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Research staff blog 2011
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Author: Simon Smith
Life in projects: the pros and cons
Have you had the kind of career that involves jumping from one research project to another? Does it allow you to feel you are building a career, or are you frustrated by constantly having to return to the starting line over and over, or develop skills that don’t have much mainstream value?
12 September 2011
Categories: Learning, Research, career, development, mobility, short term contracts, research staff
Think tanks: report from an ESRC workshop
Engaged scholars, unabashed lobbyists or useful research mediators? Would you work for a think tank?
11 December 2011
Categories: Research, career, mobility, research staff
Sharing the joy
Who can you share your research successes with? Do your colleagues celebrate your triumphs, or is there too much rivalry there? Do your family and friends outside academia appreciate what it means to you to get a paper published? (I’m not, I’m really not, going to use the term work-life balance in this blog …)
17 December 2011
Categories: Research, career, development, mobility, short term contracts
Autonomy, but for whom?
A personal reaction to the latest European University Association university autonomy scorecards. Do they tell us where academics have the best conditions to research and teach freely? I doubt it.
27 November 2011
Categories: Research, short term contracts
The ins and outs of the REF
As departments and institutions begin to prepare for the 2014 REF, researchers, particularly young ones, will start to worry about whether they are to be included in submissions. Is there scope in the new impact and environment elements to tell a more inclusive, whole lifecycle story about the research process in your unit?
30 October 2011
Categories: Research, career, research staff
Pro-am science
If we're professional researchers, what what it mean to be an amateur researcher? Is that a pejorative term, or something you could happily call yourself? Why we shouldn't be afraid of crossing and blurring the boundaries.
10 October 2011
Academic (and other) rankings
Rankings pervade academic life, as they do so many other spheres. What do we use them for? Are they intended for us professionals, or for those looking into our increasingly transparent world from outside? Should we welcome lots of alternative ranking scales, or does that defeat their purpose? This post explains why I concede they have a value at the same time as I pride myself in ignoring them.
24 September 2011
Would you own up to being a public intellectual?
Should academics be restricted, or restrict themselves, to speaking in public about their specialist subject only? Or do we have a wider role in public debate? Some thoughts on the Starkey controversy and the importance of knowing where someone's coming from.
29 August 2011
Categories: role models
Science in the media
Do journalists lack the skills, knowledge and temerity to question scientists? Or do they cut them off in full flow? Is science presented in the media as a researcher's monologue or a quick-fire Q&A? Why I doubt we'll find a happy medium.
04 August 2011
Categories: Research
Public engagement in the REF - ‘business as usual’ or ‘extra’ impact?
The REF panels have adopted different attitudes to public engagement as an indicator of research impact. Should the new evaluation process reward us for creating public interest in our research?
14 August 2011
Categories: Research, research staff
