Re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic?

08 September 2010

By Sarah Davies

As promised, I wanted to feed back some (personal) highlights from the Vitae Researcher Development Conference. (The emphasis here is on personal: there were hundreds of people at the conference, and tens of sessions, so I’m very aware that my experience has only scraped the surface.) Here are some moments and comments from this gathering of the great and the good in research development which have stuck in my mind…

One thing was a sense – which I must admit was new to me – of how far the UK has come and, actually, how good we are at supporting researchers. Barbara Evans, speaking in the conference’s first plenary, emphasised that Vitae (and related activities) sets the best practice benchmark for the rest of the world. The Roberts Report and the funding which flowed from it enabled enormous strides to be made in setting up structures to train and develop postgraduates and research staff; Rick Rylance made a similar point in the same session when he described how different current practice is from the haphazard system of “patronage and good fortune” which previously existed. However chaotic individual experiences of the research process are, it seems that as a whole UK research has come a long way in a short period.

I was also struck both by the number of people present and the richness and diversity of experience contained within those people. There were, as I have said, hundreds of attendees, all – that I encountered – intelligent, thoughtful, and (perhaps most to the point) passionate about supporting research students and staff. Everything from social enterprise to auto-ethnography was showcased as means to better enable that support; but, even more than this immense range of knowledge and expertise, I also had the sense that this was a community which genuinely cared about those it seeks to help – that these were people who had been there, got the t-shirt, and now wanted to encourage others through that process.

Naturally one highlight was hearing the boys from the UKRSA talk about what’s happening at the moment (research on RSAs, their social media-tastic web presence, a conference coming up…). Their workshop aimed to create new connections between those training and supporting research staff and UKRSA activities, and there certainly seemed to be some productive networking going on. I also had lots of conversations with others interested in public engagement and – perhaps the most fun – with people you don’t seek out but end up sitting next to at dinner or over coffee (one woman for whom PhDs seem to run in the family; another whose work was so interesting that I’m going to ask her for a guest post…).

So: a great time. Even the food was good (smoothies for breakfast - mmm). And yet…despite the enthusiasm, the knowledge – despite even that I left excited about everything that is going on and keyed up to get more involved – something, for me, is not quite right. I think this is partly to do with the looming funding cuts: as one participant pointed out, it is not at all clear how many of those attending will have jobs this time next year. But it’s also to do with the repeated discussions (for example here) we have had on this blog about the structure of the academy, the challenges of short-term contracts, and the impossibility of achieving a ‘research career’. These to me are deeply engrained problems which all the support, training and development in the world won’t change (particularly given that – as was noted at the conference – the Roberts agenda has done less well at liasing with external employers): they rely not on changes in researchers but in the research councils, universities, and funding bodies. Until those changes start to happen – or at least are discussed and their pros and cons publically aired – too much of the wonderful work that is going on in researcher development feels like re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic. It’s great to be supported, networked and generally savvy – but if there are no avenues for researchers to research, there’s still an iceberg heading your way.