Universities in Europe and worldwide are placing greater emphasis on the successful and prompt completion of PhD programs (Woolderink, Putnik, van der Boom, & Klabbers, 2015). The increasingly neoliberal climate puts pressure on PhD-supervision, contributing to risk of drop-out (Glorieux, Spruyt, Minnen, & van Tienoven). This study explores the experiences of previous and current PhD-candidates who are, or have been, part of aninterdisciplinary, interprofessional, and practice-near research school, PROFRES. The research school responds to demands for increased relevance through innovative and integrative approaches and methods for academic excellence. Its unique contribution is to engage future scholars, professional practitioners, educators, leaders and policymakers in interdisciplinary and interprofessional co-creation in practice-near doctoral research, pushing institutional, sectorial and disciplinary boundaries towards a progressive welfare future. The welfare state is a trademark of the European social model (Svallfors, 2013)PROFRES is specifically designed to offer a space for the reframing of professional education and research to meet current and future societal challenges in the welfare state. The challenges concern policy calls for increased interprofessionalism, and the need for innovation and collaboration in services (White Paper 30, 2019-2020), as well as the sustainability of the public welfare itself (White Paper 4, 2018-2019). The research school is funded by the Research Council of Norway and recruits 60 PhD candidates across Norway with projects relating to three major sectors of the Welfare State: healthcare, welfare, and education. Candidates are supervised by a multi-institutional, interprofessional, and interdisciplinary academic staff, whose role is to contribute with different disciplinary practices as well as to model the value of interdisciplinary practice itself. The study explores how the interdisciplinary context of the research school may provide added value to the process of becoming a researcher in terms of “identity work” (Kamler & Thomson, 2014): a vulnerable process characterised by uncertainty, anxiety, and possible threat of drop out (Kristoffersen, Frøysland Oftedal & Friberg, 2021).

Previous research in the field indicates the doctoral trajectory as an individual and often lonely process, with the increasing neoliberal “performance culture” (Hoggett, 2017) in academia adding to the pressure. The study’s research questions are What are the experiences and reflections of current and former candidates who have participated in the interdisciplinary research school, and what academic and personal significance, if any, do they attribute to their participation?The purpose of the study is to contribute to a discussion about the conditions necessary for supporting candidates in their path to becoming professionally relevant researchers in the fields of education, health, and welfare, so that future societal challenges in the welfare state can be met.

The study’s theoretical framing draws on sociocultural perspective on learning (Gjems, 2019; Wenger, 1998), with a focus on professionalisation and identity formation in communities of practice. Aimed at creating a broad and rich impression of the candidates’ experiences, data construction consists of a qualitative questionnaire, anchored in the study’s overarching research question. The open-ended questions invite reflections on the experiences and meaning of participating in PROFRES for doing a PhD, and whether, and if so, how, the interdisciplinary collaboration has been of influence on the work. Further questions tap understanding doctoral expectations, the meaning of the social community in the research school for doing a PhD, as well as the quality of the academic work. Questions tap topics such as what does ‘becoming a researcher’ mean to you, and about the experience of being a participant in PROFRES. We are also interested in the meaning of the research school for the candidates’ PhD-projects, includ

We expect the analysis to show central aspects in the research school’s supervision and teaching that may support candidates’ development towards becoming a researcher. Becoming a researcher is connected to what Kamler & Thomson (2014) identify as identity work in the process of gaining doctorateness. This can be connected to sociocultural perspectives on learning through participation in Communities of Practice (Wenger, 1998), where taking part in mutual meaning-making in the activities of the community of the research school may support important learning trajectories on the way to completion, both academically and personally, by developing an identity as a researcher. In line with Kristoffersen, Oftedal and Friberg (2019), the PhD-candidates at the multidisciplinary research school will have had to relinquish their previous professional status as a practitioner and may struggle at a perceived low level of competence upon entering academia. The study contributes to knowledge about how the interdisciplinary

Gjems, L. (2019). Lære gjennom praksisfellesskap i barnehage, skole og profesjonell virksomhet. In H. Bjørnsrud & L. Gjems (Eds.), Praksisfellsskap for læring og profesjonsutvikling (pp. 16-34). Universitetsforlaget. Kamler, B., & Thomson, P. (2014). Helping Doctoral Students Write. Pedagogies for supervision (2nd ed.). Routledge. Glorieux, A., Spruyt, B., Minnen, J., & van Tienoven, T. P. Calling it quits: a longitudinal study of factors associated with dropout among doctoral students. Studies in Continuing Education, 1-19. doi:10.1080/0158037X.2024.2314694 Kristoffersen, M., Oftedal, B. F. & Friberg, F. (2021). From a professional practitioner to a practice-based researcher: a qualitative study of Norwegian PhD candidates in the fields of health, welfare, and education. Studies in Continuing Education, 43(1): 16-32 10.1080/0158037X.2020.1732333 Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2015). Interviews. Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Inc. Svallfors, S. (2013