Qualification Programme

Qualification Programme

Our RTG Qualification Programme aims at enabling doctoral researchers to complete excellent dissertation projects within 48 months and qualify for high-profile future careers in academia, politics, NGOs, industry and other sectors. 

The mandatory part of the RTG training programme offers specialized courses tailored to the RTG research programme. These courses will be organized exclusively for RTG doctoral researchers.

The mandatory part consists of

• the RTG Research Class (RC) which runs throughout 4 semesters. In the research class, doctoral researchers present and discuss issues that arise during the different stages of their research.
• the RTG Writing Club (WC), where from the 5th semester onwards, chapter and article drafts and revisions are discussed and developed further.
• the Theory Classes (TCs) in which they are introduced to the relevant theoretical approaches in the study of cross-border labour markets from different disciplinary angles. 
• the Research Design and Epistemology Class (RDEC), in which the doctoral researchers reflect on different epistemologies and methodological approaches for the research on transnational labour markets. 
• the RTG Lecture Series (LS), in which (international) guests and Mercator Fellows present and discuss their research with the doctoral researchers, postdocs and PIs. 
• a Research Ethics and the Principles of ‘Good Scientific Practice’ Workshop (EthC), where the doctoral researchers are introduced to the standards of research ethics.
• a Data Management Course (DMC), where the doctoral researchers are introduced to the standards of data management.

Within the optional part of the training programme, doctoral researchers collect further credit points by selecting courses or activities such as more specialized theory or methods classes or other seminars, taking transferable skills courses (examples being ‘Academic Writing’, ‘How to get published in an international journal’, ‘Presentation Skills’.