Applications for the 2024 Edition have closed

The Mentorship groups will be contacted in the first week of February

The ESG Mentoring Initiative is a one-year programme designed to support and guide early career ESG Research Fellows as Mentees, to hopefully assist in advancing their career trajectories.

Mentors are distinguished scholars, invited from the ESG Lead Faculty and Senior Research Fellows, who share experiences and provide professional guidance for a small group of 2-4 Research Fellow Mentees each. The maximum time commitment of a Mentor ranges between 6 to 10 hours for one year, dependent on the number of Research Fellows that the Mentor is committed to support. This initiative presents an opportunity to strengthen the ESG network by contributing to the development of future leaders in our field and bringing us closer together as a community.

The ESG Mentoring Initiative will connect Mentees and Mentors that have signed up to partake, working to align the themes, research subject area, discipline and areas of career advice in which both parties have expressed interest. This effort will be coordinated by the ESG International Project Office (IPO).

Suggested structure of the Mentoring Initiative

While the details and focus of discussions of each mentoring relationship will be agreed upon jointly by the mentor and mentees, we envision and suggest that the mentor will meet with their mentees, both as a small group to talk about common themes and additionally one-on-one to discuss individual questions. We suggest having four meetings over the course of one year, twice with the small mentoring group, and twice individually between mentor and mentees. The maximum time commitment of a Mentor ranges between 6 to 10 hours for one year, dependent on the number of Research Fellows that the Mentor is committed to support.

Please note the following regarding the Mentoring Initiative:

• Mentorship meetings will be held online, unless opportunities arise for physical meetings.
• The number of Mentees will be dependent on the availability of Mentors. In case of limited availability, preference will be given to early career Research Fellows nearer to the end of their PhD.
• Mentees are required to be Research Fellows of the ESG Project.
• The Mentees are responsible for taking action to arrange, prepare and plan the meetings with the Mentor.
• The expectation of Mentors is that they share general advice and experiences to help the Mentee rather than solving specific issues. Mentors are not expected to act as informal Research Advisors or comment on specific thesis chapters or publications.
• In principle, Mentors and Mentees will be asked to commit for one year; we recognize that a mentoring relationship might carry on informally after this commitment period but there is no obligation in this regard
• We understand there may be cases where a Mentor or Mentee consider that the relationship does not work and decide to discontinue the relationship – in this case we ask the partiers to contact the ESG IPO.
• The ESG IPO will act as the primary contact point if any parties have questions or concerns about the ESG Mentoring Initiative.
• The ESG IPO will get in touch with Mentors and Mentees 6 months after commencement to ensure all Mentorship groups have met and if necessary, provide support.

For any questions or concerns throughout the year, do not hesitate to reach out to the ESG International Project Office (IPO): ipo@earthsystemgovernance.org

Experiences of Mentees 

“The initiative helped me to know more about my professional goals, saving me from time-wasting mistakes.”

“To be authentic in my research, to look for my style and follow my heart.”

“I learned that a PhD is a training process, you cannot do it all perfectly.”

“It helped me feel more confident about my PhD choices in terms of publication strategies, contribution etc.”

”I think this was a great initiative that impacted the way I now plan my career.”

Experiences of mentors

”I found it rewarding to try to help a young scholar in another country make their way in academia and widened my horizons in terms of learning how universities operate in different cultural settings.”

”The most interesting was how the conversations evolved and differed over time, with different issues and challenges they were facing”

”I appreciated the opportunity to get some understanding of academic life in a different cultural context and to try and find ways of using my own experience to help another academic build their professional career.”