Eurodoc Conference 2017 “Open Science” and Annual General Meeting

Eurodoc, Events

At this year’s Eurodoc conference from 26-29 April 2017 in Oslo, Norway, Burim Ramaj and Cécile Blaser, both University of Fribourg, represented actionuni. Eurodoc is the European Association of doctoral candidates and young researchers. actionuni (Switzerland) is member in Eurodoc since 2006. In total, 32 organisations are member of Eurodoc, representing their respective European countries and the Council of Europe.

This year’s topic was of the Annual Conference of Eurodoc was “Open Science”, a heavily discussed topic also in Switzerland.

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NZZ dossier – Young academics for research

Press release, Resources and documents

On 5 April 2017, the NZZ has published an extensive dossier on the situation of the non-professorial academic staff in Switzerland. Co-president Florian Lippke took part in a dispute with swissuniversities president Michael Hengartner; co-president Andrea Tamas via telephone interview gave additional positions on the situation of the non-professorial academic staff at Universities of Applied Sciences and Universities of Teacher Education. The full dossier can be found here.

Mittelbau at University of St Gallen wants a stronger voice

Press release

Young researchers at the University of St. Gallen will give themselves a new organizational structure. A telephone interview by the responsible journalist from the St. Galler Tagblatt with Florian Lippke gave us the chance to welcome these new developments and to stress the importance of well-defined conditions for the researchers who are actively involved.

The article can be found here.

actionuni meets with SERI

Events

On 15 February 2017, actionuni met for the first time with representatives of the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, SERI. actionuni’s new structures were presented and it was agreed to establish a regular contact with the SERI. The main topic was how actionuni can be involved in the definition of the next federal message on education, research and innovation policy 2021-2024.

Full association to Horizon2020 is important

Press release

Just before the discussion on the mass immigration initiative in the parliament, actionuni co-president Andrea Tamas gave an interview to the German radio station Deutschlandfunk. She stressed the relevancy of the ratification of the Croatia protocol within the timeframe given by the EU to not loose association to the European research program Horizon2020.

The short broadcast can be found here.

1st AAQ Institutional Accreditation Day

Events

Co-presidents Florian Lippke and Andrea Tamas attended the 1st AAQ Institutional Accreditation Day on 25 November 2016 on the topic “Communicating quality assurance“. The program consisted of three presentations by international speakers about “The dos and don’ts of organizational communication: A theoretic approach”, “Qualitätskultur als Kommunikationskultur – Interne Qualitätssicherung über Dialog” and “Reaching out: How to improve better communication and committment of your institution’s quality assurance” as well as a round-table discussion on “Effiziente Kommunikationsstrukturen: Wie erreicht man Studierende?”. Conclusions can be found in an inspiring visual recording of the day and the workshop outcomes on the AAQ-webpage.

The next AAQ Institutional Accreditation Day will take place on 29 November 2018.

A Swiss Way to Research Quality

Events

On 3-4 November 2016, a conference on “A Swiss Way to Research Quality” took place in Berne, which was the final event of the swissuniversities program “Performances de la recherche en sciences humaines et sociales“. Co-president Florian Lippke was invited to a panel discussion on 4 November. Together with Geneviève Le Fort, Michael Hengartner, Catherine Paradeise and Alexander Hasgall under the moderation of Jacques Lanarès he discussed a position paper on the diversity of evaluation in research.

A video is available here.

AdValue – personal stories for an open Switzerland are needed!

Events

The second meeting of actionuni with swissuniversities, VSS and swissfaculty took place last week. The most pressing topic we discussed was the upcoming political debate about how Switzerland can be fully associated to Horizon2020 and Erasmus+ again.

An important communication tool is the Blog AdValue by swissuniversities:

advalue-switzerland.ch

Have you been negatively impacted by the discontinuation with Horizon2020 and Erasmus+ after February 2014? Contribute with your story to the blog “AdValue”. Contact us or the blog-responsible Maria Christoffel directly at christoffel@swissuniversities.ch if you want to contribute to the blog.

It is needed to make the benefits of Horizon2020 and Erasmus+ clear to a wide audience and keep a constant buzz regarding the importance of re-integrating Switzerland into the European research area.

Further topics we discussed were:

  • time-line for the definition of the next federal message on education, research and innovation
  • integrating refugees into higher education (project by the national students union VSS/UNES)