Practicing Doctoral Students’ Skills

    Almost twenty doctoral students from four countries participated in a program focusing on developing their skills in publishing and project preparation.
    Practicing Doctoral Students’ Skills

    During the last two weeks, Catholic University in Ruzomberok in cooperation with the universities from Lublin and Zagreb organized both physical and virtual components of its first Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Program. The program “Academic Skills in Publishing and Project Preparation – Experience from Central Europe” was aimed at doctoral students to develop and improve their abilities in the areas of publishing and project preparation. Fifteen doctoral students from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin in Poland, the Catholic University of Croatia in Zagreb and the University of Ostrava and a couple of students from the Catholic University in Ruzomberok, first, attended several lectures and workshops during the physical mobility part of the program at the Faculty of Arts and Letters, Catholic University in Ruzomberok (June 13 – June 17, 2022) and, consequently, they participated in online activities (June 20 – June 23, 2022).

    Faculty from universities in Ruzomberok, Lublin and Zagreb offered lectures, supervised workshops and participated in roundtable discussions, all of which explored topics of publishing, predatory publishing, individual research stays and team projects. Moreover, during the program, students had a chance to listen to three young scholars (Matej Drobnak, University of Hradec Kralove, Zoltan Boldizsar Simon, Bielefeld University and Anto Čartolovni, Catholic University of Croatia) who shared their experience with publishing and projects.

    The main objectives of the blended intensive program were: 1) to offer to doctoral students the information from the area of publishing, research stays and team research projects, 2) to share experience with them and 3) it was very important to help doctoral students to develop skills pertaining to these three areas. In addition, students had a chance to network and at the end of the project each doctoral student submitted his or her own individual research stay proposal and three groups of students prepared team research projects from the areas of humanities, social sciences and history.

    We hope that the program offered valuable information and an opportunity to meet and practice useful skills. It was pleasure to have a chance to host a group of motivated students at our university.

     

    Feedback from participants

    “Erasmus BIP Program in Ruzomberok was a great experience for me as a young scholar. I had an opportunity to meet and cooperate with other doctoral students in small groups. The main advantage is that we will stay in touch and potentially work on the projects and articles together in the future.” (Karla Žagi, doctoral student from Zagreb, Croatia)

    “Taking part in the BIP program was very valuable experience for me as a PhD student. It was very pleasurable to meet various scholars from different disciplines and to cooperate with them in project workshops.” (Matea Škomrlj, doctoral student from Zagreb, Croatia).

    “The Catholic University in Ruzomberok has a natural potential for becoming an auxiliary knowledge hub for bigger national centers between North and South, East and West. My participation in the Blended Intensive Program for Ph.D. students and the visit of the Croatian students is a proof of this. You have a great team for demanding goals. I wish you all the best. God bless you.” (Łukasz Konopa, doctoral student from Lublin, Poland)