Academic career planning beyond the thesis

Aarhus University

The seminar addresses the institutional and material conditions under which legal research careers are made, and asks doctoral students to consider their own academic career trajectories. 

Legal scholarship in the Nordic countries is produced by people holding particular kinds of academic (and non-academic) positions, on particular employment terms, assessed by particular people, against particular criteria. Those criteria are written down, and the assessments are, in Sweden, public documents. Doctoral students nonetheless typically encounter them for the first time when they are applying for academic positions close to the planned submission date of their doctoral thesis, at which point it may be too late to fully evaluate the expectations that departments/faculties, and external experts have. This seminar closes that gap by putting the primary material in front of participants, while they still have time to respond to it. 

The seminar covers the Swedish academic career structure and its legal basis, including the qualification requirements for post doc, biträdande lektor, universitetslektor and professor, the promotion right attaching to the meriting position, and admission as docent (and the corresponding structures in Denmark and Norway); how merit is documented and assessed, funding as a career instrument; publication strategy, including the choice between national language and English language venues, and what that choice entails. 

The seminar treats these matters critically, as much as it does instrumentally. A recurring theme is the tension between doing what advances an academic career, and doing what one believes to be worth doing, and the conditions under which those diverge. A second is the position of legal scholarship within evaluation systems designed by non-legal academics, including national publication indicators, and the wider issue of research assessment. A third is the range of careers open to holders of doctoral degrees in law outside of universities. 

Type of instruction

The seminar is one full day, in-person programme. Participants prepare individually before the seminar. 

Activity

Active participation in the seminar is required, together with submission of a pre-seminar assignment by the stated deadline, and a post-seminar assignment by the stated deadline. 

Certificate

For doctoral students at Linnaeus University who participate, an award of 3.0 hp will be formally made as part of the update of the individual study plan (ISP) at regular intervals on Ladok. 

Participants admitted from other higher education institutions may receive a seminar certificate (on request) stating the seminar’s content and scope, for the purpose of crediting by their home higher education institution, subject to their completion of both the pre-seminar assignment, participation in the seminar, and completion of the post-seminar assignment. 

Aims and objectives

Upon completion of the seminar, students should be able to: 

Knowledge and understanding

• account for the structure of academic careers in law in Sweden (and, if necessary, the other Nordic countries), including the sequence and legal basis of academic positions, and the regulation of qualification and appointment in law;
• explain how the institutional conditions of legal research – publication outlets, funding structures, national publication indicators, language choice, and evaluation regimes – shape which legal research is produced, by whom, and in what form;
• describe how academic and pedagogical merit is documented and assessed, internally and externally, in Swedish academic appointments, including the function of the expert report (sakkunnigutlåtande), and the promotion processes.

Competence and skills

• critically and independently assess their own academic profile against the criteria actually applied by departments and/or faculties appointment committees and external experts, identify specific gaps, and formulate the steps needed to close them within a stated timeframe;
• plan a realistic, time-bound research and publication strategy for after the completion of the doctoral thesis, including choice of outlet, issues related to authorship and co-authorship, funding applications and mobility, and evaluate the trade-offs that each choice entails;
• produce and defend the core written instruments of an academic job application to a standard capable of getting positions.

Judgement and approach

• reflect critically on the relationship between strategic career decisions, and intellectual independence, including in the choice of research topics, publication outlets, collaborators, and languages;
• assess the structural dimensions of the academic labour market, including fixed-term employment, permanent employment, promotion expectations, and the use of broader academic quantitative indicators in the discipline of law, which fit poorly;
• take and justify a considered position on the range of careers open to a doctor of laws, within and outside the university, and on their own responsibility for the use of their expertise.

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