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November and December were marked by our kick-off for UDs of our faculty. Reason enough to take a quick look back at our Talent Factory programme so far.

For those who did not already know: Talent Factory was the brainchild of Olga Gritsai following many years of close work with researchers at the Law Faculty and seeing a gap in support tailored to the needs to legal researchers – namely in how to make strategic career choices and build the necessary skills to support those choices.

This idea is now the fully fledged Talent Factory booster programme, through a collaboration between the Amsterdam Law Hub and the Amsterdam Law School. Following a successful pilot in 2021 with PhDs, the programme was expanded to UDs (professors or assistant professors).

For UDs, Talent Factory is broken down into four modules

  1. CV & Career Building – Focusing on different researcher profiles or types, key things to consider when identifying your own career path, how to develop consistency without closing doors, skills tips and tools to support work processes for researchers.
  2. Pitching & Networking – How to identify network gaps and strengthen them, communicating with the press, identifying your research profile theme, practical strategies for building strong pitches.
  3. Grant writing – Common grant writing pitfalls for legal researchers, an intro to consortium grants, knowledge utilization explained, how to build a strong story through the hourglass method.
  4. Methods & research design – Rethinking your approach strategically, how to develop a good research question, critically reflecting on the gap between questions and methods, an intro to key methods and a critical reflection on normative frameworks.

These took place over 4 afternoons between 1st November and 1st December. Each class was a combination of theory and internal discussion between participants stimulated by the three course organisers – Frances Singleton, Olga Gritsai, Michael Williams; alongside intervision with senior and highly successful peers.

It was really valuable to interact with peers from other depts with whom I had not previously spoken in great length. In that sense, the program has really expanded my connections within the faculty and my understanding of what everyone is doing. This also means that I know better who to talk to for collaborating on particular topics." (UD, December 2022)

What Talent Factory has meant for UDs so far

This year 18 UDs took part in the programme from every department in the Faculty. This meant for some researchers that it was the first opportunity to mix and make connections with peers from completely different disciplines. It strengthened bonds in the Faculty and increased opportunities for shared learning and collaboration. 

It was also the first time many UDs had the opportunity to talk closely with senior faculty members. Our intervision panels were attended by Benjamin van Rooij, Goran Sluijter, Agnes Akkerman, Rivke Jaffe, Gaby Lunasky and Nathalie Dijkman. This gave the chance to speak freely with highly successful researchers, or ask for opinions or career advice from those responsible for strategy as faculty Research Director.

The result is that Talent Factory has been responsible for horizontally strengthening bonds between fellow researchers across departments, but also vertically through intervision and across Faculties through interdisciplinary panels (with Rivke and Agnes).

On to the next episode

Moving forwards the Talent Factory will be expanded – by popular demand we will be running at least two UD level programmes per year. A scaled down programme (covering 2 modules: CV Building & Pitching and Networking), tailored to PhDs will now be required in order to receive your doctorate. It is eventually our ambition to see how Talent Factory can support senior Faculty academics and even how (or whether) other Faculties can benefit from the programme. Ideally with the shared goal of interdisciplinary learning and sharing of success stories.

In early 2023, we will update you on our new Talent Factory modules and components. Keep an eye on our Talent Factory page for the latest news, or contact Frances or Olga directly.