Europe Is Reinventing Research Careers. What Does It Mean for Australia?
adela Jiroudkova | July 2026
When I first began working in research management, most conversations were about funding. How do we secure more grants? How do we improve success rates? How do we attract excellent researchers? More than a decade later, I find myself having very different conversations with university leaders. We talk about career pathways, leadership, mentoring, supervision and researcher development.
This shift reflects something much bigger than a new funding programme or another European policy initiative. Europe is gradually changing the way it thinks about research careers.
Photo by Louis Reed on Unsplash
From funding excellence to building excellence
For many years, European universities invested heavily in research infrastructure, laboratories and competitive funding schemes. These investments transformed the research landscape. But funding alone does not create research excellence. Excellent researchers do not emerge by accident. They are developed, supported and retained by institutions that invest deliberately in their people.
Throughout my career, I have become increasingly interested in the institutional conditions behind individual success. When working with university leadership, I rarely begin by asking how many proposals an institution submits or how many training courses it offers.
Instead, I ask different questions.
Can talented researchers see a credible path towards independence?
Do early-career researchers receive the mentoring they need?
Are principal investigators prepared not only to conduct outstanding science, but also to lead people, supervise researchers and build successful teams?
For me, research strategy has never been only about funding. It is about creating an environment in which talented people can flourish.
ResearchComp: making invisible expectations visible
One of the most interesting developments I have encountered in recent years is ResearchComp, the European Competence Framework for Researchers. At first, I assumed it might become another framework that institutions would politely acknowledge but rarely use. Instead, I found something quite different.
ResearchComp provides universities with a common language for discussing researcher development. It recognises that today’s researchers need far more than disciplinary expertise. They collaborate internationally, supervise students, manage projects, communicate with different audiences, build partnerships, engage with industry and society, and increasingly lead diverse teams.
Anyone working at universities knows these expectations already exist. The problem is that they have often remained invisible. Throughout my work with researchers and university leaders, I have repeatedly seen early-career researchers expected to acquire these capabilities simply through experience, observation and persistence. Some were fortunate enough to have excellent supervisors and mentors. Others developed them through trial and error. Many simply assumed that becoming a successful researcher meant publishing more papers.
ResearchComp changes the conversation.
Instead of treating these capabilities as optional extras, it recognises them as integral parts of a modern research career. Perhaps more importantly, it gives institutions permission to discuss researcher development in a much more structured way. Rather than asking what training should be offered next semester, universities can begin asking a more strategic question: What capabilities should researchers develop at different stages of their careers, and how can institutions support that journey?
That is a fundamentally different conversation.
Why this matters beyond Europe
Australia has an outstanding higher education system and does not need to replicate European initiatives. But the questions Europe is asking are relevant everywhere.
How explicitly do universities define what successful researchers should be able to do?
How intentionally do they prepare researchers for leadership, supervision and collaboration?
How much of researcher development is planned, and how much is simply left to chance?
ResearchComp should not be viewed as another competency checklist. Its real contribution is that it shifts the conversation from training activities to career development. It encourages universities to think less about individual workshops and more about the long-term growth of researchers as professionals.
Looking ahead
I no longer believe that the greatest challenge facing universities is finding talented researchers. Universities are full of talented people. The real challenge is creating environments in which that talent can develop into sustained research leadership.
ResearchComp is not a magic solution, nor is it a framework that every institution should adopt unchanged. But it reflects a way of thinking that I find increasingly compelling. Research excellence is not simply something we fund. It is something we deliberately develop.
