From June 2–6, 2025, the COST-ECADOC 2025 Summer School for Doctoral Students took place at the DSW University of Lower Silesia in Wrocław, Poland. The event was organized in partnership with the following institutions: SWPS University (Warsaw), the Educational Research Institute (Warsaw), Euroguidance Poland (Warsaw), the Imago Foundation (Wrocław), the Counsellogical Association (Wrocław), and Basecamp by Xior (Wrocław).

The main theme of this year’s event was Career guidance and counselling in times of crises. Challenges and responses and hosted nearly 50 early-stage and experienced researchers who represented over 20 European countries.

Over the five days the attendees had the opportunity to participate in the following events:

• Keynote lectures:
  • Dr Sanna Toivianen and Dr Anna Bilon-Piórko presented Drawing from relational thinking to develop career guidance in times of multiple crisis, exploring conceptualisations of relationality grounded in relational ontology while drawing from relational sociology, new materialism, and more-than-human perspectives.
  • Dr Anthony Mann presented Quantitative and conceptual approaches to understanding effective career guidance in times of crisis drawing on PISA 2022 data, and providing evidence of how participation in career development activities has positive impacts on student career thinking and illustrate the extend of variation in career development within and between countries, raising important questions concerning the effectiveness of national provision and inequity in outcomes for youth)

• Methodological workshops:
  • Exploring and analysing paradoxical career articulations within qualitative interviews (Ricky Gee)
  • Moderation and Mediation Analysis in Career Counselling Research (Iva Rajter)
  • Critical Career Learning Café (Petra Røise, Kristina Mariager-Anderson)
  • Finding your academic voice …in writing (Gill Frigerio)
  • Critical Discourse Analysis’ Value in Career Guidance and Counselling Research (Mariana Lucas Casanova)
  • Workshop on Q Methodology in Career Guidance Research (Ingrid Bårdsdatter Bakke, Hannah Svennungsen)

• Panels:
  • From Offer to Strategy: Rethinking the Institutions’ Role in Career Guidance in Poland (panel chairs: Małgorzata Rosalska, Anna Wawrzonek)
  • Entering Adulthood in Times of Poly-Crisis and Ultra-Uncertainty (panel chair: Marta Wrzosek)
  • Building an international collaboration (Miika Kekki)
  • Meet the editor (panel chairs: Rie Thomsen, Miika Kekki)

• Collective Academic Supervision:
  • 29 PhD students worked in 9 parallel sessions with tutors.