DION is an interest organization for all temporary scientific employees at NTNU, and we have representatives in all three NTNU cities. The recent discussion about stipendiatombud is happening mostly in Norwegian, so we would like to express our opinion in English, in an attempt to reach many more of the temporary scientific employees, especially the newly employed ones who do not speak Norwegian and are the most vulnerable.
Ongoing discussions in the media are focusing on a potential conflict between a ph.d. candidate and their supervisor, and more generally relations of power between ph.d. candidates and supervisors. While some argue that there are guidelines and rules in place that make the process of reporting and conflict management possible, others point out to the things that are missing or are not good enough. We strongly agree with the latter.
As DION, we are one of the first organization that ph.d. candidates contact in order to get help in this type of situations. We see that there is a common link between the cases, which is that the candidates a
