Training Program

The training program aims to prepare young researchers for a wide range of career options, including the academic job market, but pays particular attention to preparing for careers in public policy making and civil society organisations in the field of intercultural relations, integration and diversity policies and strategies.

The aim of the SOLiDi training and research program is to provide doctoral researchers with:

  1. interdisciplinary knowledge on analysing and researching place-based practices of solidarity in diversity in a context of social inequality and uneven power relations

  2. a deep understanding of how conditions for nurturing solidarity in diversity vary across time and space and sector

  3. the expertise and skills to translate scholarly insights into action, either through organisational strategies or policies or through public pedagogies and paying attention to the ethical dimensions of interventions aimed at vulnerable groups

The program aims to prepare young researchers for a wide range of career options, including the academic job market, but pays particular attention to preparing for careers in public policy making and civil society organisations in the field of intercultural relations, integration and diversity policies and strategies.

To achieve these objectives SOLiDi the doctoral researchers will spend at least three months in academic secondment at the research institute of the co-supervisor. This will guarantee exposure to different disciplinary and national research traditions and encourage doctoral researchers to incorporate these various perspectives into their work. The doctoral researchers will also do a secondment at a non-academic partner organisation, which also constitutes the fieldwork of their doctoral research project. This non-academic secondment will give the researchers direct experience with the context of public policy making or civil society organising and contribute to the development of transferable skills in organisational and policy change, addressing intersectional dynamics and/or public pedagogy.

Network Training Events

The core of the SOLiDi training program are the network wide training events. These training events are organized in three different streams, focusing on:

STREAM 1 (what?): establishing a joint collaboration on the shared research problem and analytical framework that guides all individual PhD projects within the SOLiDi network as well as on drawing joint conclusions of the ESR projects. It is focused on interculturalism, solidarity in diversity and intersectionality (what is this research project about?);

STREAM 2 (how?): training for academic research skills and research ethics, but with a keen focus on associated transferable skills (how will we carry out the research project?);

STREAM 3 (impact): making a difference (how to generate societal impact with this research project?).

Each stream consists of a number of workshops and involves academic as well as non-academic partners. By involving non-academic partners in each workshop, we want to guarantee a focus on transferable skills in the training program as well as a mutually enriching dialogue between academic and non-academic expertise.

Calendar of the SOLiDi training program

There are ten SOLiDi training events (workshops) planned from September 2021 until September 2024. We are currently halfway through the SOLiDi training program. Five training events were organized online, in Antwerp (Belgium), Gozo (Malta), Newcastle (UK), and Borlänge (Sweden). The next training event will take place in Vienna in September 2023.

Here you can find a calendar overview of all the SOLiDi network training events and workshops.