Exploring Your Career Potential After the PhD: Review Your Professional Situation and Imagine Your Potential Next Steps, in a Game-Based and Design-Thinking Environment (212)

27 February 2026

Dr Verity Elston

An opportunity for doctoral candidates to review their current situation and how they could imagine their next career steps.

The workshop builds on an initial reflection on your current strengths and resources and with that as a base, supports you in exploring where and how you might reconfigure/re-imagine your research interests in all the possible paths towards positive impact beyond the academic career.

The goal throughout is to remain open, positive and inclusive, to support all participants, no matter their academic background. Participants will be encouraged to take into account all aspects of their strengths and experience – their scientific research, their side-projects, their parallel interests – and to think a little out of the box to understand how their expertise and interests could be reconfigured in different contexts. 

We will cover: 

• Reviewing your professional interests and motivations 
• Clarifying your qualities and skills, and how your research could lead towards a positive impact on society 
• Exploring the careers of other doctorate holders and expanding the possibilities 
• Identifying concrete paths beyond the academic career in a logicial continuity of your current interests 

University of Lausanne

Date: Friday 27th February 2026

Schedule: 9h00-17h30

Place: University of Lausanne

Trainer:

Director of Portfolio Formation Sàrl and Co-Director of the University of Lausanne Graduate Campus, Dr Verity Elston was previously director of the CUSO Transversal Programme and Deputy to the Dean of the EPFL Doctoral School. She has broad professional experience in the private and public sectors in several countries, including in middle- and high-level recruitment. She holds a doctorate in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago, the FSEA certificate in adult education, the ACC certificate in integral coaching and is a certified TRIMA practitioner. She conducts ongoing qualitative and quantitative research and analysis on the career paths of doctorate holders in Switzerland and in Europe.

Participants are eligible for reimbursement of incurred travel expenses by train between the city of their university and the location of the workshop (half-fare card, 2nd class).

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