Text size
Home > Research > Graduate school > Activities > Graduate Platform

Graduate Platform

The Graduate Student Platform is an informal platform that facilitates interaction amongst Research Master (MSR) students and PhD candidates of the Faculty of Social Sciences, and represents their interests within the faculty. Within the Platform, all sorts of issues regarding the MSR and PhD programs can be raised, ideas and experiences are exchanged, and social and educational activities are organized on a regular basis. Among the main activities within the Platform are the Graduate Brown Bag Lunches and the annual Graduate Conference.

Activities

During Graduate Brown Bag Lunches, we meet to discuss issues such as changes in the PhD Program, aspects of the PhD process, or ideas for Graduate School activities and seminars. The lunches are a way for PhD candidates and MSR students from all over the faculty to meet informally and catch up on recent developments within the Graduate School and forthcoming interesting activities. On occasion we invite guest speakers to give short workshops on a wide range of issues that are of interest to Graduate students. Previous meetings have included workshops on how to review an article, speed-reading, teaching skills, and writing abstracts.

The two-day Graduate Conference takes place every fall and it is the place where PhD candidates and MSR students from the Faculty of Social Sciences present their work and ‘wild ideas’ to one another. The main aim of the conference is to give PhD candidates an opportunity to present their work to each other and to get acquainted with the research done in other departments. For the MSR students it is an excellent opportunity to get a sense of what it entails to be part of an academic conference, to present their research and to get a broad introduction into the wide range of research that is being conducted by the PhD candidates of the Graduate School. For both PhD candidates and MSR students the conference provides an opportunity to practice the various crafts of: presenting to a wider and mixed audience, being a discussant or a chair, participating in meaningful cross-disciplinary debates, and the various tasks of organizing a conference. There are also workshops addressing topics and challenges relevant to most PhD candidates and Research Master students.  Last but not least, the conference performs an important socializing function and therefore also entails various social events.

Specific dates and information about activities organized by the Graduate Student Platform are posted on the Graduate School Agenda.

Organization

Chair of the Graduate Student Platform is Leonie Heres and vice-chair is Jacomijne Prins. The chair of the Platform is part of the management team of the Graduate School and maintains regular contact with PhD Platforms of other faculties at the VU University (Contact Personen Overleg), ProVU (the formal PhD organization of VU University), and the formal employee representative body within the faculty (Onderdeelcommissie).

The chair of the Platform serves as an informal contact point for PhD candidates that have questions or problems that they do not (yet) want to share with, formally raise to, or (think) are not solved by their supervisors, their department, or the Graduate School. The chair will try to help the PhD candidates by providing them with the necessary information or support, referring them to the right person in the faculty to talk to, or raising the issue within the Graduate School to make sure matters are resolved and changes are made.

The Graduate Platform also has buddies within each department of the faculty. The buddies serve as an informal ‘go to’ person for other PhD Candidates in the department and may be approached for any practical questions or issues with supervisors, the department and so on. The buddies are:

For more information about the Graduate Platform, please contact Leonie Heres

 


 

 

© Copyright VU University Amsterdam
Quick links
Research programmes

spamfuik@vu.nl