Surviving and Thriving in Academia – serie

Academic promotion doesn't come easy: a successful application requires you to demonstrate continued growth in every area of your role as a researcher, educator and member of the academic community. Furthermore, the detail of the promotions process varies from one country to another and even from one institution to another. So where does an ambitious academic start? Achieving Academic Promotion demystifies the process by bringing together international perspectives - both personal accounts and reflections on the structures and processes of promotion in different contexts - to help you understand the steps you can take at any stage of your career to move up the ladder. Featuring compelling and encouraging personal stories of success, as well as practical tips and takeaways, this timely book is essential reading for the academic who wants to be promotion-ready.

Beyond the doctoral thesis itself, the most significant factors in the progression of PhD candidature and early academic careers are: the relationships between the researcher and their supervisor(s), the ability to network, and understanding one’s place in the global research arena. Navigating these critical factors and moving from a novice to expert, is a critical undertaking for every PhD candidate and a process that will continue for years following one’s PhD. In this book, scholars from around the world offer practical advice on how to get the most out of one’s doctorate. Readers will get helpful tips on how to sustain healthy and long-lasting relationships with their supervisors, learn how to develop their networks, and understand the important changes impacting the modern PhD candidate.

Learning through dialogue brings a powerful opportunity for individuals to connect to colleagues, navigate professional demands, and meet the challenges posed by a turbulent world. Written for all who mentor or coach in universities, this book addresses a critical question: how can mentoring and coaching conversations be effective and accessible ways to support researcher and academic development?Drawing on their wide range of experiences of coaching and mentoring, and designing and leading institutional programmes and policy, Guccione and Hutchinson provide an insight into the founding principles of reflective ethical practice, as well as a pragmatic and easy to navigate toolkit supporting you to understand the needs of the people you want to develop. Including bite-sized chapters packed full of applied solutions, the authors help you to design, re-design, or troubleshoot your mentoring or coaching approach, and offer up go-to guidance for building and enhancing a culture of developmental dialogue at the individual, programme and organisational level.

Despite growing numbers of international academics globally, there is a dearth of works exploring success stories, and the barriers and opportunities of being an international academic. Academic Mobility and International Academics offers personal experiences and guidance from a truly international suite of scholars exploring their academic journeys and addressing intersectional topics on academic mobility including perspectives from early career researchers, university leaders, mentors, LGBTIQ scholars, and more.    Throughout this timely collection, chapter authors offer insight into overall academic employment experiences, including their motivations and challenges in steering their academic career. They offer guidance on how international academics can harness their career aspirations, across both leadership and non-leadership positions and how internationality in academic careers is evolving in these current times.Essential reading for any scholar or postgraduate student looking to work outside of their home nation, this hopeful and insightful text will provide guidance, inspiration, and real-life examples of how to survive and thrive as an international scholar.

Globally, researchers are being asked to plan for and demonstrate the impact that their research has on culture, society, health, and the economy. Higher education is changing, moving away from rewarding academics primarily for peer-reviewed academic publications and asking academics to report on how their work contributes to society more broadly.For many academics, impact poses a worrisome proposition. Impact has not generally been integrated into PhD training and many universities have been slow to respond to the emerging impact agenda, leaving a knowledge, training, and support gap. The Impactful Academic offers a holistic, all-of-career approach to impact aimed at active researchers and those who support research impact. It ruminates on the question of what an academic with impact looked like in the past, and what it will look like going forward as concepts around impact are solidified by government and granting agencies. The authors come from various backgrounds including engaged scholars who are generating impact, and impact professionals who have been critical to supporting academics across disciplines on their impact journeys. The reader will emerge with more than an impact plan for a single research project or grant, but rather a holistic, career-centric approach to impact.

The COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly tested the resilience of academics in higher education. Many universities were severely affected by reduced student enrolment, with widespread job losses reported across universities. For many academics, the impact of the pandemic has been worrying, financially crippling and overwhelming. The virus has also exposed academic inequalities and impacted heavily on vulnerable people. The individual and collective heroic spirit of many academics has been nothing short of extraordinary. Overcoming the initial hurdles of COVID-19 takes one kind of energy; the resilience needed to remain engaged despite the continuing changes and uncertainties is quite another challenge. It is one that demands sustained resilience.This timely book provides perspectives across disciplines, career stages and global contexts on how to develop resilience in academia. These personal stories may empower others not only to survive, but to thrive in times of adversity.

Pressure to share research findings in the form of academic publications has meant that doctoral candidates are encouraged to develop skills that will help them engage with the competitive publication market.Doctoral Study and Getting Published features a collection of early career research narratives that focuses on researcher development and education. There is an emphasis on the often pressurised process of publishing during or after a doctorate through an ecological perspective. The book brings together a diverse but coherent set of voices, reflections and advice from early-career researchers regarding publication experiences. Issues explored include academic identity, collaboration (including include student-supervisor relationships, co-authorship and working in research groups), dynamics of larger scholarly communities and engaging with publishers and reviewer feedback.The book is intended as a supplementary resource for use by doctoral students and early career researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences, whether they are enrolled in academic writing programmes or working individually to develop their authorial identity.

Navigating Academia as a Neurodivergent Academic sheds light on the various emotional and physical tolls that navigating an unsupportive academic landscape can take on neurodivergent researchers, with calls for systemic changes to better support neurodivergent people within higher education institutions. It also celebrates finding connection and purpose within neurodivergent research communities.Delving into experiences of a global cohort of neurodivergent scholars as they navigate professional journeys, chapters draw on personal narratives, theoretical insights, and research conducted with and by neurodivergent academics. Opening with an overview of current challenges faced by neurodivergent scholars in a time that offers both increasing mainstream acceptance and systemic pressures that disproportionally harm neurodivergent staff, the editors highlight the complexities of navigating shifting institutional attitudes and policies. Subsequent chapters identify specific challenges faced by neurodivergent academics, from PhD scholars to academics in leadership positions, alongside intersecting issues relating to gender diversity and race. Each story brings a unique perspective, showing the wide variety of neurodivergent people and the challenges that they face, with common themes of navigating spaces, systems, and social and communication norms that can create barriers to people who experience the world in different ways.Navigating Academia as a Neurodivergent Academic highlights the need for more inclusive spaces within higher education institutions for neurodivergent individuals, with particular emphasis on neurodivergent early career academics. However, it also celebrates the successes of neurodivergent people, including the joys of finding community, the relief of finally being understood, and the positive changes neurodivergent academics are able to make when they stand together.

Navigating Academia as a Neurodivergent Academic sheds light on the various emotional and physical tolls that navigating an unsupportive academic landscape can take on neurodivergent researchers, with calls for systemic changes to better support neurodivergent people within higher education institutions. It also celebrates finding connection and purpose within neurodivergent research communities.Delving into experiences of a global cohort of neurodivergent scholars as they navigate professional journeys, chapters draw on personal narratives, theoretical insights, and research conducted with and by neurodivergent academics. Opening with an overview of current challenges faced by neurodivergent scholars in a time that offers both increasing mainstream acceptance and systemic pressures that disproportionally harm neurodivergent staff, the editors highlight the complexities of navigating shifting institutional attitudes and policies. Subsequent chapters identify specific challenges faced by neurodivergent academics, from PhD scholars to academics in leadership positions, alongside intersecting issues relating to gender diversity and race. Each story brings a unique perspective, showing the wide variety of neurodivergent people and the challenges that they face, with common themes of navigating spaces, systems, and social and communication norms that can create barriers to people who experience the world in different ways.Navigating Academia as a Neurodivergent Academic highlights the need for more inclusive spaces within higher education institutions for neurodivergent individuals, with particular emphasis on neurodivergent early career academics. However, it also celebrates the successes of neurodivergent people, including the joys of finding community, the relief of finally being understood, and the positive changes neurodivergent academics are able to make when they stand together.

Becoming an academic can be an overwhelming, if not a completely consuming, experience, and conceptualising this process is often fraught with a lack of understanding of both the process and the subsequent implications. Many academics struggle with the notion of who they are, despite believing that they are aware of who they want to be and where they are situated on their academic journey.This edited collection draws on the experiences of early and mid-career academics, as well as leaders in the field, to explore the role and contribution of the self when professionally undertaking research. Each chapter addresses valuable questions for academics to examine and articulate the self in one’s work, and encourages the probing of the impact of academic engagement in higher education on individual fidelity to personal and professional values, beliefs and assumptions. With a focus on self-methodologies, including arts-based approaches to reflective and reflexive practice, the authors showcase methods that go beyond traditional reflective practice and explore the interplay of arts and self-practices.Conceptualising the Academic Self offers transformative educational insights with both theoretical and practical applications. It serves as a comprehensive guide for novice academics to seasoned educators and researchers, as well as institutional leaders and policy influencers, addressing the challenges of self-conceptualisation and self-formation.

Becoming an academic can be an overwhelming, if not a completely consuming, experience, and conceptualising this process is often fraught with a lack of understanding of both the process and the subsequent implications. Many academics struggle with the notion of who they are, despite believing that they are aware of who they want to be and where they are situated on their academic journey.This edited collection draws on the experiences of early and mid-career academics, as well as leaders in the field, to explore the role and contribution of the self when professionally undertaking research. Each chapter addresses valuable questions for academics to examine and articulate the self in one’s work, and encourages the probing of the impact of academic engagement in higher education on individual fidelity to personal and professional values, beliefs and assumptions. With a focus on self-methodologies, including arts-based approaches to reflective and reflexive practice, the authors showcase methods that go beyond traditional reflective practice and explore the interplay of arts and self-practices.Conceptualising the Academic Self offers transformative educational insights with both theoretical and practical applications. It serves as a comprehensive guide for novice academics to seasoned educators and researchers, as well as institutional leaders and policy influencers, addressing the challenges of self-conceptualisation and self-formation.

Demands on institutions of higher education are constantly growing, and recent years, including the Coronavirus pandemic, have complicated academic life in unprecedented ways. The impact of complex and dynamic outside forces, from the pandemic to the interacting socio-cultural, political, economic, and technological factors, calls for strengthened leadership. Yet the 21st century has seen reduced participation by faculty in leadership roles, even though the numbers of faculty globally are rising.Better support is needed to encourage and inspire early and mid-career scholars in pursuing leadership. Thriving in Academic Leadership provides just that, presenting informative and inspiring stories from academic leaders at colleges and universities across the world, including Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States.Personal and engaging, the stories speak to a broad population of academics, serving as an inspiration and guide for academics who aspire to leadership, or are currently in leadership positions, looking to climb the leadership ladder.

Early career faculty colleagues may only recently have completed their own doctoral studies, and what knowledge they have of supervising doctoral candidates may be limited. Supervising Doctoral Candidates provides support for new and young academics who, from the beginning of their academic career, may be expected to support doctoral candidates with little or no prior training.Each chapter draws on the more extensive experience of international authors, providing encouragement and gentle advice on the role of the supervisor and the relationships with the student and co-supervisors as the doctoral study progresses. The structure of the book follows the student’s journey – from selecting an appropriate topic of study, through the support needed to develop research skills and begin writing, to publications and the final defence of the thesis. Understanding the needs of doctoral candidates, developing relationships with other supervisors, and how to work with non-academic members of the supervising team are covered in this collection, with consideration given to different types of students including those with disabilities and those who join from abroad.Delivering practical and useful mentorship advice grounded in lived experience, Supervising Doctoral Candidates assists early-career academics and addresses the challenges of supervision.

This book contains an Open Access chapter.Communities exist everywhere in academia. They are important not only for facilitating academic socialisation and generating intellectual capital, but also for fostering academic wellbeing. But how do communities come to be and how do we develop and maintain them? What kinds of challenges are involved when bringing people together around a shared interest in a field or topic?Addressing community-building in academia through a practical yet critical lens, the nine chapters present cases of academic community-building, or lack thereof, from across the globe. These communities are built and maintained by scholars representing different career stages, resulting in a go-to resource for any academic or higher education practitioner interested in community-building activities that strengthen and emphasise the collective – rather than competitive - aspect of academic work. Communities bring various benefits, yet community builders encounter several challenges. Very often, community-building often takes a great deal of time and (often voluntary) effort that is rarely officially rewarded.Building Communities in Academia poses important questions and provides extensive insights that scholars and practitioners can use when developing community-related activities to enhance connection in academia.

To thrive in academia, wellbeing must be understood and nurtured. Recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic has left the landscape of higher education altered and uncertain, resulting in a range of important considerations which can jeopardise wellbeing and positive mental health of those working within the academic community.Written with a core understanding of wellbeing and the different challenges and stresses on our mental health, this easily digestible and accessible text encourages those in academia to reflect upon how they are functioning, both in and out of the classroom, offering a range of suggestions for smarter ways of working. A deeper discussion threads through on the balance between job satisfaction and life satisfaction, and calls educators and academics to remember why they entered academia in the first place and how to maintain these values in a way that continues to inspire and drive us.Containing ‘critical questions’, Nurturing Wellbeing in Academia provides useful, practical ideas to help maintain or to recapture a feeling of wellbeing. Topics discussed include applying for promotions, research grants, mentoring, using social media and publishing pressures. This is an ideal resource for those who may be considering transitioning into higher education, helping to prepare them for the challenges and cognitive load that academia can bring.