Abstract

According to recent OECD publications (Reducing the precarity of academic research careers, 2021 & Promoting diverse career pathways for doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, 2023), there is growing concern about research culture and the future of the scientific research workforce. Precarity in research careers is not a new issue but it is one that has been raising increasing concerns in recent years, since many potentially excellent researchers are electing not to do PhDs or many disenchanted young researchers eventually drop out of academia to pursue other career paths.

As a result, research teams become very poorly representative of society as whole in terms of gender, social class and representation of minority groups. Excluding so many people from research at the outset is bad for science and bad for society as a whole. The future of scientific research and its capacity to deliver the new knowledge and solutions that are necessary to address urgent societal challenges, depends on the scientific workforce. Tomorrow’s science depends on the early career scientists – PhD and postdoctoral researchers, who are entering the system today, but with limited incentives to continue.

Public research systems have become increasingly dependent on young researchers in precarious employment conditions to do the actual research. However, in the absence of measures to expand the number of permanent academic posts, the prospects for these people to continue to pursue their career of choice in academia have deteriorated. Most end up elsewhere, some continuing to do research, many having abandoned research but applying their scientific skills elsewhere and some having changed track altogether. The transition out of academia is often difficult and made in the full knowledge that the possibility of coming back at a later career stage is extremely limited.

Amid all this difficult context, what can research management do? Based on the experience of the University of Coimbra Institute for Legal Research, we want to present good practices on how to support PhD candidates and early-career researchers, as an institutional strategy to keep young talent and renew research’s units’ teams. As a research organization, training and education is not our main mission, but we can dive into this as a way of promoting research competences and investing in human resources.

Within our management structure, we are responsible to provide support for all researchers, including early career and PhD students. Focusing on the later, we created a series of activities to foster skills, mobility, autonomy and funding opportunities. In this presentation, we will show the vision and results of the UCILER’s Researchers’ Camp, Visiting programs, Doctoral Students Network and support service for funding applications.

As a learning outcome, we expect to share good practices on how to support young researchers, and also have the feedback from participants on what can be improved or what are their experiences.