European Doctoral School: What Are We Preparing Doctoral Candidates For?

The EDS Doctoral Education Mission

The European Doctoral School (EDS) train and develop diverse, pioneering and courageous doctoral researchers who will have a lasting impact, within and outside of the academia.

We educate and develop doctoral candidates to the highest skills levels so that they become creative, critical and independent individuals who will advance the boundaries of research. Through the process of doctoral education, the EDS doctoral candidate is provided with opportunities to develop a range of skills to a very advanced level. These skills relate both to the research process itself and to broader professional training and development.

European

Doctoral

School: The first Digital Doctoral School.

The EDS Doctoral Education Strategy

The EDS Doctoral Education Strategy flows from our four main objectives:

1. Creating an Enabling Environment

Principle 1: Celebrate the Nature of Doctoral Research at EDS.

Principle 2: Doctoral Research Environment

Principle 3: Excellence and Quality

Principle 4: Supervision

2. Building and Developing Capacity

Principle 5: Sussex Doctoral Researcher Experience

Principle 6: Research Integrity

Principle 7: Employability and Researcher Development

3. Increasing our Influence and Building Connections

Principle 8: Connectivity

The EDS Framework for Doctoral Education

The EDS Framework for Doctoral Education endorses the following skills and attributes, as key educational objectives for all graduates of the EDS Doctoral Programmes:

• Research skills and awareness;

• Ethics and social understanding;

• Communication skills;

• Personal effectiveness/development;

• Team-working and leadership;

• Career management;

• Entrepreneurship and innovation.

The core and essential component of the EDS mission remains the advancement of knowledge through original research—a fundamental societal value in itself, based on freedom of enquiry, the fostering of innovative thinking and the development of advanced critical skills.