Researcher Identity Development
Strengthening Science in Society Strategies
RID·SSISS 2018-2020
Researcher Identity Development: Strengthening Science in Society Strategies
The RID-SSISS project aims at reconceptualizing the role of Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and providing them with innovative and quality educational resources to help them develop as researchers and successfully face current societal challenges and establish satisfactory careers.
The specific objectives are:
To design, implement and assess interactive on-line research-based resources to help ECRs (PhD students and post-doc) face challenges concerning: interaction with supervisors, teams and communities of reference; scientific writing and production; inequity and ethics of research, and strategies for developing resilience and regulating emotions.
To develop, validate and set up digital tools that contribute to developing ECR identity and career trajectories through effective participation in the professional and scientific communities of reference.
To raise awareness within the European scientific community of the importance of researcher identity and career development through the presence of these digital tools.
To showcase and disseminate proven methodologies, tools and practices for ECR to successfully address challenges faced in advancing their careers.
Apart from Early Career Researchers (PhD Students and post-docs), the RID-SSISS project is clearly targeted to other groups’ needs:
-
Supervisors and other teachers and trainers.
-
Higher Education institutions and educational stakeholders (doctoral school directors, graduate program directors).
-
Research funding agencies and policymakers.
To develop effective and innovative training proposals, materials and modules for doctoral students and ECRs, we need to train highly qualified teachers and trainers engaged in doctoral education. Training not only helps them implement these innovative approaches and proposals but to modify their own perception of what researcher education means and how it needs to be changed to make a new researcher profile possible at the European level. Moreover, HE institutions and other stakeholders can benefit from the outputs of the project to plan doctoral programs and courses in their institutions.
Co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union. Project reference: 2017-1-ES01-KA203-038303.
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
FINS·RIDSS 2015-2017
Researcher Identity Development in the Social Sciences
The project aimed at generating knowledge about and resources for Social Sciences Early Career Researchers’ (ECR) identity development in the European context. To do that, we conducted two empirical studies.
The first study conducted initially in Spain, Finland and UK, and later on also in Switzerland, was aimed at analysing ECRs’ conceptions about research and writing and how they deal with the problems and critical incidents they face. A large-scale data collection was done through a questionnaire that was developed in the four contexts and administrated to both PhD students and post-docs. Around 2,000 doctoral students and 300 post-docs from the four countries participated in this study.
In the second study, we conducted individual interviews with a subsample of participants to explore more in-depth their conceptions and experiences during the previous year. We interviewed more than 80 ECRs.
Results and outputs of the project are available on this website.
