What does it mean to be a researcher in 21st century academia? (Edition 2026)

Cluster

Career management

Target group

In the first place this seminar series targets PhD students, young researchers at the beginning of their academic career from all Doctoral Schools, and postdoctoral researchers. The seminar is, however, also open to supervisors and other interested academic personnel. Building upon our positive outreach experience the past few years, this year we will aim to further expand our efforts to reach all faculties (also faculties with less stringent doctoral schools requirements such as sciences, engineering and medicine)

Abstract

The seminar series aims to make researchers aware not only of their individual obligations and roles within academic institutions, but also of the broader context of the research environment in which they are trying to build a career. Young researchers are almost inevitably confronted with questions and considerations that their early engagements with science did not prepare them for. This includes individual episodes of malpractice but also interpersonal challenges and societal responses to scientific work. It is important to situate and contextualize these cases within a broader context of academic practice and the position of local research institutions and universities in an increasingly global, productivity-driven and competitive environment.
The seminars organised in this course introduce participants to these broader issues present in contemporary academic life, inform them about the structural causes of the challenges they face as young researchers, and help them reflect on ways in which they themselves can contribute to improving the current state of academia.

Topic

Over the past few years, numerous scholars and university personnel have expressed concerns about research deontology and ethics, increasing publication pressure, mental well-being and the changing professional environment in which academics have to work. The urgency of these concerns was recognized by the (former) Flemish government in its coalition agreement: “Research shows that the mental well-being of students in higher education, including PhD students, is under pressure. Special
attention is paid to this.” In response, Belgian universities have expressed an interest in raising awareness among the academic population and pointed to the Doctoral Schools as a way of accomplishing this.

This course is an initiative of the ‘21st century slow science academics’ collective that aims to raise awareness and understanding of the structural causes of the challenges facing young researchers, and help them think about ways in which they can contribute themselves to improving the state of academia. In addition to considering the mental well-being of PhD students, the course also addresses the conditions in which researchers work today, which not only affect mental health, but also raise questions about ethics, deontology, norms, conducting research itself and the relationship between science and society/democracy in general. The first morning session aims to encourage participants to discuss and reflect on their own experiences as young researchers, with a particular focus on mental health and the role of systemic challenges in today’s academia.
The morning session ends with a lecture on citizen science and participatory research in Africa and the Middle East. Parallel sessions in the afternoon seek to foster a collaborative environment for participants to reflect, share, and envision a more sustainable and inclusive academic work environment.The following day focuses on knowledge production, with interactive group sessions on the existent use of digital tools at the university, followed by a lecture on university policies and alternative ways of organizing digital university infrastructures, including open science practices. In the afternoon, there will be a lecture and interactive group discussions on the role of generative AI models in the academic system, finishing with a workshop on existing alternatives to Big Tech digital tools.

The third day centers on the university of tomorrow, with a keynote and discussion the notion of care in the morning and an interactive workshop relying on creative research methods in the afternoon

Objectives

To gain comprehensive knowledge of current debates on a series of topics related to today's role of academic research, such as publication policies and strategies, research ethics, intellectual property regimes, mental health issues, working conditions, etc.
To have a critical understanding of the contemporary political economy of academic research environments and academic knowledge production more generally.
To acquire critical insight into and awareness of the relationships between academic institutions, markets and society/democracy, and of current responsibilities and societal role of academic research.
To formulate critical arguments and engage in interactive debates.
To translate the obtained awareness and insights into action in their personal academic environments.

Organizing & scientific committee

This doctoral school course is organised by a heterogeneous group of scholars from an interuniversity partnership between all five Flemish universities and one French-speaking university. In this way we hope to reach a broad and diverse audience for topics that are relevant for every researcher in Belgium, regardless of their affiliation:

Elvira Crois (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Erinn De Waele (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Anneleen Kenis (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
Sarah Kusch (Universiteit Gent)
Gaëlle Le Pavic (Universiteit Gent)
Pieter Maeseele (Universiteit Antwerpen)
Sevinj Samadzade (Universiteit Gent)
Mathias Schroijen (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Emma Verhoeven (Universiteit Antwerpen)
Lena Verlooy (Universiteit Gent)
Johanna Couvée (Universiteit Gent)
Astrid Luypaert (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Farnia (Saba) Shakerian (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Lena Van Bergen (Universiteit Gent)
Teun van Son (Universiteit Antwerpen)
Floor Verhaeghe (Universiteit Gent)
Emma Verhoeven (Universiteit Antwerpen)
Elina Vrijsen (University of Antwerp & Ghent University)
Patrizia Zanoni (Universiteit Hasselt)
Pascale Maes (KU Leuven)

Contact person

Gaëlle Le Pavic, Universiteit Gent (Social Work and Social Pedagogy , Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences)

Format

Course activities consist of an ‘open space technology’ session, a keynote, panel discussions, interactive lectures, guided group discussions, collaborative inquiries and participatory sessions. Furthermore, participants are expected to prepare questions and discussion topics based on their reading of provided literature (chosen in consultation with the lecturers and training facilitators).

Program

Wednesday 06 May 2026 (10h00h-16h30)

Topic of the day: Unthinking methods and participation in scientific research
Location: Odisee, Warmoesberg 26 1000 Brussel
This day is co-organised with the Brussels Research Centre on Innovation in Learning [BILD] at Vrije
Universiteit Brussel. BILD is committed to research in educational change and innovation in both
compulsory and lifelong learning contexts (informal, non-formal and formal education). https://bild.research.vub.be/

9h30 – 10h00: Walk in with coffee

10h -12h30: Individual experiences in the current academic system

Group building
We will begin by welcoming participants and stimulating an open interactive environment through short exercises (mindfulness and ice-breaker) facilitated by the organising committee of the doctoral course.
The aim of this first session is to inquire into the problematic nature of current-day academic life through the experiences and knowledge of the participants themselves. Participants will engage with the seminar theme during the session, inspired by ‘open space technology’ (OST). OST is used as a method to organise a tiny colloquium at the start of the doctoral course in order to detect recurrent themes and incentives among the participants. Participants can propose any topic related to mental health in academia that they want to address in small groups, such as work-life balance, imposter syndrome, publication pressure, inter-personal struggles within a research group, the challenges posed by global events and the precarity of research careers. Members of the organising committee of the doctoral course will help to facilitate the different discussions and help to record the main points that emerge for use in the afternoon session. The more intimate setting and bottom-up approach (theme-wise) will stimulate the interaction between participants throughout the doctoral course and create a group dynamic, facilitated by the organising committee.

Keynote participatory research and citizen science
The morning session ends with a lecture from Sara Dewachter (IOB, UAntwerp) (45’ lecture + 20’ Q&A). She will talk about citizen science and participatory research, reflecting on IOB’s projects in Tanzania and upcoming projects in Palestine on Indigenous resistance through agricultural cooperatives. In Tanzania, they co-created research with female citizens who were trained to gather water samples, test them, and communicate their results. Dewachter’s insights will allow participants to reflect on their own practices in every step of their research, from research design to outreach.

12h30 – 13h30: Networking Lunch

13h30 – 16h30: Creative Methodologies

This session explores innovative approaches to research, such as transdisciplinary research, arts-based approaches, and participatory research.
Being able to work transdisciplinarily as researchers is increasingly essential to address today’s complex societal challenges. Transdisciplinary research bridges science, practice, and society to unite diverse perspectives and drive legitimate and transformative approaches for a regenerative future.
Yet, how can we as researchers support this process? What are the key considerations and best practices? We invite interdisciplinary experts to explore these questions with us.
After a short introductory lecture, this session will offer the option of three parallel sessions where participants, through a hands-on approach, are introduced to methods for data collection. Examples could be doctoral researcher Danielle Fernandes or Astrid Breel. Fernandes developed a board game to investigate the experiences of transgressive behavior encountered by people with a migration background in Brussels. Focusing on both individual experiences and systemic challenges, this workshop seeks to foster a collaborative environment for participants to reflect, share, and envision a more sustainable and inclusive academic work environment. Breel explores participant-led impact
research in the arts and humanities and embedded reflective strategies, where impact is not decided beforehand, and reflection exercises are used to deepen learners’ reflections while also gathering their responses as data collection.

Wednesday 13 May 2026 (9h30 - 16h30)

Topic of the day:
A critical perspective on digitalization at the university
Location: University of Antwerp

09h30 – 10h00 Walk-in with coffee

10h00 - 11h00 Group discussions

At the start of the day, we get acquainted with the subject of the role of digital tools, including generative AI models, with an interactive group session. The participants will be divided in smaller groups and are encouraged to share 1) the ways in which their academic work is reliant on digital tools, 2) which entities/companies are behind those tools, and 3) what possible problems and advantages those tools bring. This can be about tools that are officially required by the university, such as Blackboard, Teams, or Microsoft Outlook, as well as tools that participants use voluntarily, such as Zotero, Google Scholar, or ChatGPT. We will provide information materials to guide the discussions. The goal of this session is to make the participants aware of the tools they use and to think critically about them.

11h00 - 11h15 Coffee break

11h15 - 12h30 Talk and Q&A on open science and digital dependencies of universities

Speaker: TBC

After the discussion on the participants' individual experiences and insights, we will take a broader perspective and focus on university policies and alternative ways of organizing digital university infrastructures, including open science practices. Universities’ collaboration with US-based Big Tech companies such as Microsoft and Google brings with it a host of concerns, from privacy risks to dependencies. This begs the question: is there another way that universities can be more independent of Big Tech?

This session will be a discussion of best practices from an expert in the field. The speaker (tbd) will be someone with experience in developing and promoting software alternatives at universities, for example, at the Open Source Academy at ULiége, or at the Open Source University Alliance. They will share their own experience with the process of introducing alternatives to Big Tech at universities, including successes and failures. Then, there will be time for questions and open discussion, where
topics could include questions about open science practices, the merits and challenges of switching away from Big Tech solutions, practical aspects of such a switch, and the actions that individuals could take to encourage such a change at their own university.

12h30 - 13h30 Lunch break

13h30 - 14h45 Talk and Q&A on critical perspectives on AI technologies in academic education

Speaker: Olivia Guest (Radboud University, The Netherlands)

The afternoon session will focus specifically on the role of generative AI models in the academic system. We will critically reflect on this topic by first listening to a talk by an expert in the field, followed by a Q&A with the speaker and afterwards, interactive group discussions.

In her talk, Dr. Olivia Guest will present her recent position piece “Against the Uncritical Adoption of ‘AI’ Technologies in Academia”. Olivia Guest is an Assistant Professor of Computational Cognitive Science at Radboud University and will speak about the influence of AI technologies on the academic system, critical AI literacy and how to safeguard the higher education system. After the talk there will be time for participants to ask questions.

14h45 - 15h00 Coffee break

15h00 - 16h00 Group reflections

We will divide the participants into smaller groups to facilitate interactive discussions among them to reflect on what they have learned during the talk. We will provide guiding reflection questions on what the participants could discuss but mostly the topics of this session will be self-organized, and participants are free to discuss what they find most important. This session will give them time to engage more deeply with the topic and reflect on their own (private or research-related) AI usage.

16h00 - 16h30 Workshop on alternative software

The final session of the day will be an information session on existing alternatives to Big Tech digital tools. The idea is to give the participants practical information on which alternative digital products exist which they could directly implement. The focus will be on software and services relevant to researchers, such as reference managers, academic search engines, social media, video conferencing tools, email providers, document collaboration platforms, web browsers, and operating systems. We will discuss how these alternatives can provide better privacy, better security, and in many cases, a better user experience, as well as the tradeoffs that come with them.

Thursday 20 May 2026 (10h-16h30)

Topic of the day: What University Can We Imagine
Location: : Ghent University - This day is co-organised with the Centre for the Social Study of
Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR) at Ghent University. CESSMIR is an interdisciplinary centre,
aimed at societal impact, focusing on social aspects of migration, refugees and ethnic-cultural
diversity. It encompasses over 150 researchers from seven different faculties. https://cessmir.be

10h – 12h30: Social session - Keynote speech by Dr Sarah Ahmed (or Aminata Cairo) - defining and
situating care in the XXI century: from academia to everyday life

The keynote will introduce the notion of care, what it means in different contexts and across languages, and how we can trace its epistemology. It will focus on where we are now when we talk about care rather than on where we can go.

It will also interrogate what happens when we navigate care from the private, individualised, therapised realm into the collective, political, embodied field? Care carries historically colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist charges. It is distributed unequally across bodies, geographies, and academic hierarchies. Today, care is too often framed as self-management — a personal responsibility, a tool for productivity and burnout-prevention within institutions that, in some cases, contribute to exhausting us. As such, the keynote aims to address the polysemy of care, offering food for thought for the participants. Doctoral students will be invited to reflect further on these aspects and how they apply to their doctoral research and personal trajectories during an afternoon workshop.

12.30-13.30: Lunch

13h30 - 16h30: Workshop - mapping care in a doctoral journey

During this workshop, we invite the participants to rethink academia beyond its traditional structures and hierarchies. Throughout interactive activities, participants will be invited to map care in their research and explore how this notion applies to the doctoral and personal trajectory. The workshop will begin with a series of facilitated small-group discussions on different aspects of care, including its meaning across languages and applications in different contexts.

The workshop will rely on creative research methods, offering an engaging and reflective approach to exploring and documenting care based on the morning lecture. A strong emphasis will be put on peer connection and community-building.

The workshop will conclude with an open, informal session for participants to continue conversations, plan potential collaborations, or simply offer one another (care) support. This final segment is designed to deepen the connections established over the preceding days, encouraging lasting peer networks that extend beyond the workshop itself.
The workshop will be facilitated by Lena Van Bergen, Lena Verlooy, Sevinj Samadzade, Johanna Couvée, Floor Verhaeghe and Gaëlle Le Pavic.

Registration procedure

Follow this link for the registration and waiting list.

Your registration will be confirmed by separate e-mail from the Doctoral Schools. Cancellation of your registration can only be performed by sending an email to doctoralschools@ugent.be.

Registration fee

Free of charge for members of the Doctoral Schools. The no show policy applies.

Teaching method

open space technology’ session, keynotes, interactive lectures, creative methodologies (transdisciplinary research, arts-based approaches, and participatory research) and interactive group discussions

Teaching material

Before the start of the course, participants will be provided with reading materials selected in consultation with the speakers of days two and three.

Number of participants

Language

English

Evaluation criteria (doctoral training programme)

Participants will be evaluated on their attendance of all sessions, preparatory reading and active engagement in the group discussions.