The market for university sector career advisers seems to be on the rise. This trend suggests that the activities such as searching for a field of study, choosing a PhD program or pursuing a successful post-doc career have become more complex. […]
Surviving supervision: walking the rackety bridge, together
Doing a PhD is challenging even for the most prepared and confident individuals. The PhD journey is a personal intellectual quest during which the bar is constantly raised for you and by you. Beside personal motivation, social relationships also play an important part […]
From writing articles to editing someone else’s: journal editorial work from an early-career researcher’s perspective
Two weeks ago, on November 1st, I experienced a new kind of pride that I hadn’t felt before during my doctoral studies. The first issue of a new higher education journal, Journal of Praxis in Higher Education (JPHE) […]
Save the dates: events for higher education researchers in 2020
Following the success of last year’s “Save the dates” post (thank you, Daniel Kontowski) we continue with ECHER’s aim to provide relevant information about higher education research events to early-career (and not-so-early-career) scholars.
Doing research, writing, and publishing: ECHER’s resources
Recently we introduced a new page on our website – resources. It is meant as a permanent and easy-to-access corner on this website, something you can always find by looking at the top of your browser, right under the address bar. We will be using this page to list various resources which could be helpful […]
Thinking strategically: what can co-authorship bring to your academic career?
While in lab-based disciplines co-authorship is the norm, there are “individual(istic)” disciplines where it is sometimes still frowned upon. In general, co-authorship is not bad per se, and there is nothing negative in being the 4th or even the 99th author, especially if we are talking about a highly cited paper.
Becoming an Academic: 4 reasons why you should read Inger Mewburn’s new book
If you’ve ever been discouraged by the somewhat challenging prospects of getting an academic job (I mean the real, permanent one) after getting your PhD, you may want to de-stress yourself with Inger Mewburn’s new book Becoming an Academic: How to get through Grad School and Beyond. […]
Helping each other write better: ECHER’s first Academic Writing Clinic
A wise scholar once told me that the difference between being able to recognize a good piece of writing and producing one ourselves is akin to something like watching the Olympics and participating in them. Fitting or not, I always found this metaphor […]
Reading about writing: 5 book recommendations for early-career researchers
Recently I’ve become super excited about reading again – a dear hobby of mine which I had ignored for a few years, mainly because of Netflix and all the great TV shows that I just “had to watch”. […]
Academic careers in the UK: how it works
The expectation in the UK is that you will probably spend the bulk of your academic life doing both teaching and research. While this is probably true, how you get there, and what it looks like if/when you do, will vary. Some aspects of academic careers here look good […]