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In Soft skills for PhDs - part 1 I shared five important soft skills that you train during your PhD trajectory: critical thinking, time management, brainstorming, ethical decision making and negotiation & teamwork. Today I would like to add five…

In the fast paced academic world of today, soft skills can either make or break the future of a PhD candidate. Contrary to popular belief, academics and PhD students require soft skills and management techniques along with their usual rigorous techn…

Do you find yourself distracted by social media at times? Are you trying to write an abstract, yet veer off to check Twitter a few times in the process? Or do you find yourself tempted to check your phone notifications too many times during the day?…

2020 and the global COVID-19 pandemic did not only help us to realize how important health, research, and good access to health care are, but also how much change is still necessary in our societies to reach (social and racial) justice. Academia is…

This blogpost is aimed at those of us who come from abroad to pursue a PhD in Europe and more specifically in the Netherlands. There are a lot of small issues that we need to be aware of before we can settle into our new life comfortably. Coming fro…

Will COVID-19 completely change the face of education and learning? We can't answer this question with certainty, but after more than a year of virtual learning at all levels, it's quite likely that virtual learning has become more embedded in educa…

During your years as a PhD student, you will likely attend a party or two. The most frequently asked question at parties is: what do you do? So, of course, you then (often proudly) say that you are doing a PhD. Know that you may expect two kinds of …

Taking the next career step as a PhD student or researcher can be a real challenge. In this 5 minute vlog, Tonke shares three practical tips with you, that you can start implementing right away!

As we are heading into the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, we may be hoping that we soon will be able to attend conferences again. But the reality right now is that conferences are still virtual. Virtual conferences allow more people to parti…

Jeroen van Baar and Lieke de Boer discuss why they have decided to leave academia, and what steps they took to come to that decision. Reporting separately from their respective lockdown locations across Europe (well, Berlin and Amsterdam), during th…