A short preamble to kick start a new season for 2022 of Changing Academic Life podcasts. [6:56 mins]

Links:

Austen Rainer, Queens Uni Belfast

Online Academic Leadership Development Course (Starting end Sept 2022)

Residential Leadership Development Course (last held June 2022)

Informatics Europe

Transcript:

 (00:04) Welcome to changing academic life I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick. And this is a podcast series where academics and others share their stories, provide ideas and provoke discussions about what we can do individually and collectively to change academic life for the better. 

(00:30) So welcome to this brand new series of the changing academic life podcast. I know it has been a long, long time coming. I think the last podcast I released was in June, 2021, and that was when I was still COVID stranded in Australia. It took some getting out of Australia. We were initially denied permission to leave despite our bags being on the plane and us thinking that we had all the correct permissions, but we eventually got back to Vienna in August, 2021. And I don't know about you, but it's been an ongoing process of readjusting and renegotiating what life and work looks like in these ongoing times. The term VUCA has been around for a number of years to describe a world where there's a lot of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and, and it feels like we're in a world, that's a VUCA world on steroids still. 

(01:37) And I know that for our own group, our own research group, we're still renegotiating how to gather again and how to be a group and how we reconfigure the sort of working from home and working from the office. And, also how we renegotiate connecting with community and conference travel or not travel and so on. So there's been lots going on and I feel like we are just, I'm just surfacing a little bit now, and that's not to say there weren't still some really interesting things going on around the changing academic life theme with my co-facilitator Austen Rainer, we were able to run two versions of the online academic leadership development course last autumn semester. And, this summer semester that were well received and we plan on running the next autumn online version that runs for seven sessions over a couple of months, starting in September towards the end of September. 

(02:46) So if you're interested in that, I'll put a link on the webpage. We were also finally able to run a residential leadership course in June this year that was targeted to more senior leaders. And again, that was a very humbling experience and very rich and rewarding for us as facilitators as well. And we are planning to run another version of the residential course next June, again You might wanna keep your eyes open for that. And just to say that we're running these leadership courses for informatics Europe. So you can also find the links to them on the Informatics Europe webpage. And in the course of the year, there are also various talks and workshops on, you know, to audiences ranging from lecturers to early career researchers, to PhD students on things like bringing a coaching mindset to supervision or how to say yes, no strategically. 

(03:46) I also developed and ran a brand new course for the PhD school in our faculty. And this was in response to seeing the stresses that PhD students were on, especially around pandemic, um, impacts. And I called the course from 'surviving to thriving, crafting your good professional life'. Um, and again, that was well received and such a, again, such a humbling experience to be part of that journey for people. And we'll be running it again. I'll be running it again, this coming semester and looking at ways that I might be able to package that and offer it more generally because I really see a need there. 

(04:33) And so now for 2022 and the new podcast series, I'm really looking forward to bringing whole lots of new conversations with people to share with you. And, I already have a bunch of people who've agreed to have a chat with me and have a couple recorded already that I'll be releasing over the next little while and really looking forward to just hearing people's stories and seeing what we can learn from each other and being part of continuing an open conversation about how we can do academia differently and better and in more collegial and sustainable ways while still producing great research. 

(05:21) And I think for me, one of the big messages that comes through again and again and again in the conversations is the fact that we can take many small choices that can have some really big impacts for ourselves and for the people that we work with. And I know that the agenda of culture change more generally in academia is a longer term project, but it starts with our small steps. So looking forward to being part of the ongoing conversation and discussion around how we can change academic life for the better and really glad to have you along as part of the journey. So keep your eye open for the next podcast, which will be the first conversation that I release in this new season, starting September, 2022. So look forward to talking to you again very soon, take care. 

(06:20) You can find the summary notes and related links for this podcast on www.changingacademiclife.com. You can also subscribe to changing academic life on iTunes or on Stitcher, and you can follow changeacadlife on Twitter. And if something connected with you, please consider sharing this podcast with your colleagues so that we can widen the conversation about how we can do academia differently.

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Photo by Artturi Jalli on Unsplash