Are you conducting research on researchers and researcher careers or someone who is interested in knowing more about research in this area? Join us at the bi-annual meeting of EARLI SIG 24!
This international meeting brings together the work of scholars who focus on researcher education and development in different disciplinary contexts, and promotes innovative and cutting-edge research on researcher development. The meeting is intended for those early-career and advanced researchers who want to develop the scholarly work and their expertise in the field. The meeting is designed to stimulate discussion about the theoretical and methodological gaps. Our goal is to encourage dialogue and research.
The seminar is organized by Center for University Teaching and Learning, University of Helsinki in collaboration with EARLI SIG24: Researcher Education and Careers.
Conference theme: Transitions in researcher education and careers
The many different and multi-sided institutional and societal expectations on research and researchers contribute to increased transitions in researcher education and careers. Early-career researchers may enter universities from one professional context to do their PhD and return into (perhaps a different) professional context again followingly. PhD scholarships are increasingly funded by external stakeholders who may have a say in the focus and aims of the research, and even take part in the practices of researcher education through co-supervision and partners in the research itself. The growing scope and quality of the exchanges between research, researchers, and various professional and societal actors push for, but also enable, new forms of researcher transitions between institutional, professional, and societal contexts.
Transitions within the institutional context alone occur ongoingly as well. Being an MA degree holder moving into doctoral education and trying to form a new identity as researcher and to find one’s own academic voice. Transitioning in the post-PhD career into short term contract employments as postdoc or research assistant, while trying to land a more permanent position as lecturer. Also important are the transitions during mid-career academic life when moving into a position as senior lecturer (associate professor), or even professor, with new responsibilities and increasing demands of research funding, output, supervision and leadership. Transition may be temporal and spatial. During the time in the lives of academics, we may even transition between various stages in our own personal lives as well. Very tangibly, academic work has transitioned between physical and virtual spaces in the past couple of years.
The increased mobility in researcher education and careers cause transitions between various national and cultural contexts, perhaps even in one single academic career trajectory. Leaving one’s home (country, field) and finding one’s feet in a new and different institutional, national, and perhaps also cultural context put demands on the (young) researchers both academically, socially, and personally. This way seen, academic, social, and cultural contexts may become inextricably linked and not always easily communicated to new colleagues (and supervisors). Researchers, today, are often on the move – nomadically – between one disciplinary, institutional, national, or cultural context towards another for the next position in an increasingly nomadic academic career trajectory.
During the SIG 24 meeting we are inspired by three key notes on various transitions in researcher education and careers and engage in workshops with the aim of a edited peer reviewed book. An opportunity is reserved for participants to work on writing for the publication (optional writing retreat).