Correspondence: francesco.lissoni@u-bordeaux.fr

Summary of the Session’s Theme and Objectives

This special session will examine the careers of PhD holders through a spatial lens, with a particular focus on graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and the implications for innovation at both local and global levels (Chellaraj et al., 2008; Hunt, 2011). 

This topic is timely due to several interrelated developments:

• the growing integration of national academic labor markets across Europe, spurred by decades-long efforts to establish a European Research Area (ERA; Musselin, 2004);
• the rising significance of international students in many countries—particularly in STEM fields at the graduate level (Avenyo et al., 2015);
• and the adoption of selective immigration policies aimed at attracting highly skilled workers, often including targeted measures to improve the retention of foreign graduates (Czaika, 2018).

In addition, from a methodological standpoint, the most recent years have seen a substantial increase in the availability of data for undertaking such analyses. Most notably, many countries now publish extensive open-access repositories of Electronic Dissertations and Theses (EDTs), with detailed information on the graduates and their supervisors, which allow for both cross-national and longitudinal research. The session will therefore address also the key methodological challenges involved in linking EDT data to bibliometric and labor market datasets (Corsini et al., 2022; Bünstorf et al., 2023; Iversen, 2023; König, 2022).

List of Topics to Be Presented in the Special Session

• The regional and international mobility of STEM PhD holders, and its determinants (spatial, institutional, disciplinary, and organizational)
• The local innovation impact of  STEM PhD holders, in both the countries or regions of destination and those of origin
• The national academic and non-academic labour markets for STEM PhD holders, and their roles in shaping mobility
• The integration of the European academic and non-academic labour markets for STEM PhD holders
• Gender and ethnic bias in STEM PhD holders’ careers and mobility
• Immigration policies and the cross-border mobility of STEM PhD holders
• EDT data: creation and harmonization issues
• EDT data linkage to bibliometric, labour market, and social network data

Key References

Avenyo, E. K., Chien, C.-L., Hollanders, H., Marins, L., Schaaper, M., & Verspagen, B. (2015). Tracking trends in innovation and mobility. In UNESCO science report: Towards 2030. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Bünstorf, G., König, J., & Otto, A. (2023). Expansion of doctoral training and doctorate recipients’ labour market outcomes: Evidence from German register data. Studies in Higher Education, 48(8), 1216–1242.

Chellaraj, G., Maskus, K. E., & Mattoo, A. (2008). The contribution of international graduate students to US innovation. Review of International Economics, 16(3), 444–462.

Corsini, A., Pezzoni, M., & Visentin, F. (2022). What makes a productive Ph.D. student? Research Policy, 51(10), 104561.
Czaika, M. (Ed.). (2018). High-skilled migration: Drivers and policies. Oxford University Press.

Hunt, J. (2011). Which immigrants are most innovative and entrepreneurial? Distinctions by entry visa. Journal of Labor Economics, 29(3), 417–457.
Iversen, E. J. (2023). Policy brief, Issue 13. How to monitor and analyse the labour-market placement of trained PhDs using linked datasets (v. 1). Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8004816

König, J. (2022). Postdoctoral employment and future non-academic career prospects. PLOS ONE, 17(12), e0278091.

Musselin, C. (2004). Towards a European academic labour market? Some lessons drawn from empirical studies on academic mobility. Higher Education, 48(1), 55–78.