EPAR stands up for the rights and interests of PhD students, as well as junior researchers and other scholars at Erasmus University. A university is a very diverse organisation with many different policies in place and often deviating regulations between faculties. University staff also consist of people from very different backgrounds and cultures. This complexity may sometimes lead to friction between personnel. Internal or external PhD students, visiting scholars from abroad and other junior staff are often the victim of this complexity, as they are a vulnerable group with little influence. At EPAR, we strive to directly or indirectly help people to overcome or deal with undesirable situations or harmful events that have transpired.
While EPAR cannot usually solve your problem immediately, we can at least direct you to people who can help you further as well as offer you motivational and moral support where necessary. If you did not do so already, depending on your type of situation, please first consider contacting your faculty’s PhD council and/or graduate school. You can also have a talk with your faculty representative, who is also part of the EPAR Board. Also keep in mind that the university employs confidential counsellors.
Problems you may be experiencing which you want to tell others about can be pertaining to yourself, but you may also want to take action when you aledgedly notice general violations of lawful behaviour in other people’s situations (but make sure not to name them without their approval). Among other things, some examples of disconcerting situations people come to us with are:
- Misconduct by supervisors or other colleagues
- Contractual issues or alleged (financial) exploitation
- Disagreements or conflicts with (senior) staff members
- Supervision issues
- Poor working relationships or atmosphere
- Sexual harassment
- Emotional harassment
If you experience any of these or similar matters, it is important to talk with others about this. After you considered contacting the faculty representatives, the faculty councils and the university counsellors, you can also contact EPAR via the contact form or by e-mail. If you think that your problem is something that EPAR needs to know about, please contact us even if you already have seen or talked to others about it or if the problem is solved already. That way we can keep track of such issues and possibly prevent it from happening to others in the future.
We also provide the option, below, to contact us anonymously. Regardless of whether you contact us anonymously or not, the only people who can read your message are EPAR’s current board members. We will never share your story with anyone else without your permission, neither will we make anything you send us public without your approval. We have a policy to delete your messages from our systems, especially if it contains particularly sensitive information. If you prefer you can also make an appointment with or send an e-mail to one of our board members directly.
Note that while we are very glad that you take the effort to contact us with your story, we cannot reply to you if you do not provide an e-mail address via the form below, meaning we cannot ask you for clarification or follow up with additional questions. Of course we will consider your situation and keep it in mind in our talks with different institutions. That way we can help you indirectly. However, to give us the possibility to contact you, please provide an e-mail address (this can also be an anonymous one).
If you do not provide a means to contact you, please explain in your message whether we have your permission to contact others about your situation or what you would like us to do. Otherwise, we cannot do much. We are in touch with many university departments, the deans and the rector magnificus, as well as the media (such as Erasmus Magazine) to improve things for you and others with similar problems.
Anonymous Contact Form