Postgrad group

The Language campus Postgrad group is a community of early career researchers that organizes various activities for supporting community building, research work and professional development. The activities include for example writing retreats, reading circle meetings, mentoring and an annual mini-conference called Spring school. Some activities are organized online and others on campus. More information on the activities can be found in the monthly newsletter.

The idea of writing retreats is to work in the spirit of peer support and peer pressure. The meetings are called writing retreats, but you can work on anything you are working on at the moment: reading, transcribing, writing. The meetings start by sharing what participants are going to work on that day. The day ends with reflections on how everything went. The meetings take place every week: on Mondays (odd-numbered weeks), or Fridays (even-numbered weeks). We recommend the meetings especially for PhD candidates and early career researchers. They are also a good opportunity to meet other early career researchers.

The reading circle meetings are aimed at doctoral students in particular. The idea is to choose a classic text from our broad field and get together in an informal setting to share our thoughts. The reading circle serves both those who are already familiar with the texts/authors discussed, but also and especially those/us, who find their lists of "authors I should have read x years ago but didn't have time" growing longer. Instead of recent research, we focus on classic texts that can sometimes be difficult to approach on your own. The texts are generally in English but other languages can be used in the meetings as well.

Peer and group mentoring is aimed at supporting the thesis-writing process at different stages of the PhD journey rather than concentrating on the content of PhD thesis as such. Mentoring meetings are confidential and the topics discussed are chosen according to the participants’ needs. Groups meet according to their own schedules.

The purpose of the Spring school is to provide especially early-stage PhD students with a supportive and friendly environment for practicing their presentation skills. University staff members are recruited to comment and give constructive feedback on the presentations. Depending on the annually changing theme, sometimes expert talks, workshops or panel discussions are also included in the program. The Spring school is a great opportunity to connect with other PhD researchers and learn about their research.
Spring 2023 Spring school event page.

The Postgrad group has a Teams channel, come and join us! Here's the link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/team/19%3a1e441aedec0345ef9235bca3584c19cd%40thread.tacv2/conversations?groupId=56236ea6-f07c-4894-a350-504c68e79c78&tenantId=e9662d58-caa4-4bc1-b138-c8b1acab5a11

For more information, contact coordinator Päivi Iikkanen (paivi.i.iikkanen@jyu.fi).