At 50, it’s time to venture something new! Paderborn University is therefore making some structural changes to the support it offers early-career researchers. Because one thing’s for sure: The demands on early-career researchers are becoming increasingly complex and challenging, while paths to a career in academia – both within and outside universities – remain difficult to plan. To best prepare early-career researchers at Paderborn University for these challenges, to provide them with all the information, advice and support they’ll need throughout the qualification phases and to help them plan for their future career, the university is setting up an institution-wide network to support early-career researchers. Because providing early-career researchers with future-oriented support requires the skills and expertise of the entire university.
At faculty level, the graduate centers will in future play an important role in this network. This is where faculties will bundle subject-related information and programmes, opportunities and support and list contact persons and details for any faculty-related concerns. At central level, a newly established umbrella organisation will act as a hub. Its task is to bring together all of the university’s graduate centers and various stakeholders, to jointly and closely co-ordinate the provision of high-quality tailored services for Paderborn University doctoral candidates, postdocs, junior professors and tenure-track professors. The main aim of the umbrella organisation is thereby to offer interdisciplinary, extracurricular and cross-faculty training and qualification formats and to bundle all the key information for early-career researchers at the university. The Board of Directors of the umbrella organisation comprises professors and early-career researchers from all faculties, who work together to generate impulses to further improve the support available for early-career researchers at Paderborn University. Various permanent working groups promote collaboration within the university and bring together experts from different departments.
As a cross-faculty institution, the umbrella organisation serves all Paderborn University early-career researchers, and is therefore also tasked with bringing together the university’s different faculty cultures and creating an interdisciplinary meeting space – in this respect, the center sees itself as having a special connection with the author after whom it is named.
Professor Johannes Blömer, Vice-President for Research and Junior Academics, is therefore particularly delighted to announce the foundation of this umbrella organisation as the “Jenny Aloni Center for Early-Career Researchers”.
You can find more information on what the Jenny Aloni Center has to offer at http://www.uni-paderborn.de/en/jennyalonicenter.
