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The 2022 EUA-CDE Annual Meeting ddressed the question of time and timing, taking a close look at this key issue for doctoral education. Through workshops and sessions in various formats, this conference provided an opportunity for the doctoral education community to come together and address these topics.
One of the most significant developments in the field of doctoral education over the last two decades is the growing attention paid to the question of time. The 2005 Salzburg Principles define the duration of a doctorate as “three to four years full time as a rule”. While EUA-CDE surveys indicate that this has become the average length of a doctorate, there is still an ongoing debate on key issues such as time to degree, the role of doctoral candidates who are part-time – either due to parenting obligations or additional work responsibilities – and the increased time pressure in doctoral education caused by tight timelines. Universities face the challenge of ensuring that a doctorate lasts for a reasonable length of time, but they also need to take into account the individual circumstances of doctoral candidates, including age, gender and socio-economic background. At the same time, in light of the increased training offers in doctoral education, it is important to prioritise and consider time management as a key skill for doctoral candidates. Above all, high quality research takes time, with large variations across fields and topics, and it is of utmost importance that doctoral candidates are allowed enough.
The 2022 EUA-CDE Annual Meeting also focused on future trends and the diversity of the doctoral candidate population. A new paper outlining a vision on doctoral education, developed together with the EUA-CDE member community, was presented at the Meeting.
EUA-CDE Annual Meetings have become the largest and most comprehensive gatherings of academic leaders, senior academics, doctoral education professionals, postdoctoral researchers, doctoral candidates and other stakeholders working on doctoral education and research training.
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Invitation from the President
On behalf of The University of Manchester I am delighted to invite you to participate in the 2022 European University Association - Council for Doctoral Education Annual Meeting.
The University of Manchester, in its present form, was created in 2004 by the amalgamation of the Victoria University of Manchester and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). In 2024, we will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the foundation of our first predecessor institution, two centuries that have seen 25 Nobel Prizes including that for Ernest Rutherford for his work on the nucleus of the atom. The world’s first stored programme electronic computer was built here, with Alan Turing pioneering artificial intelligence. Professor Arthur Lewis, Britain’s first black professor, received his Nobel Prize for his research on development economics. Christabel Pankhurst, who studied law here, was a leader of the suffragette movement. The University of Manchester is a place where research has a global impact, where students experience outstanding teaching and learning, helping them to develop into tomorrow’s leaders, and where our activities are enriched by a commitment to social responsibility.
Our student community is one of the largest in the UK; we have more than 40,000 students of whom some 4,000 are postgraduate researchers and we know that as we look forward we must focus on the well-being and success of our students. In particular to support those who have witnessed their studies disrupted through the pandemic, and to respond to our students rapidly changing needs.
During these times of change, challenge and opportunity, the 2022 EUA-CDE Annual Meeting provides the ideal opportunity for higher education leaders in Europe to meet, reflect and engage in discussions. The overarching theme of the meeting will be time and timing in doctoral education, specifically exploring the different challenges faced during the doctorate and how both students and institutions can optimise the use of their time.
We look forward to hosting the 2022 EUA-CDE Annual Meeting.
Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
About the city of Manchester and the University
The University of Manchester has many great assets: a fantastic location in a vibrant and forward-thinking city; an attractive and evolving campus; a cosmopolitan and lively student population; and dedicated staff who are world-leading experts in their fields. The University has one of the largest student communities in the UK and is home to more than 40,000 students from more than 160 nationalities. The University’s size and scale enable unparalleled interdisciplinary inquiry with world-leading minds from the across the University collaborating to discover new ways forward and address some of the world’s biggest challenges from poverty to sustainable consumption to cancer.
The city and the University have long worked together and the city region is a big part the University’s identity. Manchester positions itself as the original modern city and as a place where things are done differently. The city was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and has always had an independent spirit, with political movements such as Chartism, trade unions and the suffragettes having Mancunian roots. Manchester is one of the most celebrated British cities – judged to be the top UK city to live in for 2018 (the Economist’s Global Liveability index) and one of the ten friendliest cities in the world by Rough Guides readers. The city is famous for its sporting culture and boasts an enviable arts scene. The University’s own Manchester Museum, the John Rylands Library and the Whitworth are among the city’s cultural landmarks with the iconic Lovell Telescope just a short drive away at our Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Manchester was proud to host the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) in 2016, the first time a UK city has been chose to host this biennial, pan-European, general science conference which welcomed 4,500 leading thinkers, innovators, policy makers, journalists and educators from more than 90 countries to the city.
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© The University of Manchester
