Relationships and Expectations

The dynamic between early career researchers/academics and their principal investigators (PIs)/managers is formative in shaping academic careers.  Research suggests potential conflicts in the different professional expectations held by early career researchers and their managers.  

In the first year of our project, we gave postdocs access to multiple training sessions which all aimed to empower them with knowledge and skills to have a meaningful career conversation with their PI. This project didn’t have the effect we hoped or anticipated, but we learned a lot about how to reconsider developing solutions for this aspect of research culture, and we wrote about our experiences in the F1000 article(see side bar). 

In the second year of our project, we wanted to learn more about the expectations postdocs and PIs have of their own roles and each other’s roles. To capture more critical experiences, we solicited views in multiple creative formats through a project called “Your Voice.” To capture more positive experiences, we organised the university’s first “Research Culture Celebration” allowing nominations of PIs or research groups who exemplify key values. Participants in both sub-projects were interviewed to gather more nuance. Learn more about these activities on More details on our Relationships & Expectations Study page.

In the third year of our project, we are developing and evaluating a new training course in collaboration with the university’s Postdoc Academy which incorporates the findings we learned from our most recent activities. We are also developing and evaluating workshops for research groups who are interested in developing a team handbook to establish a common expectations and research culture.  

Diagram: Visualises the different facets of professional expectations in academia. We analyse our survey and interview data according to this expectations framework and build our interventions to align expectations on it.