Thursday, 7 May 2026 European Doctoral Day 2026
The University of Primorska (UP) has joined 200 European universities in their efforts to designate May 13 as European Doctoral Day. In Europe, where science and research are established as fundamental values, this initiative aims to highlight the importance of doctoral education, doctoral candidates, and PhDs for Europe as a whole.
At the University of Primorska, we will mark the first European Doctoral Day 2026 with a series of four events at the University’s member institutions:
UP Faculty of Education (UP PEF)
May 13, 2026, 17:30 - 19:00: Doctoral Tea Party: a conversational gathering of graduates, students, and mentors from UP PEF
Doctoral students are invited to a Doctoral Tea Gathering – an informal discussion event aimed at connecting doctoral students and graduates of UP PEF, along with their mentors. Former doctoral candidates of UP PEF will also take part, including the faculty’s first doctoral graduate, who will share their study and career experiences and answer participants’ questions. The event is an internal UP PEF event, intended to foster connections and strengthen the doctoral community at the faculty.
More: https://pef.upr.si/sl/koledar-dogodkov/2026041610170236/doktorska-cajanka-na-up-pef
UP Faculty of Management (UP FM):
May 13, 2026, 15:30 - 16:30, lecture room 4: Discussion with doctoral students: Sustainable Tourism: Opportunities and Challenges
The discussion will highlight doctoral studies as a crucial phase of research training, with guests sharing their experiences with research work, the development of competencies, and the challenges they face during their doctoral studies. Special emphasis will be placed on the role of research and the placement of research work within a broader scientific and social context, career opportunities, and the transition to the academic or broader professional environment. We will address the challenges of doctoral studies in the rapidly changing Slovenian, European, and global environments, from the perspective of ICT development, artificial intelligence, and sustainability challenges. The discussion will also highlight the importance of international collaboration and knowledge exchange with researchers from European and other universities around the world.
UP Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica (UP FTŠ Turistica)
May 13, 2026: A gathering of graduate students, doctoral candidates, early-career researchers, doctoral program instructors, and potential employers What competencies can and should a doctoral student in tourism acquire?
The event will be designed as a meeting of postgraduate students, doctoral candidates, early-career researchers, doctoral programme instructors, and potential employers of this graduate profile. It will serve as a platform for exchanging expectations, experiences, and perspectives on doctoral studies in the field of tourism. A key characteristic of this programme is its inter- and multidisciplinary nature, as well as the “contrast” between the applied nature of the field and the academic/scientific standards that shape the choice of dissertation topic, content, and study approach. The central question is how to effectively align the feasibility of the chosen dissertation topic, its scientific contribution, and the competencies expected from doctoral graduates by the professional sector.
The meeting will take place within the 2026 TTRA Europe Annual Chapter Conference; more detailed information is available at: https://www.turistica.si/si/extra-strani/2026-ttra-europe-annual-chapter-conference
UP Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Information Technologies (UP FAMNIT)
Presentation of doctoral students’ research papers
Doctoral students will present their research areas and scientific results. The audience will include both academic staff from the University of Primorska and the wider public, as the event will be held in a hybrid format with the option to join via a publicly available link to an online platform.
May 13, 14:00, lecture room VP3: Enrico Talotti (University of Nova Gorica, and University of Primorska) - Towards the enumeration of EL-semihypergroups
We investigate finite semigroups equipped with a preorder relation that is compatible with the semigroup operation and we develop an enumeration methodology based on automorphism group actions. For a fixed finite semigroup S, the automorphism group Aut(S) acts naturally on the set Pre(S) of compatible preorders via pushforward; the orbits of this action correspond exactly to isomorphism classes of preordered semigroups.Using known classifications of semigroups of small order, together with exhaustive generation of compatible preorders, our method yields a complete enumeration of preordered semigroups up to order five. Finally, this framework opens a computational window toward the study of more complex algebraic systems, particularly EL-hyperstructures arising in hypercompositional algebra, where preordered semigroups serve as a fundamental tool for their construction.
May 15, 14:00, lecture room VP3: George Savvoudis (University of Primorska) - A family of Cubic Surfaces over Finite Fields of characteristic 2
Cubic Surfaces are a classical area of study. In this talk we will discuss some recent results by Anton Betten and Fatma Karaoglu, and show how they give rise to interesting geometric consequences for a particular family of cubic surfaces over finite fields with characteristic 2.
The events are designed to foster networking and the exchange of ideas and information among various stakeholders, as well as to facilitate discussions on career paths and opportunities for young PhDs.
European Doctoral Day is a joint initiative of various European associations dedicated to promoting the importance of doctoral education. The initiative stems from a respect for science and research as fundamental European values. European Doctoral Day will also contribute to the formation of a common European identity and to the enrichment of the cultural and intellectual diversity of the European research area.
