Early Career Higher Education Researchers (shorter ECHER) is a community of early-career scholars who share a research interest in the interdisciplinary field of higher education. ECHER was established in 2011.
Since the earliest days ECHER has operated as a loose and mostly informal network of fellow academics, colleagues, and friends, and it has as such acted as a support network for junior scholars who wish to share experiences and resources, support each other, and expand opportunities to meet and collaborate.
Our work at the moment is focused on the following activities: managing ECHER Blog, organizing discussions and events (see below), and disseminating information relevant for early-career scholars via social media and our mailing list.
ECHER also works towards strengthening ties with other communities of similar character, as well as with well-established associations of higher education researchers. Since 2013, ECHER had a representative in the CHER Board of Governors, appointed for a period of four years. The first ECHER representative was Mari Elken (2013-2017), who was followed by Jelena Brankovic (2017-2021).
It should be stressed that ECHER is entirely independent and as such not part of any scholarly society.
ECHER co-coordinators
Melina Aarnikoivu
Since January 2019
Kalypso Filippou
Since January 2022
Previous co-coordinators
Jelena Brankovic, Bojana Ćulum, Mari Elken, Yurgos Politis, Filipa Ribeiro, Christian Schneijderberg, Rachel Sweetman, Mitchell Young
Events organized by ECHER
ECHER network was initiated just before the 25th annual CHER conference, which took place in Reykjavik (Iceland). An initial meeting involved 25 early-career researchers from Germany, Finland, Ireland, Italy, England, Norway, Slovenia, Serbia, Canada and the United States.
Since then, ECHER has organized yearly gatherings of its members, sometimes in combination with a workshop and usually prior to a CHER conference. Below we list the workshops, starting with the most recent.
2019: ECHER Academic Writing Clinic
August 27, 2019, Kassel (Germany)
ECHER Academic Writing Clinic is a peer-to-peer workshop on academic writing. The participants discussed common pitfalls and how to avoid them, ways to identify and engage with specific academic and non-academic audiences, methods for critically assessing one’s own writing, as well as how to provide peer feedback. In addition, participants had the opportunity to discuss each other’s writings and working out the ways in which to improve them. The workshop was organized by Melina Aarnikoivu, Jelena Brankovic, Daniel Kontowski, and Vitus Püttmann.
Read a short reflection on the workshop by Jelena Brankovic
Take a look at the Call for Participants
2016: Journal publishing in higher education for early-career researchers
September 4, 2016, Cambridge (UK)
The event was organized by Mari Elken and Bojana Ćulum. It was dedicated to academic publishing and it was organized in two parts. The first part was a round table debate about early-career academia. In the second part, professors Simon Marginson (University College London), Jussi Välimaa (Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä) and Emanuela Reale (IRCRES CNR) shared their experiences on academic publishing and its challenges.
2015: Early-career researchers and book publishing in higher education
September 6, 2015, Lisbon (Portugal)
During this event, book editors of New Voices in Higher Education Research and Scholarship, Bojana Ćulum and Yurgos Politis shared their experience with book production and publishing, focusing on coordination activities and challenges. The event was also an opportunity for the CHER conference “first-timers” to be acquainted with the ECHER network and the upcoming conference.
2013: ECHER Workshop on academic publishing
September 8, 2013, Lausanne (Switzerland)
The aim of the 2013 pre-CHER workshop was to discuss a number of issues of interest to early career researchers, as well as the functioning of the ECHER network. Manja Klemenčič (Harvard Graduate School of Education and Centre of Educational Policy Studies at University of Ljubljana) delivered a talk on how to get published in journals and offered tips on improving academic writing, from the point of view of a journal editor.
2013: ESF-ECHER Colloquium “Higher Education and Society: Implication and Effects”
April 13-14, 2013, Dublin (Ireland)
The ESF-funded colloquium entitled “Higher Education and Society: Implications and effects” was organised by Filipa Ribeiro, Bojana Ćulum, Yurgos Politis and Jonathan Drennan and hosted by University College Dublin. The colloquium addressed questions on the role of higher education in today’s society; questions of the ways in which HE influences the understanding of social issues by students, policy-makers and even HE researchers; discussed the dissemination strategies of research work, especially for early career researchers; and argued on the ways in which researchers cope with the emergent standards in HE research and with the changes in the nature of knowledge itself.
The colloquium combined talks by invited international and Irish guest speakers, and presentations by participants as well as plenary discussion sessions. The guest speakers were Prof. Gaële Goastellec (head of research unit at the Observatoire Science, Policy and Society, University of Lausanne, Switzerland), Prof. Maria Slowey (Director of the Higher Education Research Centre in Dublin City University, Ireland) and Prof. Ellen Hazelkorn (Vice President of Research and Enterprise, and Dean of the Graduate Research School, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland).
2012: Workshop on early-career academia in higher education
September 8-9, 2012, Belgrade (Serbia)
The event brought together 14 early-career higher education scholars to discuss the status, role and the future of the ECHER network. Prof. Jussi Välimaa joined to share his views on the usual challenges encountered in publishing in relevant journals, the role of editors, as well as on the publishing opportunities for early career researchers. Prof. Christine Musselin and Dr. David Hoffman shared their views on the role of CHER in the academic community and on the potential future cooperation between ECHER and CHER.
ECHER publications
ECHER co-coordinators and members have have also jointly published on the topics in the areas of network’s interest.
Journal article
Brankovic, J., & Aarnikoivu, M. (2021). The Making of Early Career Higher Education Researchers: An Open-Ended Experiment in Community Building. Internationalisation of Higher Education – Policy and Practice, 1/2021, C 3.2.
The preprint version of the article has been published on ECHER Blog.
Edited volume
New Voices in Higher Education Research and Scholarship (edited by Filipa M. Ribeiro, Yurgos Politis and Bojana Ćulum). The book explores the role of higher education in today’s society. It discusses the rapidly changing nature of higher education around the globe, especially the relationship between higher education and social development.
This book takes a critical stance on contemporary views of issues that set the pace for the concept of higher education in a global context. The book’s insights into higher education and research in this field offer a way into a dialogue about the critical issues related to, among others, inclusive practices, internationalised practices and institutional responses to the diverse needs of the higher education field.
New Voices gathered new as well as more established voices in the higher education field and in doing so provided readers with deeper insights into the complex nature of the relation between higher education and a society, faced with constant change and dilemmas. Crucially, the book aimed to support international collaborative research and in particular the collaboration and visibility of early-career scholars, which is one of its more important distinctive contributions.
The book has been reviewed by Ana Sofia Ribeiro for the European Journal of Higher Education.
Contact
You can reach us anytime at echernetwork[at]gmail(dot)com.
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