Funding: National Research, Development and Innovation Fund (NKFI K 116102)
Duration: 1 February 2016 – 31 January 2020 (47 months)

The research project aims to identify and evaluate different career models and the enabling and hindering factors determining career advancement in the field of Research & Development (R&D) in Hungary. Scientific careers will be analysed from the perspective of different patterns and inequalities in labour market opportunities, personal network building and work-life balance with special attention to gender, age, regions, sectors and STEM fields. More specifically, the research project aims to examine the career paths that are available for PhD holders in R&D. On the one hand, the research will uncover macro-level characteristics of the scientific career path of Hungarian PhD holders, in interplay with various social and career factors based on the mining and analysis of large-scale scientific metadata. On the other hand, it will explore individual determinants of career advancement focusing on two major factors affecting careers in R&D: network building and work-family life balance. From an organisational perspective, we aim to investigate employers in the R&D field and study how their workplace equality, diversity and human resource policies and practices affect gender equality, with a special attention on the STEM areas where gender balance is traditionally poor. Furthermore, we plan to assess the innovation related attitudes across sectors and reveal how innovation, CSR and gender equality might be linked in the R&D field. The current research is planned to be implemented with a mixed method research design.

Principal investigator (PI):

Katalin Tardos  Senior Research Fellow  Researcher profile page  Contact the PI