Practical information

ECHER

Prior to the CHER 2012 conference, the first official meeting of the recently established ECHER network will be held in Belgrade, on 8 and 9 September 2012 (Saturday afternoon and Sunday all day).

The Early Career Higher Education Researchers (ECHER) network was established to respond to the need for early-stage higher education researchers to have more opportunities to gather, meet, network and collaborate. ECHER is a network for early career researchers in the interdisciplinary field of higher education research, institutional research and researching higher education practitioners. In particular it responds to a sense that more international-level dialogue and collaboration would be fruitful. ECHER therefore creates a international hub for, and gives a voice to, early career researchers and those who have just started researching higher education. ECHER members may well be members of national networks and associations as well, and go onto join a range of other networks as they progress. ECHER is a web-based network and therefore aims to collaborate closely with existing national and international associations to offer more targeted support to early career researchers. (Click here to find out more about ECHER and how to become member)

If you are an early‐stage researcher in the Higher Education field, we invite you to join the network and participate in the first ECHER workshop in Belgrade in September. The workshop will provide support to students and researchers wishing to foster their own research projects and start or consolidate new and fruitful relationships.

Registration form will be available by May 20 on this page. If you wish to register in the meantime, please send an email to info[at]cher2012.rs. Costs such as coffee/tea at breaks will be covered by organisers, while meals (dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday) will be covered by participants themselves.


Preliminary PROGRAMME



SATURDAY 8th September 2012

15h00 Welcome

15h30: ECHER: answering the needs of early stage researchers!

  • Short and long term goals of ECHER: How it was created, purposes regarding the current “state of the art” in higher education research for early-stage researchers.

Yurgos Politis (ECHER organising committee)

16h00: Connecting early-stage researchers on international level

  • Open discussion on aims and functioning of ECHER
  • World café (lots of Brainstorming and group work)

Bojana Ćulum (ECHER organising committee)
Invited guests: Christine Musselin (tbc), Anna Kosmützky (tbc) and David Hoffman (visiting professor University of Cologne, Germany)

18h00 End of session

19h00: Dinner celebrating the 1st birthday and official foundation of ECHER


SUNDAY 9th September 2012

10h00: (Re-)inventing cooperation: Methodology and experiences of cooperative research

  • The role of comparison in research. It questions in particular the construction of knowledge in and through international (comparative) research projects.
  • New and emerging ways of collaborating; is collaboration only a buzzword? What motivates collaboration and who is collaborating; communication and social proximity

Invited speaker: Jonathan Drennan (tbc)

11h30 Coffee break

11h00: Hands on Comparison: Petcha Kucha

  • Presentation of specific examples with specific research projects.

Session coordinated by a member of the Committee and engage some of the participants.

13h00: Lunch

14h00: ECHER Café

  • A member of the committee presents the results of the questionnaire and puts them into discussion in order to get feedback and draw tangible conclusions.

15h45: Coffee break

16h00: On growth and form: academic writing and publishing treat or tricks

  • The process of writing a paper.

Invited speaker: Jussi Välimaa (Editor-in-chief of HIGHER EDUCATION; Professor of Higher Education Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, Finland)
Sharing experiences: “my first international journal paper”.

17h30: End of day