Seminar is one of the delivery methods typically available in the European high education systems. Other mechanisms are lecture or practical sessions, guest lectures, workshops, projects, tutoring, etc. (Ponnusamy & Pandurangan, 2014: 27). It usually encompasses the purpose of bringing together small groups for recurring meetings, focusing on particular subjects, sometimes through a formal presentation of research, and directed by a seminar leader or instructor. The term finds some variation in the European space, it may refer to a large lecture course, or to a university class that includes a term paper or project, as opposed to lecture class (e.g., Germany).

It is in fact a well-known term in the higher education context, and although in practice it corresponds to different pedagogical realities, leading from the typical ex cathedra lecture up to student-managed discussions about their own research, its use was naturalized in such a way that we have lost track of its origin.

This paper presents the seminar as an experienced model for the advanced training of junior researchers held by both authors. As teachers and researchers, both are responsible for seminar leadership and sought to discuss their pedagogical practices in the light of this genealogy.

The origin of the seminar can take us further into the past, but essentially the modern seminary lies in the experience tackled in the German territories of the beginning of the 18^th century (Halle and Göttingen) and spread from the foundations of the University of Berlin in 1810, by Wilhelm von Humboldt. One can today critically claim that Humboldt was not fully humboldtian (Josephson, Karlsohn, & Östling, 2014), but the pedagogical model of the seminar was diffused from a fundamental premise embraced by the German philosopher. He remains the main responsible by the implementation of the concept of the fusion of teaching and research in the University of Berlim (Anderson, 2003: 3). Initially, the seminar was based on the experience of philology seminars, but during the 19th century seminars in various disciplinary areas emerged (Clark, 2007).

Thus, around 1860, German universities became a point of attraction for foreigners. Both students and reformers sought to improve the pedagogical model of higher education in their countries by experiencing the German seminars. Literature testifies that the research seminars became a way of deepening the relation between teacher and student, while aiming at the production of original knowledge (Waquet, 2003). It became the nest of a ‘science of research’ (Clark, 1989: 120)

It is not, however, only the German 18^th century tradition that can stand for the modelling of the European university space. The increasing intrusion of political and economic values in German research and the barrier posed by two world wars seems to have shifted the idea of a seminary as a practice of pedagogical practices and Germany as model of good practices. The German seminar model spread during the 19^th century but it emerged elsewhere leaving only a vague notion of where it came from. National backgrounds and especially the local writing traditions within the European space turned into different national models and pratices for the research seminars (Kruse, 2013).  

Ou purpose is firstly to map and describe the seminar models and their main geographical and pedagogical changes. Secondly, given the wide range of experiences referred to as seminars, we intend to establish a typology, based on an analysis of the types of relationship proposed between reading and writing in the seminar setting. In other words, we aim at mapping the posibilities of achievement of original work, re-joining the question how we became researchers and what does it take to train junior researchers.

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