The shaping of a new generation? Early career researchers working at the interface between...
16
-
Upload
catherine-manning -
Category
Documents
-
view
212 -
download
0
Transcript of The shaping of a new generation? Early career researchers working at the interface between...
The shaping of a new generation?Early career researchers working at the
interface between universities and communities
Dr. Bryony EnrightProf. Keri FacerDr. Lisa Lucus
Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol
Context and Objectives• Relationship between university and society is changing: ‘Third mission’,
‘knowledge exchange’, ‘civic’ universities• Nature of intellectual labour is changing: New forms of accountability,
economic austerity demanding ‘useful’ knowledge, and academic legitimacy• New processes of knowledge production: Collaborative, co-produced trans
and interdisciplinary gaining popularity• ECRs at the sharp end of renegotiations of relationships between: 1) Collaborative research: Universities and their ‘publics’ (Mahony, 2013; Jongbloed
et al, 2013; Strier, 2014)
2) Interdisciplinarity: Relationships between disciplines (Barry & Born, 2013; Strathern, 2006)
3) Internal labour relations: Relationships between universities and their staff (Nadolny and Ryan, 2013; Dowling, 2008; Martin 2011)
Connected Communities Programme
• Flagship UK research programme• Keri Facer; Leadership Fellow, Bryony Enright; PDRA on fellowship• ‘Researching community with by and for communities’ • Interdisciplinary (strong A&H element) & Collaborative (early stage
involvement of communities in research design, data collection, analysis) • Running since 2010• Invested over £20m in over 300 projects, will continue to 2018• Over 400 academics and 650 community partners involved • Employing roughly 150 ECRs
Research Design
• 17 ECRs (defined as less than eight years’ experience in academic research)• 11 in-depth semi-structured interviews• Focus group with 6 ECRs• Within context of 40 Semi-structured Interviews with academics and 25
community partners (to date)• Interview themes relating to life narrative; intellectual labour; interactions
with non-academic collaborators; employment conditions • Questionnaire survey of over 100 projects and community collaborators
(to date) • Detailed case studies of 3 projects with different models of ‘co-production’
Research Questions
• Who are the researchers taking on these roles in complex conditions and what experience and knowledge do they bring to the research practice?
• What is the nature of the intellectual and practical work that ECRs are carrying out on interdisciplinary and collaborative projects in the CC programme?
• How/do employment conditions, intellectual work and relationships with external partners inter-relate in the experiences of these ECRs?
ECR research participants
• 11 women 6 men; mid-20s to early-40s• All but one on fixed-term contracts• Varying combinations of part-time contracts, from 0.2FTE to full-time,
from three months to six years• 6 ECRs concurrently working on PhD• 11 ECRs with previous careers outside academia, e.g. Health
professionals, designers, gallery assistants and work in policy• Often bringing in personal and professional networks to the projects
What are the ECRs doing?
• Everything…• Roles: Research Assistant/Associate; Teaching Assistant; Engagement
and Impact Officer; Project Officer; Lecturer; Senior Research Fellow; PhD Student• Activities: Bringing in partners through existing contacts; recruiting
participants from scratch; running events; writing newspapers and new forms of dissemination; financial management of the projects; designing methodological approaches; data analysis; final report writing; writing the bids (and not getting named as Co-Is)• Central role to the success of the projects: “the core delivery team”,
“You are the project”
“That group of five [ECRs and artists], that seems to be something quite special there... And that’s the core delivery team on the project. So, in a sense [the PI] and [other Co-I] and I and [the other community partners] are all busy doing lots of other things; that project’s success or failure is based around that group of five... I think they’re really creative, they bring very different ideas and qualities, I find with any of these projects that you’re bought out for 10% of your time say for something, but in a sense, for the project to really work it’s those early career researchers that actually make the difference.” (Historian, Co-I)
ECR roles in interdisciplinary and collaborative research• Translating and demystifying conceptual underpinning to non-
academic audiences, participants and across disciplines• Facilitating informed consent and attempting to enable voice and
democratisation – building trust and friendships• Discussing with collaborators what universities are for, what research
is and the nature of academic labour - explaining the competing ‘logics’ of interdisciplinary and collaborative research • Being reflexive about their position within the academy and wider
perception of academics
“I feel like a lot of what I’ve been doing has been like, kind of, translation across the different sectors and different partnerships, and I feel like my role as an ECR has been quite critical in brokering those relationships.” (Natalie, ECR)
“You also need to be able to communicate with the [group of vulnerable people they are working with] to demystify it, do you know what I mean? You know they’re scared to, you know, if they’re meeting a professor and you know they don’t quite know what the study means, what we’re trying to get out of it and what’s required of them. And I guess just putting them at ease and trying to do that in a way that you can demystify it I suppose. I’d like to think that would be the skills that I possibly bring.” (Stuart, ECR)
Living with Precarity• Interesting and exciting work• Diverse orientations (sometimes in the same person) toward precarity
(Standing, 2013) • ‘grinners’ (arts/creative industries background, precarity as default, arts as
experiment, approach from personal development perspective) – seeing this as an exciting experience, allows autonomy and maintenance of other identities
• ‘groaners’ – anxiety about part time and short term nature of contracts, constant need to apply for new jobs, unrecognised for contribution, ‘gripping the table’ at Christmas, not knowing if the contract will be renewed.
• NB – for many the motivation in the work is ‘making a difference’, the economic does not come first. • Particular risks associated with collaborative and interdisciplinary work
Different approaches to building security amongst ECRs• Freelance model –Don’t rely on university as employer
• Disciplinarian - Strong eye on discipline
• Create your own university –Generate your own income stream
• Work hard, head down – Try and get written into other projects
Discussion• These conditions are creating a generation of researchers who are ‘growing up
collaborative’ in which fractional, distributed working practices that engage diverse forms and sources of knowledge, are normal.
• There are risks for this group – if teaching and institutional structures only favour the ‘disciplinarian’, then they may find themselves excluded from the academy once the funding dries up – but this group also has other networks and resources that are open to them
• Is there, however, a real opportunity for this group to collaborate and build security for themselves by recognising and demonstrating their centrality to research enterprise (academic, public and industrial) ?
• They are ‘the project’ in interdisciplinary and collaborative research. The ‘precariat’ in academic labour is different from other forms of labour because it is not exchangeable. It has huge latent power because the intellectual labour is embodied in the ECRs, in their networks, friendships, trust and insights that they have developed through these projects. What would happen if that labour was withdrawn or simply taken outside the academy?
