The PhD, Tal-Qroqq and campus fiction

Abstract

It is a great pleasure for me to write the foreword to the publication of the Doctoral School’s first annual lecture delivered by Professor Ivan Callus on the occasion of the School’s Doctoral Symposium held for the first time at the University of Malta’s Valletta Campus on 1 March 2019. The Doctoral School’s Annual Lecture is intended to invite discussion and reflection on doctoral education. The changes brought about by the signing of the Bologna Declaration twenty years ago have seen the implementation right across Europe of a series of reforms that affect the role of the type of training that is given to PhD students over and above producing research to the highest standards, presented as a thesis and defended in front of peers. In addition to preparing for an academic career, graduates are increasingly following non-academic career paths in a knowledge-based society that relies on highly qualified staff. Doctoral schools and similar structures have been set up with the intent of developing programmes that can provide ancillary training in transversal skills and competences, besides addressing strategic priorities including gender equality, open access/open science, research integrity, and the health/wellbeing of doctoral researchers. These European reforms were never enforced by law or imposed top down but emerged and evolved from introspection at the institutional level and the exchange of practices between universities at fora such as the EUA’s Council for Doctoral Education. It is this type of introspection that is argued for in the keynote address being published in this booklet. With his masterly and engaging presentation, Prof. Callus has set a high standard for those who will follow him, bringing to bear on the subject his experience in doctoral supervision, examination and, not least, administration having served on the Faculty of Art’s Doctoral Committee for many years. As the University looks towards the future with great confidence, this being the 250th anniversary of its re-foundation, it is hoped that this annual event becomes a cherished tradition of the University of Malta.