The newly published Activity Plan of the COST Cross-Cutting Activity (CCA) outlines initiatives to support the career development of young researchers.
COST’s Cross-Cutting Activity (CCA) ‘Supporting Career Development of young researchers’ has published its Activity Plan. This document explains the structure of the network and sets out the CCA’s main objectives, activities, and deliverables for the entire duration of the project, which runs until December 2026.
Fully supported by COST, the CCA is co-chaired by two young researchers from Eurodoc, the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers.
The work of the CCA is carried out by four Working Groups:
- Working Group on young researchers. Lead by Ivana Herglová & Patricia Clement.
- Working Group on career advisory and support services. Lead by Mostafa Moonir Shawrav & Naoimh O’Connor.
- Working Group on building a young researchers’ community in COST Actions. Lead by Ahmed Rassili & Stellamarina Donato.
- Working Group on gender equity and fostering diversity in research. Lead by Adna Ašić & Verity Elston.
Each Working Group is led by two Co-Chairs and consists of young researchers and career advisory experts from a variety of COST Member Countries.
The Activity Plan presents the work of each working group in concise ‘one-pagers’, giving readers a comprehensive overview of activities, deliverables, collaborations between Working Groups as well as with members of the ‘wider’ CCA network, consisting of European stakeholder organisations who help define the work of the CCA and provide strategic input.
Examples of activities to be carried out by the Working Groups include:
- Mapping of research career strategies, focusing on career development incentives and obstacles in selected institutions;
- Building a network for research career professionals;
- Developing a transferable structured network for young researchers in COST Actions;
- Organising a webinar on inclusivity in the European research community.
COST would like to extend profound thanks to all CCA members, and in particular to the CCA and Working Group Chairs, for their enthusiasm and dedication to making this CCA a success.
Meet the Chairs
This CCA is co-chaired by two young researchers affiliated with Eurodoc: Dr Nicola Dengo and Dr Joanna Rutkowska. Both are keen to share their views and ideas for the CCA, but first, let’s meet them!
Nicola Dengo is the Vice-President of Eurodoc. He earned his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Padova and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Insubria in Italy. His work as a Eurodoc representative focuses mainly on advancing research careers through initiatives in research assessment, career development, and transferable skills. Additionally, he regularly represents Eurodoc in relations with European Institutions, stakeholder organisations, and the media.
Joanna Rutkowska is a board member of ActionUni, an organisation representing non-professorial academic staff in Switzerland, and their delegate to Eurodoc. She received her PhD in Psychology from the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and she is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in developmental psychology at the University of Zurich. In her current representational work, and as a former board member in PhD Network Netherlands and Eurodoc, she focuses on working and employment conditions of early career researchers, and sustainable research careers.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about the CCA Activity Plan?
Research careers across Europe are frequently characterised by poor working conditions and widespread precarity. These factors result in limited career planning opportunities and a deteriorated work-life balance.
In this CCA, we aim to tackle these issues by identifying the key challenges researchers face in their career development and determining best practices for their mitigation or resolution. At the same time, we will focus on promoting the creation of networks that can extend beyond the CCA, supporting researchers’ career development in the long term.
Different working groups will approach the challenges from complementary perspectives: early-career researchers, career support experts, inclusivity and gender equity specialists, and COST Action participants. The CCA will maintain close collaboration with major European organizations through the dedicated external network, ensuring alignment with key players in the research ecosystem.
Q: What is your vision for this CCA?
Our vision is to help make Europe a better place for researchers to work and live. We aim to highlight and elevate the best practices and successful initiatives that have been developed to address the many challenges researchers face in building a solid and coherent career path, whether in academia or other public and private sectors. By doing that, we can ensure that the institutions in different countries do not have to ‘reinvent the wheel’ and instead tap into existing knowledge that has not been disseminated so far.
We want to design guidelines that will truly shape future developments using a holistic approach that leverages the expertise of all stakeholders in the field. We believe the key to addressing these challenges lies in creating a transversal research and innovation community that connects individual researchers, career advisory experts, policymakers, and all relevant actors in between.
Q: In your view, what will be the added value of the CCA?
To counter the fragmentation of efforts at local and national levels in various European countries, this CCA brings together researchers and career experts from different institutions, countries, career levels and connections. Using this combined pool of experience, the CCA will be able to evaluate the implementation of the European frameworks for researcher career development on the national and local levels, as well as collate the best practices. We will produce a set of recommendations to serve as a guiding document, outlining a shared vision for enhancing career development opportunities for early-career researchers.
Moreover, special care will be given to the issues of diversity and inclusion, and the support needed to overcome the barriers to career development in research faced by women and other members of underrepresented groups.
A more detailed vision of the CCA Co-Chairs can be found in the plan: Read the full CCA Activity Plan
Further information
Further information about the CCA can be found on the COST website
News ‘Launching the Cross-Cutting Activity on career development for young researchers’