European Postdoc Association

Dear Joao,

This is an interesting question. The main similar Europe-wide organisation in existence is Eurodoc, which is an organisation representing doctoral candidates and junior researchers. It is set up on the basis of independent national organisations becoming members of Eurodoc: http://eurodoc.net/members/. Many of these national organisations, for example, Thesis in Germany, represent both doctoral candidates and postdocs and would be the same organisations that you would need to contact. On the other hand, the Eurodoc member for Sweden is the subgroup of the national union of students that represents PhD students. I don't know if this organisation represents postdocs. Another representative body in Germany represents all scientific personnel from professors and lecturers to junior scientists and PhD students.

The issue many of our members might have with these national organisations is that their main work is focussed on national politics and takes place in the national language of the country in which they are based. This is probably the best way for these organisations to represent their members at a national level. MCAA retains the niche of representing mobile researchers.

In most of these various organisations, postdocs are a side issue. This reflects the postdoc stage traditionally having been a transitionary period between PhD and a permanent job at a higher-level of responsibility. Nowadays scientists are spending much longer as postdocs than they were originally PhD students.

If you want, I could put you in touch with some people at Eurodoc. They have survived as an organisation for 15 years and certainly have some insight into the work necessary to found a postdoc association and have a large overlap with the proposed organisation.

Warm regards,

Brian

Dear Brian,

That would be great. I'm sure we can benefit a lot from their experience and maybe even their infrastructure.

Best regards,

João