities, by Ayla DE PAEPE, Career Program Manager, KI Career Service, Karolinska Institutet

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Rationale behind the webinar series

The past decade has witnessed deep changes in all stages of university studies, including doctoral education. Originally devised to provide for a license to teach at the University, doctoral studies have evolved to become an academic degree aimed at deploying intellectual and academic skills by (mainly) carrying out rigorous, productive research under the supervision of one or two senior scholars.

Although the mentor-mentee scheme remains basically unchanged, and the doctorate is still needed and considered as a preparation to enter the academic world, doctoral education has gained new and more diversified roles. On one hand, graduates seek (and find!) career opportunities outside academia, thanks to the so-called transversal skills that go beyond research abilities (i.e. knowledge generation) and that in many cases are spontaneously developed. On the other hand, institutions have taken over new roles to ensure their doctoral candidates a productive and vital period of their lives by providing organized support to identify and acquire abilities highly valued inside and outside academia: critical thinking, problem solving, communication of specialized information, working in a team, data management, leadership, integration in new environments, to mention just a few.

UNICA has been already paying special attention to doctoral education for a long time, by organizing between 2009 and 2019 annual PhD Master Classes to discuss and share good practices on different  aspects of doctoral program, ranging from the quality of supervision, the transition from MSc to PhD, the employability of doctoral candidates, to transferable skills and wellbeing in doctoral education.