In the course of the further expansion of the European Research Area the demand for young scientists within the EU will further increase; together with this it is expected that the roles and functions of Post Docs will be changing as well.  It is assumed that Post Docs will increasingly act as Principal Investigators, take over leadership positions, and independently publish. Also increasing is the interest in the performance and in particular the effects and impacts of programmes targeting young academics with regard to their effects on the careers of young scientists  and their capabilities to actually support frontier research. In this respect the project tackles not only fundamental questions regarding young scientist advancement but effectively contributes to relevant scientific and political discussions. In particular, the project contributes to explicitly improve the empirical basis in this field.

It is assumed that the ERC “Starting Grants” Programme will generate a variety of effects and impacts. We plan to methodologically capture these dimensions using a triangulation design in which data from different sources is systematically consolidated. An online panel survey with two survey waves and short yearly surveys (intermediates), semi-structured interviews, a bibliometric analysis and network analysis will be used in order to gather information about respondents’ career development.

The project will be conducted by iFQ in cooperation with Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Dortmund (TU Dortmund) and Institut für Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung (IWT) Bielefeld.

Contact persons:
Susan Böhmer, Dr. Nathalie Huber