Revisiting Forces and Forms of Doctoral Education Worldwide

Epochal Challenges

During the last decade, there have been significant changes in doctoral education worldwide: In many countries, the numbers of doctoral candidates and doctoral granting institutions have increased to help drive both national innovation and research performance of individual institutions, especially in Asia. Worldwide, there is a greater focus on diverse employment prospects and transferable skills of doctorate holders and postdocs.

At the same time, the world is changing faster than ever. Seemingly, adverse developments with yet unknown effects, namely digitisation as potential driver of progress as well as increased insecurity and the simultaneous deterioration of democracies aligned with the rise of populist or fundamentalist movements characterize the second decade of the 21st century. Training doctoral candidates to become the next generation of creative, critical, autonomous and responsible intellectual risk takers is more essential than ever in times of epochal challenges and unsettling changes.

The Forces and Forms Series

Since 2005, the international conference and workshop series Forces and Forms of Doctoral Education Worldwide has provided a platform to discuss, enhance, and disseminate future-oriented advancement of doctoral education and related policies, assessing where we stand on core values of doctoral education and research; taking stock of ongoing developments and changes in doctoral education worldwide; looking forward and setting a policy agenda on how doctoral education can best be shaped in a socially responsible way, not only in our own national systems, but at a global scale for driving innovation in public and private sectors.

The 2019 Conference

This website documents the current conference with more than 160 participants from all over the world, which will take place from 5-6 September 2019 in Herrenhausen Palace in Hanover/Germany. It informs about the conference’s experts and programme, but will also contain the documents, recommendations and reports that have emerged in the context of the event. It addresses representatives from university and educational research, members of science administration and university management, representatives of civil society and, of course, early career researchers.

If you belong to one of these groups or if you are simply interested in higher education for other reasons, we would like to encourage you to visit our website at regular intervals. And please, do tell your fellows and colleagues about it!