As of October 1st, the European Commission is funding a project to set up a European doctoral school specializing on Career Guidance and Counselling. As a joint project of higher education institutions from 15 European countries, the programme/ school shall be open for doctoral researchers from all of Europe.
The project is a joint venture of the European Society for Vocational Designing and Career Counseling (ESVDC) and the Network for Innovation in Career Guidance and Counselling in Europe (NICE), which is funded by the Erasmus programme from 2009-2015. It is lead by ESVDC board member Laura Nota from the University of Padua and Johannes Katsarov, Coordinator of NICE, together with 5 colleagues: Valérie Cohen-Scali from CNAM-INETOP in Paris, Rachel Mulvey from the University of East London, Jérôme Rossier from the University of Lausanne, Rie Thomsen from the Aarhus University in Copenhagen, and Peter Weber from the Heidelberg University. 
Until September 2016, the project consortium will conduct three summer schools to provide international doctoral training and networking opportunities to about 25 doctoral researchers. The first summer school will be hosted by the University of Padua in September 2014. Aspiring researchers will be able to discuss their research approaches and findings with peers and professors from many different disciplinary backgrounds, including psychology, sociology, economics, and educational science. Additionally, workshops will be offered to introduce the participants to state-of-the-art research methods and innovative theories, giving them the chance to expand their perspectives and their capacity for interdisciplinary research. Further training will support the doctoral researchers in developing their skills for academic training in the digital age and the management of international research projects.
Finally, the summer schools will be embedded in the development of a European Research Agenda for the field of career guidance and counselling. The goal is to establish international research networks in Europe – involving doctoral researchers – which deal with important and challenging research questions linked to innovation in career guidance and counselling.

Overall Goal of the Project

The vision is to set up a sustainable European Doctoral Program (EDP) specialized on career guidance and counselling (CGC, our field) which offers highly promising graduates of European higher education institutions (HEI) the opportunity of becoming the spearhead of CGC-related research and higher education in Europe (and thus perhaps throughout the world).
Closely connected with this vision, is the ambition to create the structures and personal resources necessary for longitudinal, large scale, international research in our field.
Regarding the multidisciplinarity, practice-orientation and specificity of our field, we have a lot to gain from joining forces in educating our most promising people: On the one hand, the number of promising doctoral candidates, available research projects and mentors will be large enough at European level to continuously carry out such a program (scale). On the other hand, considering how comparatively small – and partially isolated – academic research and training efforts in our field are nationally, we can gain significant momentum in positioning our discipline through close collaboration in promoting the next generation of academic leaders in our field.
In a nutshell, the EDP shall aim at fostering the development of top-notch academics in our field all over Europe and fully establishing research and higher education in our field.