Call for Proposals for 12th International EUREDOCS Conference in Porto, 6-8 July 2020
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EUREDOCS is a network of European doctoral students researching on issues related to the Europeanization of higher education and research. The network gathers doctoral students and those awarded the doctoral degree in the last three years researching on European higher education issues. It aims to facilitate and enhance communication among them and to promote publication and dissemination of research results, and enable exchange and mobility among young scholars in this field.EUREDOCS is an interdisciplinary network and accepts membership from doctoral students and recent doctoral awards in sociology, political science, economics, history, and educational studies.The 12th EUREDOCS Conference focuses on the following topic:
“HEIs coping with external and internal challenges”
To submit a proposal, please fill in the form (see below) and send it to: antonio@cipes.up.pt
The deadline for the submission of a proposal is 31st March 2020.
All papers selected for presentation must be available by 15th June 2020.
The Conference will be held at the Clube Universitário do Porto - Universidade do Porto, from Monday 6th July (noon) to Wednesday 8th July (noon) 2020.
In recent years, higher education systems have changed significantly in response to rising global challenges and various national policy initiatives. In the context of knowledge economy, higher education institutions were called to respond to social, economic, environmental and political demands challenging their external and internal regulation. A reconfiguration of the sector along market rules and a pervasive influence of managerial and economic dimensions upon academic management were simultaneously developed.
The rationale for many of these changes cannot be found exclusively within higher education and its analysis needs to consider higher education specificities and the examination of wider transformations taking place in the public sector all over the Western societies since the late twentieth century.
Higher education institutions have been interacting with this changing context, dealing with growing international and national competition while considering the interests of a variety of stakeholders. Their organisational forms, governance and management have been, and still are, under scrutiny in the pursuit of organisational performance, accurate coordination and control systems. But now questions arise whether these organizational and governance forms are appropriate for universities to respond to new challenges of climate crisis, large scale population movements, and challenges to EU values and democracy.
The EUREDOCS Conference welcomes papers focusing on how higher education institutions are interacting and responding to these transformations. Namely:
- the impacts of the governance reforms on the decision-making structures and processes of higher education institutions and their missions;
- the impacts of quality assessment and accreditation systems aiming to improve the control function over HE, HE system(s) and institutions on institutions internal environment, and academic and management staff;
- how does performance management contribute to HEIs achievement and accomplishment of their changing economic and social missions.
This focus does not limit the topics explored to answer these questions (e.g. access, funding, quality, careers, graduate employment, etc.), nor the methodological approaches. Additionally, the emphasis on institutions and their actors does not preclude, rather encourages, comparative approaches from international and national standpoints and multidisciplinary perspectives.
Open track:
Preference will be given to great proposals related to the conference theme, but the EUREDOCS conference also provides an open track option to allow other PhD students working on other European topics and issues in Higher education research to contribute to the conference.
Organisation of the 2018 EUREDOCS Conference
The 12th EUREDOCS Conference will be held at the Clube Universitário do Porto – University of Porto, from the 6th to the 8th July, 2020 (Monday noon to Wednesday noon).
The Conference will be organised in four sessions (one on Monday, two on Tuesday and one on Wednesday) of approximately four hours duration. In each session no more than four papers will be presented and discussed (45 to 60 minutes for each paper). The attendance of doctoral students without contributing a paper is possible. Participants without a paper have to cover their own expenses. Accommodation and food expenses will be covered for participants presenting a paper. All participants will have to pay for their travelling expenses.
All papers selected for presentation must be available by 15th June 2020.
Participants and discussants will be asked to read the papers in advance of the Conference. Contributors will have 15 minutes to present a short version of their paper. For each paper a discussant will be assigned from among the other participants to comment on the presented paper (for 15 minutes as well). A general discussion will follow for 15 to 30 minutes.
Each session is chaired by a senior researcher, usually a member of the Scientific Committee.
Contributors have to pay themselves for their travel costs. Accommodation and meals in Porto will be covered by the organisation.
Requirements:
Being a doctoral student or having recently (not earlier than January 2019) defended your thesis and working on a topic concerning higher education and/or research.
Proposals:
Submit a proposal (two pages maximum) on a topic to be presented by using the proposal form at the end of this text. The proposal and the potential presentation must be in English.
Submission of proposals:
Selection process:
The proposals will be reviewed by the members of the Scientific Committee of EUREDOCS. The main assessment criterion will be the relevance, quality and clarity of the proposal for the theme of the Conference. For those papers submitted on the open track, the Scientific Committee will consider the significance of the topic to be developed. All papers will be considered for their overall research quality. We appreciate proposals based on solid empirical material (quantitative as well as qualitative) and including an appropriate theoretical framework. The evaluation of the proposals will consider the number of years already spent working on the PhD thesis.
Replies will be sent to the applicants at the end of April 2020.
More about EUREDOCS?
1. The Network
EUREDOCS is a network of European doctoral students working on issues related to the Europeanization of higher education and research. The network was created in 2004 upon the initiative of Sylvain Kahn (at the time Director for European Affairs) and Christine Musselin (at the time Director of the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations) at Sciences Po in Paris.
EUREDOCS aims to facilitate and enable more communication among doctoral students and those awarded the doctoral degree in the last three years researching on European higher education issues. The network also aims to promote publication and dissemination of research results and to facilitate exchange and mobility among young scholars in this field.
EUREDOCS is an interdisciplinary network and accepts membership from doctoral students and from those recently awarded doctoral degree in sociology, political science, economics, history, and educational studies.
Europeanization of higher education and research is to be understood in a broad sense. It obviously addresses the Europeanization of national higher education and research policies. It also includes the analysis of the (potential) harmonisation, standardisation, convergence or normalisation processes that might affect the structure, academic curricula, accreditation procedures, the quality assessment and assurance systems, academic career patterns, the role of higher education institutions in local or regional development, the structure of university governance, the production of knowledge, the relationships between research and industry, the institutional structures for teaching and/or research etc. Furthermore, it deals with the role of supra-national bodies in these processes, the influence of American models, the impact of internationalization, etc.
2. The Activities
The activities of the EUREDOCS network mainly consist of:
- organizing regular international conferences,
- a directory collecting detailed information about doctoral students, about their PhD topics in progress and recently defended in the field of Europeanization of higher education and research,
3. The Euredocs Scientific Committee
In order to develop and run this network, Sciences Po has founded a scientific committee composed of seven well-known European research centres and their representatives:
- CIPES, Center for Research in Higher Education Policies, Portugal (Pedro Teixeira and António Magalhães)
- CSO, Sciences Po and CNRS, France (Christine Musselin and Pauline Ravinet, University of Lille)
- CHEF, Aarhus University, Denmark (Susan Wright)
- UCL Institute of Education, University of London, United Kingdom (Vincent Carpentier)
- International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER-Kassel), University of Kassel, Germany (Georg Krücken)
- OSPS, University of Lausanne, Switzerland (Gaële Goastellec)
- Department of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen, Norway (Svein Michelsen)
The conferences are organised jointly by the members of the Scientific Committee who also review the papers submitted. The Scientific Committee will also select the best papers of each conference and look for a possibility to publish them in an international journal.
4. The EUREDOCS Conferences
One of the objectives of the EUREDOCS network is to organize international conferences for doctoral students and new doctoral degree holders related to the EUREDOCS thematic priorities and interests. These conferences aim to:
- promote exchange, foster discussion and reflection among doctoral students and recent doctoral degree holders,
- encourage them to write and present papers at academic meetings and conferences,
- provide practical experiences as discussants and commentators,
- foster scientific exchange and debates.
We expect the conferences to represent opportunities for doctoral students and new doctoral candidates to find a place dedicated to their work, where they can present contributions and where they are confronted with different perspectives, and where they will meet senior researchers who will act as moderators or be part of audience. The conferences also serve as an opportunity for further cooperation and exchange.
We expect that many of the papers presented can then be revised for publication in different journals and the members of the Scientific Committee are available to support this process.
Each conference provides an opportunity for a limited number of contributors (between 12 and 16) to present a paper on a focused issue (which is part of a PhD thesis but normally not the whole project), in order to allow debates and develop relationships among participants sharing common interests and knowledge on a common theme.
The previous EUREDOCS Conferences were held at Sciences Po in Paris (2004, 2009, and 2014), at the University of Bergen (2005, 2012), at the International Centre for Higher Education Research, University of Kassel (2006), at the Centre for Higher Education Studies, School of Educational Foundations and Policy Studies, Institute of Education, University of London (2007) and at the CIPES, Center for Research on Higher Education Policies, University of Porto and University of Aveiro (2008), OSPS, University of Lausanne (2010), Society for Research in Higher Education in London (2016), at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, (2018).
12th International EUREDOCS Conference - PROPOSAL FORM
HEIs coping with external and internal challenges
The deadline for the submission of a proposal is the 31st March 2020. Please send it to antonio@cipes.up.pt
Proposals must not exceed two pages
- Family name:
- First name:
- Email address:
- Status:
Please tick the relevant box to determine your status:
| First Year | Second year | Third year | Fourth year | Thesis defended in (month/year) |
- Title of thesis:
- Title of contribution submitted to EUREDOCS Conference:
- Summary of contribution proposed (max 150 words; excluding references. References to be shown separately):
- Theoretical framework:
- Empirical data and methodology used:
- Main/provisional results: