Social Sciences and Humanities needs more of your attention

by Ivana Diaz Fernández
2 min read Mar 29, 2018
Dear all, by the pool of the MCAA 15.8% of registered Fellows are from Social Sciences and Humanities (Economics included as it is a Social Sciences) more than for example field in Chemistry (just for comparison) and still in my opinion we have to fight for any opportunity to be heard and accepted. I am grateful for the previous and current MCAA Board support about SSH, as last year we had a Workshop at the General Assembly and at the ESOF there is a panel about the SSH accepted in the Career panel. But, just in general I would like to appoint that the highest rate of unemployment and the lowest funding possibility is indeed in the Social Sciences and Humanities! For example, to give you an idea, I just saw that 634 people applied for a temporary position at REA (Research European Agency) for: - Research Programme Administrators in Biology, Environment and Geoscience and/or Satellite imagery, Life Sciences while 1154 (!) applied for the Administration position in Social Sciences, Humanities and Economics. So, please do consider to contact me at: nina.diaz.fernandez@gmail.com if you are former or current Fellow in Social Sciences and Humanities or you would like to give us support for a better vocal platform. Kind regards, Nina

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Brian Cahill
Apr 05, 2018

Hi Nina,

Your comment about the REA is interesting. Can I relativise it a little bit? Many more people in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences are aware that such career choices exist. Most people from the natural sciences and engineering don't even consider such options.

I was at the German Foreign Office's recent Career Fair for careers in International Organisations and most of those employers were actively looking for people from the Social Sciences (mostly international affairs, politics, law, finance, economics and languages).

  1. The presentation about EU Careers listed the backgrounds that they were looking for and they didn't mention the natural sciences or engineering. On being asked they admitted there were certain postions were a technical background would be a big advantage.
  2. The representative from the World Health Organisation said that they didn't necessarily need virologists to sit in an office in Geneva handling their work fighting Ebola. The most they have to do is send a sample form the affected region to a lab in Switzerland or Germany, who does the scientific work: virologists are needed doing the lab work in their partners lab. He wouldn't rule out hiring medical doctors or life scientists but that background is not necessary. 

There will probably be a feature in the newsletter about making career in international organisations. This option is often more relevant foir those from HSS but I'm sure we have many people from the Natural Sciences and Engineering, who would like to apply for such positions, particularly at the REA if there is an open call next year.

Warm regards,

Brian