Future Faculty

The main target group for Future Faculty is early-career researchers without a tenure position, such as postdoctoral fellows or research assistants, but the network is open to and welcomes researchers at all early-career levels who want to improve the working conditions and career development opportunities for early-career researchers.

Early-career researcher are at a crucial stage of our professional careers. We need to build and strengthen our professional networks and secure future research funding, while at the same time navigating through temporary academic positions. Our network aims at providing a forum for networking and discussion, as well as support in the form of workshops that are of thematical relevance for early-career researchers and a mentoring programme. Previous activities organised by the network include workshops on research funding and how to communicate social impact in research funding applications. One of the key ongoing activities run by Future Faculty is the Mentoring Programme.

The steering group for Future Faculty consists of:

• Anna Baranowska-Rataj, Professor in Population Studies at Centre for Demographic and Aging Research (CEDAR), Faculty of Social Sciences, Umeå University.  She is a Arts advisor. She is coordinator of a project funded by the European Research Council and focusing on the health effects of unemployment on family members. Her involvement in Future Faculty is driven by interest in improving support for early-career researchers and equality of career opportunities within academia across gender and nationality backgrounds.
• Irina Mancheva, postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Political Science, at the Faculty of Social Sciences. In her research she focuses on environmental politics and natural resource governance and management.
• Ivanka Hristova, senior research assistant at the Environmental Archaeology Lab, at the Faculty of Arts. She is currently working as an archaeobotanist with plant macro-remains.
• Janina Priebe, senior research assistant in environmental history at the Faculty of Arts. Her research and teaching focuses on sustainability, environmental humanities, and Arctic history.
• Magdalena Sjöberg is a sociologist working as a post-doctor in the Institution for social work, Faculty of Social Science. She conducts research within child-and family studies, digitalization and social sustainable cities and living conditions. She mainly works multidisciplinary with gender perspective.
• Emelie Hane-Weijman Emelie is an assistant professor in economic geography at the department of geography at the Social Science faculty. Her research and teaching centers around issues of labour market development, skill matching and gendered mobilities after redundancies.