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Action Research on Research Culture

 

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.

What do we think we know

  • PIs' and postdocs' expectations of their own role and each other's responsibilities may be misaligned, which can lead to challenging professional experiences.
  • A deep understanding of the postdoc experience is a prerequisite for designing workshops that are meaningful and helpful for postdocs.
  • The Cambridge postdoc experience is characterised by a variety of positive and negative emotions e.g., enjoyment and frustration.
  • Increasing preparedness and aligning professional expectations may be key to improving the postdoc experience.

How to get involved

We are not actively recruiting for this study right now. If you would like to be notified when we do start recruiting for either our Postdoc Academy training or our research group handbook workshops, please email us at arrcproject@admin.cam.ac.uk