METEOR Workshop “Transversal Skills at Doctoral Education” for EDUPSY-Doc Summer School 2026

The session, led by Prof. Terhi Nokkala, Dr. Josephine Lau, and Dr. Abdul Kadir Khan, brought together doctoral researchers to explore the growing importance of transversal skills in an evolving academic and professional landscape.

Addressing the Skills Gap in Doctoral Education

The workshop highlighted a key challenge facing doctoral education today: the mismatch between skills developed in academia and those required in non-academic careers. Doctoral education needs to shift towards a more collaborative, interdisciplinary, and societally engaged approach. This transition aligns closely with METEOR’s vision of equipping early-career researchers with the transversal skills needed to address complex societal challenges. 

Prof. Terhi Nokkala (left) from the Finnish Institute for Educational Research and Dr. Abdul Kadir Khan (right) from the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy. 

METEOR Training Resources for Doctoral and Early Career Researchers are introduced to the participants.

Learning Through Practice in the Community 

A central feature of the workshop was a hands-on group exercise designed to simulate real-world policy evaluation work. Doctoral researchers were tasked with responding to a fictional tender issued by the Ministry of Education and Culture. 

Dr. Josephine Lau (left) introduces the task for our participants, who would be role-playing as experts and consultants for the fictional tender call. 

Working in teams, participants developed research proposals that addressed educational, social, economic, and political implications of a fictional policy change. The exercise required participants to integrate methodological design, stakeholder engagement, risk management, and budgeting—mirroring the complexity of real policy consultancy projects. In engaging in this exercise, the participants had to draw from a number transversal skills such as project management, collaborative teamwork and communication skills. 

The active engagement and positive feedback from participants underscore the relevance of transversal skills training in doctoral programmes. METEOR project will continue to develop and share training resources that support innovative pedagogies and enhance doctoral researchers’ career readiness in JYU and beyond. 

For more information, please contact Prof. Terhi Nokkala (terhi.p.nokkala@jyu.fi) and Dr. Josephine Lau (josephine.pw.lau@jyu.fi).