In the course of their careers, emerging researchers will usually experience multiple transitions: they become doctoral students, they become a member of a research project, they start teaching university courses and (last but not least) they receive the doctorate, making them fully approved scientists. All these transitions play an important role in shaping the trajectories of emerging researchers. But most of these transitions are in turn shaped by academic organizations and the institutional structures of the academic field (Bourdieu 1988), because they influence the everyday practice of the emerging researchers and thus provide opportunities as well as constraints for learning processes and academic socialization. Grounded on the analytical perspective of Bourdieus´ praxeology, the paper discusses the relevance of examining transitions and trajectories in academic careers employing the concept of “trajectoire” (Bourdieu 1979). In our current research project “Trajectories in the Academic Field” we use this concept to examine career paths as long-term and path-dependent, socio-biographical processes. Empirically we examine such “trajectoires” in two research fields, namely the cognitive neurosciences and the empirical educational research applying a qualitative multi-method approach (interviews, focus groups and document analysis). In our contribution we will focus on the implications of the theoretical framework of Bourdieu’s practice theory and specifically the concept “trajectoire” for examining careers in the academic field. Based on empirical evidence gained from our research project, we will show how this concept can be used to systematically connect transitions and trajectories, individuals and organizations, habitual and institutional structures in a multi-method-approach to academic careers.

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