Here you can learn more about our goals and vision for LaProBay. If any of these activities sound like something you are dealing with or would like to contribute, don’t hesitate to reach out!
Our goals are including, but not limited to:
Main Challenges:
- Diverse legal requirements and conditions for establishing Doctoral Representations at Bavarian Research Institutions
- Need for more visibility of LaProBay and Bundesverband for Bavarian PhD Candidates
How we want to address it:
- Reach out to potentially interested representatitves at universities and research institutions
- Create guidelines for establishing doctoral representation work (e.g., establish a budget)
- Be present as LaProBay during university events
- Provide material to advertise LaProBay (e.g., slides, flyers, posters) to advertise LaProBay through local representatives
- Maintain this online presence where interested people can be informed about LaProBay activities
Main Challenge: Lack of transparent and/or consistent guidelines and legal frameworks for AI use in research / dissertations
How we want to address it:
- Represent doctoral researchers‘ needs in position paper
- Exchange, collect and publish best practices (let us know how it works at your institution!)
Main Challenges:
- Unequal pay and lack of transparency within or between faculties
- Insufficient contract duration to cover the length of the PhD
- Potential for vulnerable positions (e.g., international PhDs depending on contract extensions)
How we want to address it:
- Collect statistical data on how different contracts are implemented within each university
- Collect and publish best practices to solve power abuse situations
- Write position paper about extent of inequality in PhD payment and treatment to raise concerns on state level
- Increase transparency on conditions at different chairs / departments / universities (e.g., using Glassdoor)
- Create and distribute template for supervision agreement
- Increase incentives for good supervision, for example with a „LaProBay certificate of good supervision“ professors can use for advertisement
Main Challenges:
- More complex onboarding for international PhD candidates, often including various bureaucratic hurdles
- German language barrier for international PhD candidates
How we want to address it:
- Convince members of parliament to inquiry the Bavarian government about the share of doctoral researches who stay in Germany – in order to ultimately strengthen future advocacy efforts
Got any other concerns or ideas on how to address these issues? Let’s connect!