Please could you give us an overview of what you do and what you’re working on?
I have a PhD in gender and communication. I am currently working as a Research Associate on the Action Research on Research Culture (ARRC) team, and I'm involved in three different projects on that team. One of the projects is looking at narrative CVs and their effectiveness, another is looking at PI and supervisor relations, and the third is looking at precarity, with a particular focus on feelings of precarity in industry versus academia.
What led you to get involved in the fixed-term contract working group?
I've always been interested in equality, so my background has very much been about trying to improve systems so that they're a bit more equal for everybody. Working as a postdoc for several years, I've seen that there's quite a big inequality in that space, particularly for my international peers, and it's really important that we try and do something about this.
From my perspective, the career pathway for researchers isn’t particularly clear and it's very variable between institutions. I was part of the Researcher Reward and Progression working group last year, and I found that really interesting and rewarding. I like that something practical has come out of that group to make career progression clearer at the university, and I like that I was able to contribute to that change.
When the fixed-term working group came up, I was keen to get involved because I have first-hand, lived experience of being on extended contracts for a long time. This is also an area which I am researching and working on at the moment with my work at ARRC. So, I'm really hoping I'll be able to connect some of the research that we're doing with the practical changes the working group is aiming towards.
Why is it important to represent the postdoc perspective?
The point of having a postdoc representative is to try and bring the postdoc voice to a space that people might not always have access to. I would really like to try and link up what we're doing in ARRC and some of the findings that are coming out of that into the practical shifts that the fixed-term working group is trying to establish and support.
I'd like to be able to relay postdoc thoughts and feelings that come through from my personal networks and experience, but also through the research to ensure their voices are heard in this working group and taken into consideration as the work moves forward.
What are the main challenges when navigating fixed-term contracts?
For me personally, the biggest challenge has been dealing with the uncertainty of fixed-term contracts and as I mentioned before, I've been on fixed-term contracts for several years as a postdoc. It's not always a terrible thing, but the uncertainty does infiltrate into other parts of your life, and I really had to learn to be quite resilient and flexible and fluid in terms of what jobs I can take and what disciplines I can be in.
This has meant I've got quite a squiggly career, and that doesn't really bother me too much, but I don't think it's for everyone because if you have a very clear vision of being an academic, I think it's a lot more difficult to navigate that insecurity as that pathway can be seen to be a lot more focused, driven, and linear.
These challenges around uncertainty are amplified for international researchers particularly. Managing visas always comes up at a very stressful point for researchers. Connected to this, feeling like you're part of a community and like you belong is important. Managing expectations within that working space because of the uncertainty and the precarity is really difficult because of the fixed-term contract and the high stakes that come underneath that.
There's a range of well-known difficulties that come with fixed-term contracts like planning ahead. How much do you invest socially in a certain place? Do you buy a house there? There are also some really big issues around family planning and managing care responsibilities which fixed-term contracts amplify too.
Do you think they’ll always exist for postdocs?
Shifting how postdocs are seen and valued by funders and universities is a really important step, because, at the moment, there's the feeling that postdocs are used to plug gaps. I think that shifting that culture, even if you can't shift the fixed-term contract situation, can help.
This is quite a long-term change so it's slow and whenever you have systemic change, whether it's shifting cultures and the way that people view certain job roles and certain hierarchies, or whether it's shifting practical bureaucratic processes, is a really, really long-term process.
Unfortunately, the way that funding is structured at the moment is very much aligned with political forces that are beyond the University's control. However, there's a lot of room to improve the situation, so I don't know that fixed-term contracts will ever be abolished completely, but there are things that can be improved to help people who take on those fixed-term contracts feel like they have more autonomy, that they're more in control, that they can set expectations and that they can have a good work-life balance. That can be done and there is work trying to do that.
I also think the fixed-term contracts could be a little bit longer, because at the moment there are really short-term ones. I've interviewed people who are on contracts for one month, through to five years. Particularly when you don't have a safety net around you, that's very stressful. So, if we could extend the length of the contracts, that would be an option.
What has been your own experience with fixed-term contracts? Did you get any extensions? If so, by how much?
I've worked in a couple of institutions. I worked at Reading University before Cambridge, and I've held postdocs here as well in two different departments now. In my previous role I was on a range of different contract lengths while I was there under the same institute, but often they would be 1-2 month extensions, so that went on for a good three or four years. I was there for quite a long time, so I have experienced that really short-term stress of just going on the goodwill of what my PI said.
The last contract I had was about two years and that was long enough for me to decide I was going to move cities and that did get extended by a few months. The current role I'm in is another two-year contract, but this has also just been extended by 9 months.
So yes, they're often extended, but often without sufficient notice for me to plan ahead. I am lucky that I have lots of different aspects of security in my life which make it a bit more doable. I’m in a partnership with two incomes coming in. I don't have any children, so I don't really have high level family responsibilities unless you count feeding the cat.
I'm quite interdisciplinary, so I can move around, and I've been able to sort of shift around. I've worked in about five different disciplines, so that means that I've got more options, and I've got family here, I'm on a British passport. All of that stuff means that I have a bit of a luxury in terms of being able to manage.
Are there any benefits for a postdoc taking a fixed-term contract? What would an alternative look like?
It's difficult because I don't want to say the fixed-term contracts are great. Obviously, they have lots of cons and, situation dependent, they can also have some pros. For me, being on a fixed-term contract has meant that I've been able to move around. It has almost forced me to move around, which you can love or hate. It's also made me be a bit more open to other pathways and other careers, and that changed the way I think about what an academic looks like and what it should look like.
I'm sure you'll hear comments in other spaces such as being on a fixed-term contract can mean you can develop new skills and amend and adapt them to new jobs spaces, and you get to travel, and meet lots of different people because you're moving around institutions. Some of those comments have value, and I do personally think that having a range of institutional experience is really important. It's also really important that academics are able to be in industry or in a working place that isn't a university for a while. Maybe fixed-term contracts sometimes force the hand in that position. But of course, there are trade-offs for these too.
In terms of what an alternative would look like, there are a lot of suggestions out there. I really like that there’s work being done around the Roving Researcher at the University. That’s really cool because the idea is that you're a researcher, so you have a set of fundamental skills required to operate research in that discipline, and then you basically move around projects where additional resource is needed. It means that your contracts would be potentially longer, and it could potentially be made into a permanent position because you're always going to need that sort of skill set, so there's work being done around that and the practicalities of it.
I quite enjoyed the idea of that role, but I know there's also a lot of concern around how transferable that is in terms of an academic trajectory but that's one of the more promising solutions, I would say.
Is there a sense that if you don't follow a traditional academic pathway, then that's going to be seen as a negative later on in some way?
Yes, this is part of the big research culture and mindset that needs to be challenged. Actually, moving into research culture was quite difficult for me because it didn't fit into a discipline, so I wasn’t sure what my academic identity would be. What was my publication record going to look like? It was going to have groundwater papers, then papers on gender education, then some on research culture at Cambridge. There's no thread there, and we come from an old-fashioned way of thinking where you have to be an expert in your very specific thing to make it as an academic, and I don't think that's helpful or practical in the world we live in today.
Everything's so fast moving and interconnected that actually we need to shift how we look at that and how we work in these little silos, which impact and limit the actual application of the research we're doing.
How would you encourage more postdocs to get involved in representation groups?
We've seen this through our study that there's always a big concern from postdocs that they have no time. That often comes through and that's valid in a lot of spaces. However, it can also be very empowering and quite heartening to sit on some of these working groups as a postdoc because you can see that the issues that you're facing are at least trying to be addressed by people who care.
It's important because it presents some alternative solutions to a problem which is very easy to get very miserable and very angry about without any outlet or a way to express that. Being involved in working groups is really important because it is a chance for you to see what's going on and connect with people who are trying to help with an issue from across the University. Also, if you are in a position of having a bit more time, a bit more space, a bit more capacity like I do with the security of the longer contract I'm on, we also have a responsibility to make sure that our voices are heard.
My experience of being on working groups has been really lovely. I've felt valued and listened to. You come across very important people within the working groups, but I've never felt there's been a hierarchy within the group. Even that process can be really empowering and make you feel like you're part of a community and making a contribution to something.
Is there anything else you’d like to highlight?
I've had conversations with a lot of peers about this situation and being a postdoc in general, and it's very easy to latch on to the idea that it’s rubbish, it never going to change, that it’s just something we have to accept. But I do think it's very important to acknowledge that, yes, the situation is difficult, but also that there's a lot more work going on to try and support the postdoc experience than perhaps postdocs see.
Perhaps also reframing what would look like a reasonable change might be helpful. Yes, we all want permanent positions. Obviously, that would be great, but it's also important to be realistic about these things and if you can't get a permanent position, then what can we manage? We can't go to the funders and change the whole way that the academic funding system works. But we can have a few conversations about research culture and empower each other to manage our expectations, not work at weekends, and to turn our phones off and all that stuff which feeds into a healthier research culture and a better experience.
What I'm trying to highlight here is that there's a two-prong thing that needs to happen. The system needs to change, but that will take a very long time and it's very complicated and it's very important that postdocs are involved in that when they can be, bringing the experience and constructive criticism that they can add to that conversation. But also, there's an element here around being able and supported to manage your health and stand up to and control your environment in a way that you can make a better space for you to be working in.
I know this is often easier said than done, but I think this is something that we as a community can work together towards changing.