Flushed, Annette turnes away from her computer. She just checked the enrollments for the new courses of the graduate school. So many new PhD candidates, and they come from everywhere across the globe! The graduate school has been successful from its start and keeps growing. Just last month Annette agreed with the dean to focus […]
To academe or not to academe? For many early career researchers this is the hardest choice they faced so far. And it is a big, momentous choice. Especially if you are intrinsically motivated for your topic of expertise and if your research matters to you. Other hard choices in this stage of building a research […]
Starting on a PhD project, every PhD student will have some ideas about what a PhD entails, but most never get to explicitly investigate how they actually conceptualize it. Do you consider your PhD a process, or a product? Is it your life’s work, a stepping stone, an academic ritual…? Your answer to the question ‘What is a PhD anyway?‘ has […]
Recently four prominent female Dutch professors launched their campaign to improve career opportunities and working climate for women in academia. Athena’s Angels 4 Women in Academia are getting a lot of media attention. Rightly so, because the gender situation in the Netherlands is very problematic with almost the lowest number of women in tenured academic posts in […]
If you want an academic career, you have to excel at so many levels. First and foremost you must show an excellent publication record, with many articles preferably in A status journals. Then there is teaching and supervising students: requires high quality lectures, committed availability, personal feedback, but hardly the time to prepare and deliver. […]
Een verslag van het evenement De Geheimen van Verschilmakers door Claartje van Sijl.
Experts on sustainable employability of university employees assume that you are responsible as an individual employee for consciously shaping your own career, while the university as employer should facilitate and support you in this endeavor. This implicit hypothesis emerged in an expert meeting about a research report by dr. Judith Semeijn and prof. dr. Tinka van Vuuren on sustainable […]
So you (nearly) got a PhD in the humanities or social sciences. You probably always envisioned a scholarly future for yourself within academia, so you never gave much thought to other options for possible careers. But then reality dawns and academic careers appear not only highly competitive, but also extremely scarce and not necessarily won on […]
Be honest: as a PhD or PostDoc, how often do you get to work outside, somewhere green, where you can feel the sun shine, the wind blow, hear birds, smell flowers or fall leaves? When do you get to see and experience some nature? For most of you the basement lab, the library, or even […]
When you just started on a PhD project, where do you begin? A daunting task ahead, which questions to ask, what people to turn to, which techniques to master?
