International Doctoral Summer School about Integrity and Visibility Was Held in Vilnius University
On June 19-22, the first multidisciplinary and international summer school for doctoral students „Integrity and Visibility: Challenges for Early Career Researchers“ was held in Vilnius University (VU) Botanical Garden in Kairenai. Colleagues from partner universities of „Arqus“ also participated in the summer school – two each came from the universities of Lyon and Wroclaw, one from the University of Graz and one from the national University of „Kyiv-Mohyla Academy“.
At the beginning of the event, all participants were greeted by the VU Pro-Rector for Research Professor Edita Sužiedėlienė and Senior Researcher of Life Sciences Center dr. Stephen Knox Jones. The event featured lectures and workshops based on three general skills modules covering research integrity, scientific writing and publishing, and science communication and dissemination, with a focus on raising the researcher's profile, internationalization, and visibility.
During these sessions, participants also discussed the importance of academic ethics, principles, and norms, and improved their academic writing and scientific communication skills. Lectures and seminars were conducted by foreign and Lithuanian lecturers from Arqus partner universities. Dr. Gayannee Kedia from the University of Graz in the summer school gave lectures on academic literacy and publishing. She also conducts research in the fields of social psychology and neuroscience. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jolanta Šinkūnienė gave lectures about science communication and dissemination. She is a linguist, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philology in Vilnius University. Her research interests are semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, textual linguistics, interlingual and interdisciplinary features of scientific texts, scientific publishing and peer-review processes, scientific evaluation, construction of scientific identity. Dr. Joseph Milburn, who led the summer school module on research integrity, is visiting professor at the University of Navarre in America and Spain, specializing in epistemology, philosophy of religion and ethics. His areas of competence include contemporary philosophy, Spanish and Latin American philosophy.
Summer school program also involved cultural and educational activities. Participants got acquainted with the collections of the Botanical Garden, visited VU Central Palace, discussed the possibilities of cooperation in the VU faculties, had a tour of Vilnius Old Town, and had the opportunity to visit Trakai.
At the end of the summer school, the participants of the event happily shared their feedback stating that it was an exceptional interdisciplinary summer school for doctoral students, during which they got to know participants and researchers from other scientific fields, gained inspiration and motivation by discussing the selected dissertation topics, and were impressed by the interactive, productive and interesting lectures. Vilnius University and its environment left a great impression.
Doctoral students who participated in the entire program received 3 ECTS for the modules they attended.