Career mobility in academia has traditionally been seen as a one-way street. You're either in academia, or you leave - never to return! But is this true?
In this episode of the Research Culture Uncovered podcast, hosts Taryn Bell and Ruth Winden discuss career mobility with Danni Croucher, Policy Lead at the National Centre for Universities and Businesses (NCUB). We also hear from researchers at Leeds with experience moving between academia and other sectors.
Key takeaways:
✅ Career mobility has huge potential benefits for both researchers and organisations, whether moving into industry permanently, or for a short-term secondment.
❗However, there are organisational and structural barriers to mobility which need to be tackled to make it easier to move between sectors.
📣 Thankfully, there are a huge number of initiatives out there to support researchers as they gain experience in a variety of organisations.
Intro [:
Taryn Bell [:
Taryn Bell [:
Taryn Bell [:
Taryn Bell [:
Taryn Bell [:
Taryn Bell [:
Danni: Thanks so much for having me.
Taryn: So could you start us off by talking a little bit about NCUB's remit and, and kind of purview just for anyone listening who's not familiar with, with the organization. Of course. Yeah. So NCUB is the National Centre for Universities and Business.
Taryn: A great example of this is Dr. Gokcay Balci. He is a lecturer in sustainable freight transport and logistics at the University of Leeds. He's been an academic for roughly 10 or so years. But before completing his PhD, he spent around four years working in industry, taking a number of roles in shipping, logistics, and export management, and he told us that working in industry has had a number of benefits for him.
Gokcay Balci [:
Gokcay Balci [:
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Taryn Bell [:
Ally Shepherd [:
Ally Shepherd [:
Ally Shepherd [:
Ally Shepherd [:
Taryn Bell [:
Scott McLaughlin [:
Scott McLaughlin [:
Scott McLaughlin [:
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Scott McLaughlin [:
Taryn: It is easy to think of the benefits of industry experience as all being at the individual level, but as Danni told us, organizations really benefit from career mobility too on an organizational level.
Taryn: Secondments and placements are a great opportunity to try out a different field. Even if you decide that it's not for you in the end, Eric Atwell, who is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence for Language at Leeds, found his industry secondment useful in helping him figure out exactly where he wanted to work.
Taryn Bell [:
Eric: Another option you might wanna consider is secondment. I, for example, got seconded for, uh, three years to gist the Joint Information Systems Committee. Um, essentially to manage their, uh, national, uh, initiative in knowledge-based systems as the knowledge-based systems initiative.
Eric Atwell [:
Eric Atwell [:
Taryn: However, as Danni highlighted, there can be organizational and structural barriers to intersectoral mobility, though.
Taryn Bell [:
Danni: There's then the issues of kind of application processes are really different. There's been some good, progress on this. Like, uh, the, the narrative CV applications that are rolling out should really, really ease some of this for some people applying, applying to academia in particular, but the reforms to rep as well.
Taryn: That's so interesting. Um, so you were talking a little bit about some of the. The research that NCUB has done. Um, and I know that obviously the researcher career mobility task force has done quite a lot of work in this area too.
Taryn: We're kind of at a crux point almost, it feels like because.
Taryn Bell [:
Taryn Bell [:
Danni Croucher [:
Danni Croucher [:
Taryn: Yeah, it strikes me that there's two, I think that there's maybe two challenges there. The first is, like you say, get, getting people the knowledge of how to do these things and the opportunities.
Taryn Bell [:
Taryn Bell [:
Danni: I think one of the key challenges as well is a middle career is, is particularly a point where you get fewer, fewer people being mobile.
Danni Croucher [:
Danni Croucher [:
Taryn: Absolutely. And Ruth, I know that mid careers work is something that is very close to your heart.
Ruth Winden [:
Ruth Winden [:
Danni: The big question. Um, there are loads of opportunities out there. I think the challenge is, is awareness of them.
Taryn: So from your perspective as, as someone who has quite a, a high level understanding of this for you, are there any recommendations for what university, both universities and industrial organizations to be doing to encourage mobility more?
Danni: Absolutely. And this, we kind of can't, can't pretend this isn't happening against quite a difficult kind of environment that universities face themselves in as well.
Danni Croucher [:
Danni Croucher [:
Ruth: Thanks so much for your time, Danni. Thank you so much. No, it's great. A lot of, uh. The work that we do at NCUB really is just there to make sure that the system works as, as best as it can.
Danni Croucher [:
Danni Croucher [:
Taryn: Thanks so much to Danni for such an honest and informed perspective on career mobility. And thanks also to Gokcay, Alison, Scott, and Eric for sharing their personal perspectives on work, both in and out of academia.
