We believe that an increased promotion of women is necessary in order to draw on the full potential of excellent scientists. Additionally, we think that temporarily, quota are necessary in those disciplines, where women are heavily underrepresented, especially at senior research and professorial levels. Moreover, we strive for an equal representation of women and men in decision bodies to overcome structural deficits!

Please read about our further positions in our position paper (DE, FR, EN)

Furthermore, we would also like to inform you about the Academic Manifesto for the Feminist Strike (EN, DE, FR).

Last week, an interesting symposium on the topic of supervising doctoral students was held by ETH in Zurich.

It was discussed, how better training for supervisors can improve quality of supervision, how a contract between the PhD-student and the supervisor can help clarify expectations, how PhD-committees help balance power, which platforms can help strengthen peer-feedback among supervisors and establish a commonly agreed on “code of conduct” for supervisors.

All inputs of the symposium can be found here: https://www.video.ethz.ch/events/2019/supervision.html

We are looking forward to see the ETH and other universities develop this topic further.

We are looking for two young researcher interested in traveling to Brussels from 1 to 4 April and represent actionuni at the Eurodoc Annual Conference and Annual General Meeting. Costs are covered.

Please send an expression of interest to salome.adam@actionuni.ch by 22 February 2019.

Continue reading Call for Participation – EURODOC conference 1-4 April in Brussels →

Last November, actionuni representatives had their annual exchange meeting with SNF representatives. At the meeting, questions from actionuni members to the SNF are discussed and actionuni gives input to current development of the SNF.

This years main topics were:

1. Mobility as a selection criterion is obsolete: The SNF agrees that geographical mobility of young researchers as a criterion to judge a researchers’ professional network has become outdated, considering the way researchers are connecting nowadays through digital ways and means. The SNF this year aims to revise the requirements of its funding instruments accordingly.
2. Stronger promotion of Post-Docs: Influencing employment conditions of post-doctoral researchers towards more unlimited contracts or Tenure Track is not possible through SNF as these are within the universities’ own competencies.
3. Centralized evaluation strategy of SNF funding applications, starting 2021: By using centralized remote or panel-evaluation, the SNF aims to standardize the assessment and selection of candidates. Consequently, local selection committees (Forschungskommissionen) will be abrogated.

On 29 November 2018, the second AAQ Institutional Accreditation Day took place in Berne. The topic was “Quality concerns everyone! How participation is lived at Swiss higher education institutions”.

The program and presentations can be found online (DE / FR).

Continue reading actionuni participates prominently in AAQ Institutional Accreditation Day →