PhD candidates are at a higher risk of mental health issues than other working groups with higher education, and surveys have found that only one in five (https://www.forskerforbundet.no/dokumenter/skriftserien/2022-5_Forskeryrkets_attraktivitet.pdf ), or one in six (https://mdhs.unimelb.edu.au/early-career-academic-network/resources/mdhs-eca-network-resources/landscape-for-emerging-academic-leaders ), postdocs recommend an academic career to younger and/or early career researchers. The requirements that academia have does not seem to ensure a healthy, creative, and inspiring research environment, and change may be fruitful. One of the strong forces for cultural and systematic changes in academia, Maria Toft with many other researchers in the Nordic countries, initiated the Movement for a Free Academia (https://www.freeacademia.org/ ) which works towards an academia based on the ethics of care, trust, and research integrity. The first meeting in the movement was in Gothenburg on April 5-6th 2024, and the meeting participants wrote a manifesto with visions of what such a culture and system would look like. In this talk Maria Toft and Ingvild Bergom Lunde will talk through the background of and what the Gothenburg manifesto is. They are also interested to hear the audience reflections on the topic.
During her PhD at University of Copenhagen, Maria Toft started the campaign #Pleasedontstealmywork against research theft (2022) as well as the movement Set research free (2022), which ended up gathering 2,525 signatures for the petition. She now does independent lectures on the green transition via communities and poetry, while continuing to work toward a free academia.
Since Ingvild Bergom Lunde wrote an opinion piece in Khrono with a series of advice to PhD candidates who experience that cooperation is poor, their work environment problematic and the collaboration with their supervisor(s) challenging, she has become involved in academic activism and research policy. She is now the president of the Association of Doctoral Organizations in Norway, and is also a participant in the Movement for a Free Academia. The SiN-board is currently working on how they should position themselves in relation to the movement. Ingvild was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Health and Society at the University of Oslo and is now pursuing a career as a free scientist.
Program Details:
- Speaker: Ingvild Bergom Lunde & Maria Toft
- Date: Aug 27th, 2024
- Talk: 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
- Dinner: 6:00 pm onwards (Dinner will be provided to all participants)
- Venue: Stort møterom 253, Georg Sverdrups hus
We look forward to your active participation and the enriching discussions that will unfold during this event.
Please join us at Georg Sverdrups hus on August 27th, at 5:00 pm, and let's make this Dinner Club event a memorable one for a new academic year!
sign up via the Nettsjema link: https://nettskjema.no/a/430581
Looking forward to seeing you!
UiODoc