HR Award promotes mobility

20 Sep 2022

The MU Faculty of Education recognises the value of geographical, inter-sectoral, intra-sectoral, interdisciplinary, and virtual mobility. Within the HR Award, space has been dedicated to networking, sharing the experiences of colleagues, and making contacts with other institutions that are HR Award holders or that implement doctoral or postdoctoral schools. Members of the HR Award working group or early-stage researchers have therefore made several trips.

In September 2022, the HR Award Manager – Vendula Kratochvílová – visited the University of Potsdam, which has been a recipient of the HR Award since 2016. The mutual exchange of experience in implementing HRS4R activities was very beneficial. It was interesting to find out the different approaches of the University of Potsdam and Masaryk University to adopt and implement this strategy. Many of the topics addressed were common to both universities, for example, the issue of reconciling personal and professional life, open, transparent, and merit-based recruitment, or the adaptation of new employees. Other topics were more or less discussed. Both universities also faced similar challenges, mentioning, for example, the need for multilingual communication, the application of the gender dimension in research, or the execution of PR activities. Sharing the experiences of colleagues from this foreign institution was enriching. From the meeting with the Ombudsman or the Equal Opportunities Commissioner, Vendula Kratochvílová took away several suggestions that could be implemented at the Faculty. The working group will be introduced to them in a round table discussion.

Jana Veličková, HR Award Specialist – focusing on (Post)Doctoral school, visited the Graduiertenzentrum at the University of Hildesheim, where she met Dr. Svea Korrf - Head of the Graduiertenzentrum. The topic of the conversation was the organisation of doctoral studies at the University of Hildesheim, the center's activities, the history of its establishment, the challenges the center faces for doctoral students, and the possibilities of linking it to research. Furthermore, regarding the promotion of the career development of researchers, Dr. Korff is also involved in research. As part of the two-day shadowing session, Jana Veličková had the opportunity to participate in working sessions with Ms. Korff on upcoming events for Ph.D. students in cooperation with the library.

Five early-stage researchers seized the opportunity to participate in specialized events between June and September 2022. They traveled to Germany, Portugal, Austria, and France. Martina Šindelářová Skupeňová had the opportunity to consult the ongoing results of her research during her trip to the CercleS 2022 conference, in addition to participating in expert lectures. She compared how language education and research in this field work in foreign language centers and received feedback from local and visiting colleagues. Veronika Korvasová attended the IGU-CGE conference in Rennes, France. "The best part of the whole event was the networking with the geography-didactic community and being inspired by new topics or research currently trending in our community," says Korvasova. Miroslav Janík, who participated in the TRANSLANG seminar in Germany, has a similar assessment of the benefits of his trip. Last but not least, the HR Award was supported by Jan Egerle's participation in the Summer School of Methodology in Educational Sciences in Berlin. Egerle particularly appreciates the opportunity to analyse data together, where he and the other participants applied different methods in practice – from narrative analysis to hermeneutic approaches.

All these trips were carried out through the Operational Programme Research, Development and Education in the frame of the project “Development of Human Resources and other strategic areas to support research at MU (HR4MUII)“, nr. CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/18_054/0014703. The last two business trips of the HR Award Working Group will take place in October 2022.