Never the Twain Shall Meet on Prezi

We had been planning to run this development event for sometime before we did because research staff were telling us that they felt that their PIs needed to be more involved in assisting researchers to make career development choices. I was a bit nervous about how it might work because not all PIs share the same views on how high a priority should be placed on skills development (particularly of the “generic” or “transferable” nature) in terms of the perceived success of a researcher. I was also nervous about how likely it was that we could attract a significant number of PIs to a career development event for early career researchers given the other considerable demands on their time. I am not alone in sensing that trepidation as was confirmed at the Vitae Conference.

So here’s what we learned from running this event:-

1. We needn’t have worried about the PIs & Researchers not being engaged; they were!
2. More communication/constructive dialogue between PIs and researchers would be beneficial
3. The perspectives of the PIs were quite different to those of the researchers
4. The researchers wanted more information about how things work in research
5. The PIs felt the need to shield researchers from the external strategic pressures placed upon them
6. Researchers wanted to make the choices that were right for them as individuals, even if that meant “jumping ship” or changing course

The outcomes of this event were:-

1. We organised a follow up event where senior managers explained how the funding of research works at UWE and how it fits together with institutional research strategy including how we are approaching the Research Excellence Framework (REF)
2. The Researchers’ Forum has attracted more research staff representatives for the planning group
3. The Researchers’ Forum is having an increasing influence on research staff issues at UWE
4. More PIs and senior managers are engaging with the issues raised by research staff and are willing to contribute their knowledge/experience to research staff events

I’d really appreciate hearing from researchers or researcher development colleagues about their experience of bringing researchers and their managers together to work on improving the career development prospects of research staff.