IAS PhD Group Meetings Agenda

This is a living agenda document. For every monthly meeting, please add items to the agenda that you would like to see discussed related to being a PhD-student at IAS (for example questions regarding funding). We will meet on every Super Tuesday and discuss the agenda as it is present in here.

PhD meeting, 28 April 2025

-Board meeting update: Group will get smaller. We should stand out ground in terms of administrative tasks.

-Discussion of phd retreat: Will send out survey

PhD meeting, 4 March 2025

-Check in

-Travel money

PhD meeting, 28 January 2025

• PhD Conference: What do people want to get out from this happening?

  • Practice presentations for conferences? Is the format of presentations still what we want?

  • Discuss ideas?

  • Do we want to do a workshop on website creation, science communication?

  • Analytical sociology discussion session

  • Feedback on written work

  • Jesper, Alex, Anastasia, -Mael, Hendrik, -Cheng, Axel, Kaz, Tangbin anyone else (assumption at least 3/max 7 people would be around)-

  Notes:

• PhD conference before INAS 2025 (June 5)

  • Possibly on the May 12-16th maybe wed or friday preference (thursday in-person seminar)
  • Friday the 16th preference, maybe Wed.

-We discussed were to keep the conference and what to do during the conference. Hendrik might want to present at the conference. Otherwise ideas of workshop was floated (create webpage and automated CV:s). Axel will check availability of summerhouse and wadströmska villa.

• Bring up having a funding end date? Ellis is already talking with Asa. Axel & Kaz will follow up on this. Will try to standardize some type of ssytem for this

Phd meeting, 3 December 2024

• Welcome Tangbin
• IAS board meeting update
• Check in round + Kaz situation Will continue to monitor situation. Discussed potential communication from the group.

Phd meeting, 22 october 2024

• Check-in Kaz situation
• Continuation of Mental Health work: Will continue to discuss mental health, as everyone think its important. Potentially find new arena for it as course has ran out

PhD meeting, 18 September 2024

• Election of PhD reps
  • 7/7 in favour for Axel
  • 7/7 in favour for Kaz
  • –> Axel and Kaz are our new PhD reps 🎉
• What are you looking forward to in the coming year?

PhD meeting, 07 May 2024

• Updates on the PhD conference
• Update mental health survey / check-in on Slack
• couriosity about Noé

PhD meeting, 30 January 2024

• Hello, Kaz!

• PhD Conference: What do people want to get out from this happening?

  • Practice presentations for conferences? Is the format of presentations still what we want?

  • Discuss ideas?

  • Do we want to do a workshop on website creation, science communication?

  • Analytical sociology discussion session

  • Feedback on written work

  • Jesper, Alex, Anastasia, Mael, Hendrik, Cheng, Axel, Kazuki, anyone else (assumption at least 3/max 7 people would be around)

  Notes:

  • Adding workshops?
  • Workshops over the year
  • Motivations: Be together, have fun, social thing, present & discuss & social activities
  • Potential additional workshop ideas (at least what I, Hendrik, would love :D): Python coding, R coding, various types of regression models, simulations
  • PostDocs are welcome to attend
  • Written feedback notes
  • rather one day than two days
  • One could also do half a day/half a day… would be nice to have an evening

• PhD conference before NSA24 (see Carl's e-mail)

• Follow up on mental health discussion

  • Do we need to set anything up among ourselves?
  • We can collect issues

  Notes:

  • Jesper and I will come-up/organise mental health check-in lunch
  • Idea: Have a mental health survey every week/biweekly?

PhD meeting, 28 November 2023

• Update from the IAS Board meeting from Jesper

• Update from Jesper on Chat with Sarah

  • Any update on ProSems

  • Suggestion:

    • What exactly is the role of the PhD director?
    • Have regular check-in with the PhD director, how can we organise regular check-ins?
    • Maybe the process would be easier if we had someone who is in person at IAS
    • Confusion speaks for the need of a clear onboarding process
    • Do we need better sturctures to give/receive individual level feedback?

  • Quote from the PhD Guidelines:

    • "Meetings with the director of PhD studies: The PhD students meet regularly with the director of PhD studies at IAS in order to highlight issues related to the PhD program and bring these to the attention of the handledarkollegium (which have meetings once per semester). At these meetings, the PhD students are welcome to highlight issues they would like to be discussed in the handledarkollegium."

    • "The PhD student shall:

      • fulfill their commitments as stipulated in the individual study plan,
      • and in dialogue with the supervisors annually discuss and revise this in the dialogue with the supervisors,
      • choose suitable courses actively participate in seminars present own research at seminars and conferences,
      • preferably both nationally and internationally actively participate in research grant application procedures, where applicable."

• Ideas for workshops

  • Science communication (via LiU Library staff)
  • Create your own academic website (with Hendrik, if he's still up for this)

  Hendrik I'm still up for this if you want to, but I'm currently sitting in a classroom in Linköping, so I won't make it to today's meeting. If you want me to prepare something for a later date, feel free to ping me via Email or Slack as to what you want/need! :) Alex Aww, nice, Hendrik! I actually thought this could happen during our next PhD conference!? Would that work for you?

  Hendrik Yes! Alex Great

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• How is the general mood? Well-beeing among PhD students (as a follow up on what Maria presented during the Tuesday meeting of the 22nd)

  Alex Do we want to schedule a new meeting for this to talk about it in detail?

PhD meeting, 10 October 2023

• PhD election

  • Jesper and Alex are reelected

• Any volunteer to organise a present for Emanuel wtr child birth?

  • Hendrik and Alex
  • Give feedback to Maria that it would be nice to distribute present organisation a bit more (Jesper and Alex)

• Do we want to keep up the ProSems?

  • Keep ProSems

  • Idea for a guest: Maria

  • Follow up with Sarah (Jesper)

• Sarah's last e-mail

  • Jesper will reach out to Sarah, give personal feedback

• Update on the new Structure for allocating small tasks and teaching among PhD students

Update from Maria:

Following the discussion in the Tuesday meeting about the allocation of small tasks and teaching among PhD students, the management group suggests the following actions. We would like to give the PhD students an opportunity to comment on it before we send it out, and hope that you, as the PhD student representatives, can help us with that. These are our suggested action points

1. We send out these instructions: ”Email the Director of Studies (Carl) if you want your current teaching load to be changed in any way, i.e. if you teach too much or too little. Carl will try to look into potential mismatches in this respect. If teaching/TA opportunities arise, course directors should first check in with Carl to see if there is anyone who’s interested in more teaching.”
2. We make sure the course director sits down with the TAs to settle the hours prior to the course and reports them to the Director of Studies (Carl).
3. We make sure we discuss the allocation of small tasks every year, and add the text group and register groups to the list

• Hendrik's presentation and feedback

PhD meeting, 5 September 2023

Agenda

• Check-in
• What do we want to do this year?
  • Change up the PhD conference?
  • Social after works?
  • Presenting work and getting feedback from each other (Present the work of the 20/60/80% Seminar to the PhD cohort)
    • Date for Rodrigo: 19th of September, 11am
• Hosting/moderating seminar guests signup
• Preparing election of new PhD reps
• Reminder of presents for PhD graduates

Meeting Minutes – 5 September 2023

• Participants introduced themselves and shared their summer activities.
• Alexandra inquired if everyone received the calendar invite. Visiting PhD student Jeremy Attard had not gotten it but will now be added to the invite list.
• Jesper introduced the two main discussion points:
  1. Plans for the upcoming semester.
  2. Potential improvements to PhD Conference.
• Rodrigo requested to schedule a presentation to get feedback on his Kappa. We provisionally set it for November 19th at 11:00. Jesper suggested the idea that anyone can book a PhD meeting for presenting something. Maël said that maybe we should allow for presentations to occur at other times than just during the regular PhD meetings, as the demand for presentations may be higher than the number of PhD meetings.

Potential PhD Conference Improvements:

• Aleksandra proposed extending the PhD Conference into a full day-long event, or even that we stay overnight somewhere. The conference or retreat could then include not only presentations but also dedicated writing/working sessions and social activities. This idea was opened for discussion, especially if we need to find funding for this. Someone suggested that IEI might give funding for this kind of activity.

• Jesper, Aleksandra, and others can host people in Stockholm.

• Laura mentioned that if we want to have the conference in November, we have to set the time now already so that people can block out those dates in their calendar.

• Jeremy said that when he studied physics, he participated in a self-organized summer school in the middle of the countryside in France. Everyone cooks and helps out. This would not only involve people at IAS but also junior scholars at other universities. We could therefore do this jointly with other universities.

After-Work Gatherings:

• Jesper proposed having Tuesday evening drinks, especially with the closure of the IAS Saloon, to promote socializing.

Seminar Guest Sign-Up:

• Reminder about signing up for hosting the IAS Thursday seminars.

Election of New PhD Reps:

• We first discussed the procedure. First volunteering and then voting.

• Jesper said that he would be fine going on for another term, but emphasizing that the election process should be respected. Anastasiia mentioned that both Jesper and Aleksandra have done a really good job.

Present committee and Lunch:

• Alexandra said that we will have many graduating so we should have a present committee. One could email if they would volunteer.

• Last thing discussed was where we should go for lunch.

PhD meeting, 7 March 2023

Agenda

• Maël's 60% rehearsal

PhD meeting, 26 Jan 2023

Agenda

• Seminar series sign-up for hosting speakers
• Can someone host Anna Rogers, 16th February?
• Choose dates for PhD conference (Wadströmska Villan is prebooked May 18-19)(Available dates: 8-10, 18-19, 23-24, 26 May)
• PROSEM
• Next meeting?

Meeting notes

• PHD CONFERENCE:
  • 18th-19th is pre-booked (atm), can be changed
  • INAS is at 9th/10 of June
  • 9th/10th Villa Friedhem is booked (IAS conference)
  • There was no date that was simply the best for all of us => Jesper and Alex will send out a Doodle
• SEMINAR SERIES:
  • Anna Rogers will be hosted by Hendrik
  • Mael will host Cristina Chucca Del Cerro => there will be lunch, beers in the evening
• PROSEM:
  • Sarah is responsible for PROSEM.
  • Alex will reach out to her to check in
  • Wish: Hear from Kinga

PhD meeting, 14 Dec 2022

Agenda

• Quick intro
• Report from the IAS board meeting
• Think about prospective dates for the 2023 PhD Conference
  • Should be around beginning of May
  • book Villa end of January/beginnig of February
  • check with Åsa
• Seminar guest meetings?? (I know Karoly has not yet released next semester's schedule)
  • Remind PhDs to express interest whether to meet Seminar Speakers before or after the presentation for a chat
  • Check in with Károly which speakers are already confirmed (onsite/offsite?)
  • Who wants to take responsibility to host which guest?
• Graduation presents
• Date for next meeting
• eISP

PhD meeting, 1 Nov 2022

• Elections of the new PhD reps
  • Alexandra and Jesper are the new PhD representatives.
  • All attended

Meeting with Sarah, 20 Sep 2022

• We need a PhD rep for a meeting next week regarding the PhD program revision (Monday, Sep 26, 1pm-3pm at Campus Valla)
  • –> Don't have to be the actual PhD representatives, rather it should be a person we choose from our mid
  • –> Maël will do it, Sarah reports this to the union which has to formally agree on
• ProSem
  • The idea is to "become a professional" at the end of our PhDs.
  • One part of this professionalization is to participate at every IAS Seminar, every 60%, every 80%, and every dissertation defense; some of which some of us are believed to having failed at
  • One idea for the new PhD students is for them to present a preliminary outline during their first year (3 pages max), even before the 20% seminar
  • One of the first seminars will be hopefully Marta Rado, since she'll be leaving soon
  • Others are: Petri Ylikoski, Peter Hedström, Étienne Ollion, Christian Steglich, Adel, Ben Jarvis, Erik Rosenqvist, Pontus Strimling, Måns Magnusson, Abiel Sebhatu
  • Consensus seems to be moving towards: Marta Rado, Pontus Strimling, Petri Ylikoski
  • Ideas for upcoming foci for the seminars: Paper production cycle, maybe also funding a little bit, prioritizing work (what to agree to do, what to deny)
  • Maybe also a small workshop on preparing a presentation (addressing the audience, framing, focus, how to present unfinished work)
• Preliminary dates are: October 4, November 8, December 6, at 11am each, Zoom link: https://nyu.zoom.us/j/92535312599

Meeting 15 Sep 2022

Agenda

Participants: Alexandra, Laura, Maël, Elis, Miriam, Hendrik, Rodrigo

• When to do the meetings? keep it as is, i.e. 1pm every first Thursday of the month, or on Tuesdays, to facilitate onsite meeting
  • On every Super Tuesday at 11am, i.e. next Meeting on Tuesday, Sep. 20
• Hendrik asks Madelene for getting a PhD-only email list
• Schedule a meeting with Sarah (she's free anytime on Thursdays (except Sept 15 afternoon), Fridays, or after 10:00 (your time) on Tuesday)
  • –> Decision: Next Tuesday, 10am
• Next PhD rep elections (oct-nov?)
  • Maël: send email (What does a PhD Rep do? Also: Deadline for candidacies 1 week before the election)
• Chair for seminar
  • Hendrik: Update the spreadsheet
• Where are the answers of the QA
• Causal mechanisms Rodrigo
  • Rodrigo will send out an email in this regard
• Funding for INAS (earlier)

Meeting 9 Jun 2022

Agenda

• Rodrigo's 60% rehearsal

Meeting Notes

Meeting 5 May 2022

Agenda

• Email to Sarah was sent, but never got a reply (Maël).
• Q&A session with Sarah
• Maria asked about how well we feel wrt presence of faculty in the office, so maybe we can discuss about that as well
• Miriam: seminar on the journal submital process, e.g., how to choose journal? how to write a cover letter? how to answer reviewers? Hearing about rejections and how to deal with it in a constructive way.
• ^– I [Hendrik] actually talked about that thing with Maria today, and she has asked me to put a brainstorming session on our agenda to think about potential themes for "foundational workshops" with knowledge we just all should have. What we came up with already are these:
  • Journal submission process // Reviewing for a journal
  • Applying for travel grants
  • Applying for large project grants
  • (The idea is to have a set of mandatory workshops on core things we must know after we have finished our PhD, so that every PhD student is on the same page with the basics)

Meeting Notes

• We will send a reminder to Sarah wrt the gender imbalance email Maël sent
• Next Wednesday at 8pm we will send out the Q&A document containing everything until then to Sarah in preparation for the session
• Faculty presence in the office:
  • It's less about faculty presence and more about creating an environment where faculty is actually able to mentor PhD students informally
  • E.g. have lunch together, other activities that allow for informal discussions about research
  • Seems to point towards a common cultural problem that may have to do with a very individualistic research culture that is not inclusive and team-oriented
  • Very likely that this is a consequence of the pandemic
  • Thursday seminars on site would be very helpful
  • Stanford apparently has a very good example for this: People were presenting unfinished work on a weekly basis, even rejected paper so that reasons for the rejection can be discussed in the group, etc.
  • So one solution may be: Several fixed settings in which people can show up and present/have lunch/etc
  • Another concept from Stanford: "Macro-Lunch", i.e. very informal where people presented work without any presentation, etc. –> more discussion oriented
  • "Coffee-Roulette": You're randomly matched with some person from IAS to have coffee with for 20-ish minutes so that you have to interact with everyone at least some amount of time
  • One problem may also be that we have a very high ratio of PhD students to faculty
  • Hendrik will send these rough ideas to Maria so that we can discuss this on the IAS Conference in Florence
• As an aside, there was the need voiced to share workflows wrt coding (how to organize code, how to work, how to solve certain problems) –> basically have a person just run through (one of their) codebase(s) and explain what they're doing, maybe how they solve certain problems
• wrt workshops
  • Add those workshop formats to the ProSem series
  • Not just have each thing once but multiple times (e.g. to get several different interpretations of what is expected of us if we are to review a manuscript)
  • However, every PhD student should at least once get each of these "workshops" so that everyone is kind of on the same page
  • Ask Sarah to potentially make seminars more general and ask more about the actual workflows/how to be a scholar/implicit knowledge that we are expected to learn
  • Maybe also ask people to be in Norrköping for the ProSems??
  • Also require presentations for those ProSems?

Meeting 7 Apr 2022

Agenda

• PhD "conference" in May
• Gathering questions to Sarah
• New PhD representatives
  • Who are interested?
  • Process of choosing PhD representatives
• The "scope" of the PhD representatives role
  • Tasks and responsibilities
• Gender imbalance
  • Hendrik This is a point I thought about during the PhD Process workshop with Bandick, because one common theme by the female attendees, but which I also heard before that meeting, was that there is a strong gender imbalance that therefore also has an influence on duties (read: care work), that should be further adressed in my opinion

Meeting Notes

• PhD Conference
  • We will be planning for eight presentations and potentially start at around 9am and fill the day (Rodrigo + Hendrik will send out a preliminary schedule once we're ready)
  • Villa is nice, and even the living room has a beamer (camera in that case could be brought from the office)
  • We'll be ordering lunch from the institute's caterer (~30% of the regular price for us as long as it's only internal people) and after the day go to dinner together
  • The presentations will feature just an open Q&A afterwards, and no discussants
• Q&A for Sarah
  • Postponed to the next meeting in May 5th since the ProSem schedule has changed and we have a month more time
• New PhD representatives
  • Maël will draft a short doc on the procedure
• The PhD Representatives scope
  • Formally, PhD representatives are getting paid (in the sense of time remuneration) for meeting with Sarah and the board meetings only, however Elis mentioned that there are Union rights for organizing that the university has to make sure we are getting paid for
  • One idea is that the PhD representatives receive the responsibility to make sure that activities the group agrees on are actually carried out, but that they are not tasked with the operational duties, but rather assume a "management"/organizational role
  • Maël and Hendrik are going to draft a short, semi-formal document outlining the formalities of PhD Reps (election process + expectations for the role of PhD reps)
• Gender imbalance
  • Mentorship program should be also semi-formalized to ensure it is not biased against the female part of the PhD cohort
  • The same applies to the presents for PhD graduates, also something that tends to only stick to the women of the institute, rather than that everyone shares the responsibility
  • Also attendance is something that was brought up; the male part of the institute is felt to be less often attending in meetings
  • Maël and Hendrik will raise the gender equality issue with Sarah in a meeting to ensure the institute is aware of these issues