Abstract:

In the field of post-graduate education, numerous studies show that pursuing a doctoral degree involves multiple challenges, arising from high academic demands and sustained pressure to achieve excellence. Doctoral students experience higher levels of mental health difficulties than the general population — including stress, burnout, anxiety, and depression — which may be further intensified when students face obstacles in progressing toward degree completion.

Evidence shows that belonging to a peer community fosters mutual support among doctoral students and contributes to the development of a sense of shared experience. At the same time, peer relationships promote emotional and personal support grounded in shared experiences that go beyond the strictly academic dimension.

HumanS@Meetings is a doctoral student-led initiative launched in 2022 in the Department of Human Sciences at the University of Verona (Italy). It aims to support PhD students in successfully completing their training, maintaining their well-being, and developing competences relevant for their future careers. The project aims to build a community of peer practices to promote mutual support, discussion, and the development of transversal competences, as well as research. The meetings, held monthly online, alternate between thematic sessions and open discussions on different topics chosen by the participants themselves to meet their training needs. Among the topics covered there are, for example, emotional management, well-being, work-life balance, research management, internationalization and thesis writing. The experience is a good practice for professionalization and mental health in doctoral programs, contributing to reflection on research training policies.

Furthermore, the peer-led initiative was recognized by the doctoral board as a good practice and institutionalized through the allocation of ECTS credits within the research training framework. In this contribution, we want to present two years of HumanS@Meetings, describing the evaluation activities carried out by the organizers to design the meetings and respond to the needs of doctoral students. We also present the topics proposed and a summary of the actual educational and psychological support provided by HumanS@Meetings to participants. We hope that this contribution will inspire the implementation of student-led practices in doctoral programs at other universities, contributing not only to the training of doctoral students but also to breaking down their isolation.

Keywords:

Student-Led Initiative, PhD Education, Doctoral Peer Relationship, Doctoral Well-being, Doctoral Training.