Webinar Recording

3 February 2025

Memories of the 2005 Bologna Seminar and the emergence of the Salzburg Principles

It is 2005. In Europe’s universities, the Bologna Process has slowly gained momentum. The focus was still on Bachelor’s and Master’s degree courses. But the Berlin Communiqué of 2003 widened this focus, highlighting the European Higher Education Area and the European Research Area as two pillars of the knowledge society, emphasising the importance of research as an integral part of higher education across Europe, and recognising the need to go beyond the current focus on two main cycles of higher education and to include doctorates as a third cycle in the Bologna framework. Exactly 20 years ago, the Seminar on Doctoral Programmes for the European Knowledge Society was held in February 2005 to discuss the way forward. It was jointly organised by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the European University Association. The EUA, in particular, had done important preparatory work with the pilot project on doctoral programmes in 2004/2005. The topic was clearly very timely. The seminar was well attended, with 270 participants from 35 countries and partner organisations.

We would like to talk to two people who were there at the time and look back with them at the seminar and its impact. Georg Winckler, then Rector of the University of Vienna and shortly afterwards elected President of the EUA, was one of the driving forces behind the seminar and played a key role in formulating the Salzburg principles. Melita Kovacevic attended the Salzburg meeting as an interested participant. Later she went on to devote a considerable part of her academic career to the reform of doctoral education in various capacities.

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