The associations of non-professorial academic staff of the University of Zurich (VAUZ) and the ETH Zurich (AVETH) have published three reports on the situation of their doctoral and postdoctoral students based on surveys at both universities.
Please find the press releases and links to the reports here: VAUZ / AVETH
The Eurodoc conference 2018, which was organized in collaboration with FUURT, took place in Tampere on 18 and 19 April 2018. The conference’s main topics were mental health, equality with focus on mobility, open access, and new criteria for measuring excellence. Amongst the highly qualified PhD speakers were also representatives from industry and European education institutions. The audience gave new insights and many opportunities to discuss these topics covered from different perspectives and led to promising approaches for innovative solutions. Opportunities for networking ensure ongoing discussion and activities related to the topics discussed. It also made Eurodoc, its National Associations and all their efforts more visible. actionuni was represented by Salome Adam and Mirco Grüter.
Salome Adam (VAUZ) and Mirco Grüter (VAUZ & Actionuni) were this year’s Actionuni’s delegates at the “Annual General Meeting” (AGM) of “the European Council of PhD Candidates and Junior Researchers” (Eurodoc) that took place in Tampere, Finland from the 20.-21. April 2018. The AGM is Eurodoc’s highest decision-making body.
In consultation with Eurodoc, Actionuni participated in a public consultation on how EU funds should be used in the areas of investment, research &innovation, SMEs and the single market.
We highlighted in particular the importance of a full funding of EU research programs and asked the EU to:
You’ll find our complete answers here (PDF)
The Changes affect mainly doctoral students and other employees whilst the conditions for postdocs remain the same.
Further information can be found here.
The SNF has launched a new vehicle: the SNSF Flexibility Grant. It is tailored to support researchers with young families. It facilitates part-time work, finances scientific support persons and contributes towards the costs of external child care to ease the double burden for researchers with children. With this new instrument, the SNSF continues his commitment towards equal opportunities for all researchers, which he has previously pursued with his 120% Support Grants.
The new vehicle is:
For further information please visit the SNSF’s Flexibility Grants website.
It is not very common for actionuni providing a voting recommendation on political topics which do not concern the scientific staff at first sight. But since the no-billag initiative does have direct and indirect influence on higher education institutes and the scientific staff, actionuni clearly recommends voting no in the upcoming no-billag initiative, as (inter alia) the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences and the fh-zh do.
Further arguments as well as a profound statement can be found here.
Eurodoc has released a statement on the new Framework Programme (FP) for Research and Technological Development. The current programme FP8 or Horizon 2020 has been extremely successful with a budget of circa €80 billion and focusing on Excellent Science, Industrial Leadership, and Societal Challenges. The next programme FP9 will run from 2021 to 2027 and is currently being developed in collaboration with all relevant stakeholders.
Eurodoc has identified four key issues for early-career researchers which they would like to be taken into account in FP9:
We are happy to announce that actionuni has found an ad interim representative to the Schweizerische Hochschulkonferenz SHK / Conférence suisse des hautes écoles CSHE / Conferenza svizzera delle scuole universitarie CSSU.
Lena Hehemann (cand. Ph.D., Law Faculty, Insitute for European Law, University of Fribourg) will replace our current representative, Ruth Lyck (PD PhD, Medical Faculty, Theodor Kocher Institute, University of Bern).
We want to use this opportunity to sincerely thank Ruth Lyck for her dedication and continued endeavor on behalf of actionuni.
The project SuperProfDoc has led to the publication of a new handbook on the best practices relative to the mentorship of doctoral candidates. Claudia Dobrinski and John Peacock, both from Eurodoc, included the results of numerous experiences of successful doctoral supervisions at European universities to support their study. “A handbook for supervisors of modern doctorate candidates” establishes the state of the art in the professional mentorship of Ph.D. candidates.