EUA Council for Doctoral Education
Doctoral collaboration with society
Drivers, success factors and ways forward
As doctoral education across Europe evolves in response to growing societal and economic challenges, collaboration with a wide range of societal partners is becoming increasingly important, while remaining rooted in research excellence.
This report provides a comprehensive overview of how universities and doctoral candidates engage with societal partners in the private, public and non-profit sectors to co-create knowledge and strengthen the impact of doctoral research.
To do so, it looks at what drives doctoral collaboration beyond academia and maps the wide range of collaborative approaches currently used across Europe. These span less intensive forms of engagement to more structured collaborations, including co-supervision, joint research activities and collaborative doctorates.
Based on contributions from 22 EUA-CDE member institutions in 13 countries, this report reflects the Thematic Peer Group’s discussions on key challenges, enabling conditions and success factors for effective collaboration. It also offers institutional perspectives on how doctoral collaboration can be developed through different stages: from creating favourable framework conditions and preparing partnerships to implementing collaboration and ensuring meaningful follow-up.
The report findings cover the work and expertise of the group, a stakeholder survey capturing the perspectives of societal partners and insights from doctoral candidates pursuing collaborative doctorates, as well as thirteen good practice examples. As such, it may serve as a source of reflection and guidance for institutions wishing to build and further develop meaningful and well-structured doctoral partnerships beyond academia.