The Making of Early Career Higher Education Researchers

An Open-Ended Experiment in Community Building

The article draws attention to the value of informal scholarly communities for early-career researchers in higher education studies. To this end, we provide a narrative reflection on the past, present, and future of the Early Career Higher Education Researchers (ECHER) network. ECHER was established in 2011 and has since grown into a widely known international network of early-career scholars in higher education studies. Given its independent, informal, loosely structured, and voluntary character, we conceptualise it as an open-ended experiment in community building. We discuss the advantages, disadvantages, and challenges which accompany the said experiment.

Keywords: community building, doctoral researchers, early-career researchers, ECHER, higher education research

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36197/INT.1-2021.05