This many PhD students starting their employment at Tema during the same year is something that stands out. In the past, it was not so unusual within certain divisions, when faculty funds were used to finance PhD appointments. Nowadays, PhD students are financed by external research grants and therefore it has become more difficult to admit a whole batch at one time.
– The reason that there have been so many PhD students at the same time this year is a combination of several researchers receiving external grants and a number of investments through faculty funds, says Jelmer Brüggeman, head of division at Technology and social change.
Judith Lind, Tema's director of postgraduate studies, thinks it is gratifying that several PhD students can start their studies at the same time.
– I think it makes it easier to have fellow PhD students who are in roughly the same phase of their education. In order to give PhD students who are not accepted in groups equivalent opportunities, it is important that we create contact areas where PhD students can meet across boundaries, something that the PhD student council and the Research education committee try to help with by arranging activities that are common to all PhD students at Tema, says Judith Lind.
At Child studies, there has been a conscious effort to increase the number of PhD students.
– We did it because we see it as positive for our environment. However, there is no other common denominator between the four new PhD positions with us, because they are part of different research contexts and are financed in different ways. We simply caught the opportunities that were there on the fly, and the specific outcome can thus be seen as a mixture of reason and coincidence, says Mats Andrén, head of division at Child studies.
Tema's new PhD students
You can find Tema's new PhD students below the text. Missing from the list is Mahmoud Abdelhamid.
