Sem. Internac. sobre doutoramentos: da prática à pesquisa

[AL]

Para o programa completo e mais informações ver:
http://bolseiros.org/pdfs/Seminario_internac_phds.pdf

Call for papers: dead-line for abstracts February 28, 2007

International Seminar on PhD graduation: from practice to research policy

School of Social Sciences, University of Minho
-Braga – Portugal
26 March 2007

In a joint project, researchers from two Portuguese research centres, NES and SOCIUS , are organising an international seminar on PhD graduation.
The crucial role of universities in the development of competencies required by knowledge society has been emphasised by several actors, namely political ones. Participating in the knowledge society implies to produce and sell knowledge and training to a large community, either national or foreigner students living in their country (organising brain drain/gain). Bridging higher education, research policy and post-graduation (PhD training) has generated widespread interdisciplinary interest in the social sciences. In parallel, improving graduate education and doctoral training has been one of the aims of political action in recent years, which leads to institutional changes to foster higher education and university research. Due to an increasing pressure to perform world class research, to produce European (world) standard education (Bologna process) and to match the job market requirements for better qualifications, and interest in research careers, higher education institutions and research practices have been changing.
Despite an increasing number of people holding post-graduate degrees and PhD degrees, the total amount of population between 25 and 34 years old holding a post-graduation course is still less (about 0,26‰) in Portugal than the European average (0,56‰) (report from Portuguese Observatory on Science and Higher Education, in the year 2000). Furthermore, data show there is a slight increase in the number of PHD degrees in areas such as Science and Technology. France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Canada implemented different reforms and incentive schemes to shorten the PhD graduation time and to produce more professional researchers to respond to the developing science necessities. Those measures require paying more attention to research planning, better definition of doctoral programs, and changes in academic career evaluation, as well.

Now the agenda has moved on to look more carefully how scientific and technological competencies are built, mobilised, replicated and integrated. Based on scientific discussions on papers from Portuguese research scholars with leading academics as it has been done in the Netherlands and in Sweden during the 90’s, the aims of the workshop is to stimulate scientific research on science and higher education policies with a view to exchange best practices and policies amongst European researchers and to improve the overall quality of PhD research.

Seminar aims:
1. Discussing and presenting ways to improve post-graduate education for both academia and industry;
2. Debating key difficulties which appear during the PhD preparation and which are mostly related to different types of organizing research in universities;
3. Addressing the desirable relation between research planning at organizational level and research done by post-graduates;
4. Sharing and discussing PhD stories/cases analysing them in a way they may effectively contribute to clarify doubts and to reduce uncertainties which normally spring up during the pursuing of the PhD degree.

It seems that some of the most exciting research welds conceptual thinking with highly contextual empirical work. We are therefore organising a two day-long workshop to look at work done in research and higher education policies to deepen understanding and gain insights into the broader knowledge society agenda. The meeting will involve young and more mature scholars from several countries and several leading institutions presenting papers and/or discussing streams of thinking in a highly interactive manner. There will be plenty of time for interactions as we allocate 45 minutes to discuss each formal paper. Papers will be made available in advance so that formal presentations are kept to a minimum and to stimulate lengthy debates.

Call for papers

The organization encourages researchers to interpret the conference themes in original ways. Presentation/paper proposals are called from all fields of scholarly investigation and diverse forms of creative expression. All work will be presented in English, and should strike a balance between area of specialization and accessibility to a general intellectual audience.

Proposals should be approximately 300 words in length, and include the presenter’s field of specialization and academic/professional affiliation.
Proposals should be submitted electronically to apetseventos@gmail.com, with the author’s name as file name.

The deadline for submission is February 28, 2007.