Room for every PhD Candidate

On the 27th of November 2025 we launched our new Utrecht University policy on 'room for every PhD candidate', building on the UNL et al. (2019) position paper 'room for everyone's talent' and the 2023 focus group meetings with early career academics by 5 Deans of different Dutch universities.

Why? Because PhD candidates want (1) clarity (duidelijkheid), (2) perspective including career perspective, and (3) talking with us instead of talking about us.

The new vision on 'room for every PhD candidate' was partly funded by the 50k OSNL initiative focused on early career development. The UU Doctoral Advisory Board (DAB) and the UU open science team cocreated and coordinated the trajectory and vision development together with a UU working groups that also included two PhD candidates (Nathalie and Philine).

On the 27th of November round 80 UU colleagues attended the launch of the vision with impressive pitches from 10 PhD candidates from every corner of the university. These pitches also showed there is already a lot of room for crossing borders, for example room for interdisciplinary PhD research project, room for combining PhD research and teaching, room for alternative dissertation formats and room for combining PhD research and societal impact through for example a documentary.

Room for every PhD candidate is a joint responsibility for the supervisory team and the candidate. Both leadership and team spirit are key success factors. To be continued ! Paul Boselie, UU chief open science