Sarah, you helped establishing the Vienna Doctoral School of Philosophy and are now the co-ordinator. What are your tasks and responsibilities?
A big part of my job is helping our doctoral researchers navigate their way through the PhD, from the first steps of admission and enrolment, through the major milestones of the study program, and on to wider skills and career development. So I deal with lots of queries from current and prospective doctoral researchers.
I also manage our external website and an internal 'members area' for sharing information and resources. The doctoral school is still quite new – we are now just over a year old – so I've spent lots of time supporting our directors and steering committee to set up the main structures, as well as to make a range of strategic decisions about how we operate. We are just now establishing an International Advisory Board, which is very exciting and will help us bring in best practice from further afield.
What are the objectives of the Doctoral School?
Our aim is to foster excellent doctoral research in philosophy at the University of Vienna. The doctoral school seeks to provide a supportive environment with a strong peer community and an open, inclusive culture. We are proud to attract candidates from diverse backgrounds and support research in all kinds of philosophical methods, traditions and forms of thought. We want to make Vienna an internationally high-profile hub for early career research in philosophy.
And who is the target group?
There are currently around 130 researchers enrolled in the doctoral study programme for philosophy and we want them all to join the doctoral school! All they need to do is sign up to our code of good practice and then they can get all the benefits from being part of the VDP community: coming along to our events, making use of our resources, and applying for our grants. Anyone thinking about starting a PhD in philosophy is also encouraged to get in touch and find out how they can do that in Vienna!
Speaking of events: How was the Vienna Doctoral Summer School on "Resistance"?
It was a great success, very intense. We had about 50 participants, including students from Europe and the Americas and our excellent instructors. It felt like a very lively community, and we had many interesting discussions. Many thanks also the other organizers: Leo Townsend and Dina Lupin (with whose project, 'Giving Groups a Proper Say' the VDP was collaborating) and Sonja Riegler and Flora Löffelmann (two VDP members).
What do you have planned next?
We have quite a few ideas for the coming semester. We'll keep you posted on our events page: https://vd-philosophy.univie.ac.at/events/.
Thank you very much for talking to us!
