The Bjerknes PhD Forum in Bergen – the idea behind the Forum
The Bjerknes PhD Forum intends to create a community for international and Norwegian PhD students from different research areas during their time in Bergen.
Our aim is to facilitate exchange among new and advanced PhD students as well as to distribute and preserve knowledge about “the way things work”.
We meet about once a month to network and discuss different aspects of the academic career and/or life in Bergen. Visiting PhD students and interns are welcome to join our activities.
If you are interested to learn more about the Forum, or are interested to set up a similar PhD Forum in Oslo or Tromsø, please contact Vår Dundas <Var.Dundas@uib.no>.
Here is an event organized recently by the Forum for their members:
PhD-Forum event on Careers outside academia
A lot of people find out during their PhD that academia is not the right place for them. The world outside academia is full of opportunities, but we need to know them! Therefore, the PhD forum invited a handful of Bjerknes alumni to tell us about their perspectives and how they found their way after their PhD defense. After short presentations by our graduated guests, the PhD community had the chance to ask plenty of questions that covered many different aspects of job life. Do we need additional education to switch fields? Is the work-life balance different from working as a researcher? How does one find satisfaction without “eureka moments”? It was very motivating to see that most of the skills that we are learning during our PhD education – everything from project management, over creative development, to applied data analysis – can be useful in a variety of jobs outside academia. We are looking forward to the future, a bit more open-minded and certainly with new ideas!
The PhD Forum board
(Vår, Anna, Christian, Jakob, Mats, and Rebekka), (photos: Jakob Dörr)