On 8 and 9 of February in Rijeka, Eurodoc President Sebastian Dahle joined the Annual General Meeting of the SECURE project, kindly hosted by the University of Rijeka.
The project SECURE - Sustainable Careers for Researchers Careers is halfway in its work to identify approaches to empower researchers to pursue sustainable careers both inside and outside academia. This includes assuring the right employment conditions and plannability through tenure track-like models, but it also requires a proper framework at the research organisation, which will be implemented as a research career framework.
On the first day of the meeting, partners evaluated the results of the first year of the project, which kicked-off at the end of January 2023.
In this first semester of activity the consortium successfully completed the State-of-the-art review and an Initial Policy Brief (deliverables can be downloaded here).
The second semester of 2023 was marked by the publication of a Proposal for a Council Recommendation on an European Framework on attractive researchers careers, in July 2023, that was uptaken as a Council Recommendation in December 2023.
These two documents were integrated in the consortium work to develop a SECURE Research Career Framework and Tenure Track-Like Models; the first drafts of the two documents will be submitted and published soon.
On the second day, the partners discussed the planning and implementation of the next steps down 2024. These will involve a set of implementation trials of the SECURE Research Career Framework and Tenure Track-Like Model by some pilot RPOs (objective 3), and a broad consultation over the proposed drafts of the SECURE Research Career Framework and Tenure Track-like Models.
Sebastian Dahle, President of Eurodoc, notes the importance of the project: “The SECURE consortium paves the way to implement a framework for research careers at the institutional and funder’s level, thereby translating European policies into practice and improving the lives for future generations of researchers.”
Eurodoc thanks project coordinator, PLOCAN, and especially Dr. Gordon Dalton and Dr. Corina Moya Falcon, and the University of Rijeka, especially Prof. Sasa Zelenika (adjust the typos in the names, please) for the amazing organisation and hospitality.
Project page on Eurodoc website