PRESS RELEASE

A Manifesto for Early Career Researchers

Strasbourg and Lisbon, September 26, 2022

The Covid pandemic and the general uncertainty we are experiencing are having a negative impact on early career researchers, adding to the precarious employment situation and often poor working conditions that they endure. It is time to act! We must motivate and support the next generation to engage in research, to build and consolidate our continent’s future, our capacity to rise up to the challenges,  promote peace, and live in a healthy world.

We are launching the present Manifesto to collect broad and robust support from key stakeholders as well as researchers at all stages of their career.
The Manifesto calls for:

  • Europe-wide monitoring of young researchers’ situation
  • Improving research careers and working conditions in Research Performing Organisations (RPOs), Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs) and in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)
  • Enhancing research careers in the third sector, including NGOs and governmental organisations
  • Involving national funding agencies in cooperation with the European Commission.

It has already been signed by the following organisations: Initiative for Science in Europe, Ciencia Viva, Young Academy Europe, Marie Curie Alumni Association, Eurodoc, League of European Research Universities, European Educational Research Association, National Association of Researchers in Science and Technology of Portugal, Junior Faculty Steering Group of the Karolinska Institute…

The Manifesto is an outcome of Jean-Pierre Bourguignon‘s call about Early Career Researchers in the Covid crisis; it was supported by Manuel Heitor, former Minister of R&I in Portugal, Initiative for Science in Europe and Ciencia Viva. With the participation of the CNRS, they co-organised the 4th Gago conference on science policy “Europe supporting young researchers in times of uncertainty” on June 13, 2022, where the Manifesto was adopted.


More information about the Manifesto.                                    Download the Manifesto.                                          Endorse the Manifesto


Contact: Monica Dietl, monica.dietl@initiative-se.eu


Initiative for Science in Europe is an independent platform bringing together learned societies and European scientific research organisations, operating throughout all disciplines and across all sectors, which played a decisive role in the creation of the European Research Council (ERC).
ISE has since then successfully advocated for a greater role for science in Europe, and effectively supports common causes essential for European scientific research communities, shaping European policies and stimulating the involvement of European scientists in the design and implementation of European science policy.
More about ISE.

Ciência Viva was created in Portugal in 1996 at the initiative of José Mariano Gago, then Minister of Science and Technology, as a government programme dedicated to the promotion of education and scientific culture.
In 1998 it became an Portuguese association of scientific institutions, adopted the name Ciência Viva – National Agency for Scientific and Technological Culture – and began an expansion that transformed it into a national organisation established with a network of 21 Science Centers spread throughout Portugal, which feeds a social movement in favour of science and scientific culture, with a European vocation, that involves hundreds of thousands of researchers and citizens, students and teachers, of all generations.

Ciência Viva organizes the Gago conferences on European Science Policy.

More about Ciência Viva.

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