EUTOPIA Young Leaders Academy Launches Survey on Academic Resources and Networks

Are you an academic at an EUTOPIA university? If yes, please take a few minutes to complete this anonymous survey. The study aims to explore what resources academics value in their professional lives and how key connections enable or hinder access to these valued resources.

The survey can be accessed at this link https://warwick.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3O6IBeImlYtAMqa

Click on the link to go straight to the survey, which will take approximately 15 minutes or keep reading to find out more about how the survey aims to better understand power dynamics in academia

The EUTOPIA Young Leaders Academy

The EUTOPIA alliance empowers universities to face today’s challenges and embrace the transition to a new world by uniting diverse institutions, sparking innovation, and building a shared vision for the future of higher education. Part of the EUTOPIA Alliance, the EUTOPIA Young Leaders Academy (YLA) is a programme that brings together talented students from across the EUTOPIA alliance universities to develop their leadership skills, foster intercultural collaboration, and address global challenges through innovative, community-driven projects.

Traditionally, YLA fellows in each cohort have been tasked with organising some events directed to the EUTOPIA YA community and beyond. Cohort 2 (2023-2025), which includes 20 young scholars from over 15 different academic disciplines, has decided to mark the end of their EUTOPIA YLA fellowship with the organisation of a symposium that will take place during the upcoming EUTOPIA Week in Venice, Italy, on December 3, 2025. Hosted at the Warwick Venice Centre, the symposium is a joint effort of all the cohort-2 members and is titled “Power Dynamics in Academia”.

The ‘Power Dynamics in Academia’ symposium during the Venice EUTOPIA Week

 “When we started discussing the symposium topic, we all felt that it should be something that would feel relevant and relatable to everyone, regardless of their academic background and research field,” said one of the Cohort 2 members when asked about how the group agreed on the topic. They continued, “All the activities planned for us and the time spent together have created a safe space for discussion. It helped us retrace the paths that led us to academia and to make us more keenly aware of our responsibilities within a system that we are both a part of and that we will also continue to shape at the same time. A discussion about the power dynamics in academia was a logical next step”.

The symposium takes a holistic, scientific approach to address the issue of power, aiming to create a space in which the systems and structures of power in academia can be addressed openly and in a future-oriented manner. The event features keynote speakers from EUTOPIA partner universities and beyond, and adopts an innovative, interactive framework. Artistic interventions and community-based facilitation will accompany the scientific components, engaging participants in a collective reflection. 

Survey on power dynamics in academia

Another highlight of the symposium is the presentation of the results of the study that has been developed by fellows of YLA cohort 2, whose data collection will start on Monday, 6th of October 2025 via the survey link that you may find at the beginning and end of this page. The aim of the survey is to explore the dynamics of power across 11 participating institutions in EUTOPIA. The questionnaire will collect the anonymous experiences of academics of all ages and across academic fields and positions. The survey is anonymous and it has received ethical approval from Stellenbosch University.  All academic personnel employed at any of the following member institutions of the EUTOPIA alliance are warmly invited to participate in the questionnaire: Babeș-Bolyai University (Romania), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy), CY Cergy Paris Université (France), Technische Universität Dresden (Germany), University of Gothenburg (Sweden), University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), NOVA University Lisbon (Portugal), Pompeu Fabra University (Spain), and the University of Warwick (United Kingdom) and the global partner Stellenbosch University (South Africa).

While rooted in the same motivations that spurred the organisation of the symposium, the survey is framed within a specific literature regarding the mapping of power. According to extant research, academic life has long been shaped by complex organisational dynamics in which authority, influence, and access to opportunities are not always determined by formal rank. Instead, the ability to access and control valued resources—whether professional opportunities, research support, or collegial ties—plays a central role in shaping careers. Recent work by Battilana and Casciaro (2021) frames power as relational and context-dependent, rooted in what people value and in how others can facilitate or block access to those resources. This perspective provides a useful lens for examining higher education, where the formal hierarchy of positions coexists with informal practices, shifting networks, and unwritten rules that influence academic life. Universities remain structured around titles and procedures, but in practice, professional roles often rely on situational authority, collaboration, and the support of peers. This combination of hierarchy and flexibility makes academia a revealing context in which to study how professional networks shape access to what academics consider important.

Understanding what academics themselves value

A central motivation for the survey lies in better understanding what academics themselves value in their careers and how they navigate the structures and networks of their profession. The academic career path has become increasingly demanding and competitive, with early-career academics facing increased pressure due to to temporary contracts, mobility expectations, and high-stakes performance metrics. Whilst established academics enjoy greater stability, they still operate within systems that are marked by scarce resources and expanding accountability requirements. Previous research has shown that professional networks are crucial for success in academia, yielding collaboration, publication opportunities, and career progression. However, much of the literature has focused either on fairly general cross-country comparisons or on specific disciplines, often leaving essential questions unanswered regarding the everyday experiences of academics across different institutions, countries and research areas.

Using an ego-network approach

This survey seeks to address this gap by adopting an ego-network approach, which makes it possible to examine how individual academics perceive their own professional networks and the resources they derive from them. Rather than attempting to map an entire institutional network, the ego-network method focuses on the perspective of the individual—the “ego”—and their ties to key contacts, or “alters.” This approach has several advantages: it captures relationships across different domains of professional life, allows large-scale data collection through surveys, and foregrounds the individual as the point where multiple domains intersect. In doing so, it provides insight into how academics draw on diverse connections to access valued resources.

Intersectionality and the role of context

Another motivation stems from the need to account for differences across individuals and institutions. Factors such as gender, commuting time, and academic age can influence the resources academics value and the opportunities that are available to them by taking the specifics and complexities of people’s personal circumstances into account. For example, previous studies show that women in academia often take on more service and administrative responsibilities—necessary tasks, but not always rewarded in career progression. Similarly, commuting conditions or non-traditional career paths may affect how academics build and sustain networks. By explicitly considering these dimensions, the study aims to provide a richer account of the relationship between specific personal circumstances and the overall structural conditions, and how both of these ultimately shape academic careers.

In summary, the study builds on the tradition of survey research in higher education, which has proven useful in documenting working conditions, perceptions, and career trajectories. This provides a multidisciplinary, multinational sample and offers the possibility of comparing institutions operating within different national contexts but which are linked through shared commitments to teaching and research. The survey design draws on established frameworks and international definitions to ensure comparability and validity, while also being tailored to capture the specific dimensions of value and access highlighted by the chosen theoretical framework.

By bringing together perspectives on power, professional values, and networks, the survey is motivated by a desire to deepen understanding of how academics build their professional lives in an environment where both formal structures and informal practices matter. The goal is not only to document existing conditions but also to contribute to a broader conversation about how universities can better support their academic communities in navigating the challenges of contemporary higher education.

You can complete the survey here: https://warwick.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3O6IBeImlYtAMqa