Breadcrumbs
- Home
- Research staff
- Research staff blog
- Research staff blog 2009
- There's No Place Like Home
There's No Place Like Home
11 October 2009
By Elizabeth Dodson
I have a confession to make… I completed my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the same institution, and I have now been a full time researcher there for almost 5 years. Apparently this is considered by many as academic suicide, but is it really such a bad thing?
Well there are a number of reasons to move around:
- To be exposed to new ideas and techniques
- To be challenged by new research areas
- To show that you’re adaptable and can work with new people in a range of settings
- To demonstrate a commitment to your own career development
Of course moving between institutions is also a product of the fixed term contract, but is it always necessary? People suspect that staying in the same place is somehow lazy. I’ve heard it compared to still living with your parents in your thirties, but such generalist assumptions annoy me.
I was lucky to get into my first choice university for my undergraduate degree. I wanted to do further research related to my final year project and applied for a studentship to stay on and complete a PhD. This relied on my continued access to the original subject group, at an organisation I had volunteered for over a number of years. These are not relationships that can be built quickly, so it made absolute sense to stay where I was.
At the start of my PhD I was looking for somewhere to live and found a mortgage on a small house would cost about the same a renting a single room. It was an obvious choice and one that reinforced my roots in this area. When it came to job hunting near the end of the PhD, I focused initially on jobs within commuting distance and my eye was particularly caught by a post at my university. It was in a research institute attached to the university, which also operated as a private consultancy. This was a totally different feel from my previous department and presented many new challenges.
I entered an entirely new research area and hit the ground running. I went from studying the effects of brain injuries to the causes of road accidents. I had been doing purely qualitative research and now had to master the collection and analysis of quantitative data. Having worked entirely within psychology, I now had to brush up on my maths and physics. Within a couple of weeks I was travelling to meetings across Europe to collaborate with experts from around the globe. I’ve spent time in France, Germany, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Sweden and America, learning new methods, sharing ideas and working with a highly diverse range of people.
So I go back to the original list of reasons to move and why would I? I’m at a good university, with excellent resources for researchers and I now have that elusive open-ended contract. I’m constantly challenged and exposed to new ways of working within a world leading multidisciplinary team. I’m not saying that I’ll never explore pastures new, but I don’t want to feel forced to move by the assumption that you have to be employed in geographically different places to be somehow worthy as a researcher. For now at least, in the immortal words of Dorothy Gale, “There’s no place like home”.
Matthew Salois12 October 2009 at 02:45 PM
permalinkreport this comment
Sadly, this stigma seems quite pervasive (in the U.S. getting your degrees from the same university and/or then working for the same university is referred to as "academic inbreeding"). This sort of judgement call belies the fact that each university (and sub-units such as departments and research institutions) have unique culture and style. Even academic disciplines may vary according to the degree of acceptability of staying with your home university. In economics I know that this is highly frowned upon, with the exception of the top universities (Harvard, MIT, Chicago, Oxford, LSE). It seems quite a bit of a double-standard that the judgement against so-called academic inbreeding does not seem to apply to the top tier institutions. Furthermore, for the lower tier departments it is often much easier to stay on as faculty post graduation than to enter the battlefield of today's job market. Ultimately, the choice of research post should be based upon factors such as: 1) personal growth potential, 2) ability to contribute something new and fresh, and 3) quality of the research program. In Elizabeth's case, this success formula was clearly in place. Those who share similar circumstances should not be unfairly judged. The question I remain with is: how can we, as a group of researchers, fight the negative association of "academic inbreeding"?
Ruth Stubbings13 October 2009 at 03:36 PM
permalinkreport this comment
This is not just a problem for researchers / academics - in other professions you will also hear "you won't get on if you are not prepared to move institution / organisation / location". This can be the case, as not all organisations can or are willing to provide you with the expereince to develop and move up in house, however it is not a hard and fast rule. Personally I believe happiness / job satisfaction should be a strong determining factor on whether you stay or move. If you stay make sure it is becasue it meets your needs and when you decide to move after howeverelong, you can illustrate how you have developed, as very few job stays the same. Earlier in my career I moved a lot, but I have now been in the same institution for just over 10 years and every year I face new challenges!
Elizabeth Dodson13 October 2009 at 04:30 PM
permalinkreport this comment
I absolutely agree that this is not solely an issue for academic institutions, but my perception is that it is somewhat magnified for this sector. At the moment I’m involved in interesting research and there are multiple opportunities that I can pursue for development. The grass may well be greener somewhere else and moving might help me to progress my career more quickly, but I enjoy the job I do now and have no desire to move back onto fixed term contracts. My fear though is that one day I will either want or need to move and regardless of how much development I can demonstrate, I will as Matthew put it, be considered far too academically inbred to be employable! If this is true, then I would like to find effective ways to challenge such attitudes. If it is a myth, then I look forwards to lots of warm reassurance :-)
Sarah Davies13 October 2009 at 05:50 PM
permalinkreport this comment
Here's some warm reassurance from me! - I'm not sure that this is entirely a myth (I guess we've all come across academics/departments that are unhealthily incestuous), but I think you escape this exactly beacuse of the things you discuss in your main post - you've had good reasons to stay where you are, and have been learning, developing, and facing new challenges. I'm sure this would shine through anyone's initial prejudices. I think this is a particularly important issue, though, because the 'drop everything and go' concept of being a researcher penalises those who can't do this - who have family ties or personal commitments to a particular region. You shouldn't - and don't - have to be young and fancy-free to do the best research!
Hannah Dee30 September 2010 at 01:43 PM
permalinkreport this comment
I did undergrad, MA, and PhD in the same place. I then did a post-doc somewhere else, but only lasted 6 months before getting a different one back in my old institution. There were various reasons for this - all very solid - but it does look a bit like I had to "run home"! And then I did a post-doc in France, and did OK, and now I'm moving again into a proper job across the country (actually, as it's in Wales you could argue it's in a different country again).
I know that I would not get a fulltime permanent job in my old institution. I've got a house there, a husband there, and a huge social circle. But the institution are just not interested in me. I think that a combination of academic snobbery (the new VC is particularly keen on a particular vision of academia), the contraction of the HE system (they've just lost 500+ staff, and it's likely to get worse), financial mismanagement (their year-on-year predictions seem to be generated by an epileptic gerbil) and so on. But I'm sure they'd say I was not developed enough as an independent researcher, or similar.
Blanka Sengerová30 September 2010 at 02:04 PM
permalinkreport this comment
This is an interesting topic to revisit, but has anyone else noticed that we suddenly had two messages from October 2009 appear in the recent posts?
Elizabeth Dodson30 September 2010 at 02:40 PM
permalinkreport this comment
Yes I noticed that Blanka - waswondering what had bumped this post when there were no new comments -not sure what's going on.