The EUA Council for Doctoral Education (EUA-CDE) was launched in 2008 at the initiative of the European University Association, responding to a growing interest in doctoral education and research training in Europe. An integral part of the European University Association, it is now the largest European network in this field, covering more than 260 universities and institutions working on issues related to doctoral education and research training in 36 countries.
Since its creation, EUA-CDE has been leading the transformation and strengthening of doctoral education in Europe. Building on the outcomes of EUA’s work on doctoral programmes and research careers, EUA-CDE has been the driving force behind the implementation of the Salzburg Principles and Recommendations and the promotion of doctoral education as the main intersection between the European higher education and research.
Chair of the EUA-CDE Steering Committee, Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom and Professor of Science and Technology Policy and Management in the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research at the Alliance Manchester Business School. Since 2010 he has been responsible for the university’s research strategy and its implementation, doctoral training, and for business engagement and commercialisation activities, as well as general executive duties. He continues to be active in research and policy advice to governments and business with his current work on innovation management, public procurement and innovation and evaluation of the national demonstrator project for Internet of Things (CityVerve). In 2011 he was elected to the Academia Europaea.
Head of the Doctoral School of the University of Ljubljana (UL), Slovenia since January 2015. She was Vice-Dean for postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, UL (2007-2011). Professor Kanjuo Mrčela teaches sociology of work and economic sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana.
Professor Martine Rahier was granted a professorship by the Swiss National Science Foundation in 1988 and became a Professor of Entomology and Animal Ecology at the University of Neuchâtel in 1994. She served as rector of the University of Neuchâtel from 2008 to 2016. She was a member of the Rectors’ Conference of Swiss Universities (2008-2016) and president (2013-2015) of the “swissuniversities”. She has been member of the German Accreditation Council since 2013, Vice-President of European University Association since 2015 and a member of the Council of the Agency for Quality Assurance and Accreditation Austria since 2017.
Professor of Physics at Aix-Marseille University (AMU), France. Since September 2015 he is Director of the Doctoral College which federates the 12 AMU Doctoral Schools. He is strongly involved in the doctoral education at AMU and from 2012 to 2015 was Director of the Doctoral School of Physics. From 2013 to 2015, he was also "Chargé de mission" to the research Vice-President for relations with AMU research structures.
Full professor of informatics and mathematics at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany, where he holds the Scientific Computing chair in TUM’s Informatics Department. From 2010 to 2013, Bungartz was Dean of Academic Affairs of his department, and since 2013, he has served as both Dean of Informatics and TUM Graduate Dean, heading the TUM Graduate School.
Professor Barbara Dooley is Dean of Graduate Studies and Deputy Registrar at University College Dublin. She provides support to the Registrar and Deputy President on enhancing the student experience and ensuring the delivery of the university strategy in education. As Dean of Graduate Studies, Professor Dooley works with her team to align UCD’s structured PhD with the National Framework for Doctoral Education to ensure that robust quality assurance is integral to UCD’s doctoral education.
Paolo Biscari is Full Professor in Condensed Matter Physics at the Department of Physics of the Polytechnic University of Milan. He earned his doctorate in Physics in 1993 at Pisa, at the Scuola Normale Superiore. In recent years, his professional life of Paolo Biscari has focused on doctoral education and the organization of doctoral studies. In 2008 he contributed to create, and then became the Head of, the Doctoral Programme in Mathematical Models and Methods in Engineering. He then moved to the Doctoral School, the administrative body which coordinates the research of all the Polytechnic University of Milan doctoral candidates. He has been a member of the Steering Committee and, since January 2016, he serves the Doctoral School as Dean. In 2017 he also became an elected member of the Academic Senate, the political body addressing the strategies of Polytechnic University of Milan.
Research Director of the Doctoral School at Tampere University (2011-), the second biggest university in Finland. She received her PhD in social science from Loughborough University, UK in 2001, and is adjunct professor in the University of Helsinki. Her areas of expertise include social science methodology, ageism, and inclusion and exclusion in working life. She has been strongly engaged with doctoral education on local, national and international levels for the past 15 years, most recently with the EU-funded DocEnhance project. As head of the university-level doctoral school in Tampere, she works closely with the 23 doctoral programmes, teaches methodology, and collaborates with other doctoral schools in Finland and internationally.
Professor Andrei Terian-Dan is Vice-Rector for Research, Innovation and Internationalisation at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania (2020–). As of 2016, he is a member of the National Council for Attesting Academic Titles, Degrees, and Certificates (CNATDCU), the accreditation body for doctoral studies in Romania. His area of expertise includes the history of modern Romanian literature, cultural theory, comparative and world literature. He is Principal Investigator of the ERC Consolidator Grant TRANSHIROL (“A Transnational History of Romanian Literature”).
Irma Grdzelidze is Head of Quality Assurance Service at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, the first and the biggest university of Georgia. Dr. Grdzelidze is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. She is the founder and the chair of Quality Assurance Thematic Working Group of Georgia. Dr. Grdzelidze is a member of Advisory Board for Georgian NQF. Since 2015, she has been active as a Higher Education Reform Expert in the EU-funded SPHERE initiative.