Tips from an ‘ECR’ survivor

Posted on | August 19, 2010 | 5 Comments

I promised to report back on the career pathways discussion but I got distracted. One reason is that straight after the talk that Friday I went to my office and received a special, hand delivered notification from the Provost saying I had been promoted! So, even though I think I was supposed to keep it secret for a while, the news is now official.

In the wake of that happy event I felt momentarily obliged to stave off my cynicism about ECR life, since it seems I may have finally graduated from that particular purgatory. But the euphoria hasn’t lasted too long.

I should write separately about the performativity of promotion applications, which are a pretty horrible subspecies of the application genre. If you are looking for resources on career things of this nature Jonathan’s site is well worth consulting. I don’t really want this to be a career advice blog though, despite the fact that lots of you seem to like it when I write this stuff. I need my own advice – and not just on careers! So let’s help each other out, please…

In the talk I basically just explained that networks are the basis for career opportunity. Not a revelation in itself – especially to anyone who knows my research interests. But what I was trying to emphasise was that integrating yourself in a field beyond your department is crucial at an early stage. Personally, I think it’s the only way to learn the resilience and context you need to stay sane in a profession that is so affected by institutional politics of one kind or another. For postgrads, looking beyond the local is about the only way to position yourself confidently if and when you finish.

I would even go so far as to say that the very successful graduates I have seen in recent years (and here I’m measuring success in a range of ways, beyond paypackets) are those that remained modestly invested in their department during candidature. Looking beyond the intensity of close role models is an important way to cope with the human failings that are inevitable in any large workplace. You will probably never feel as vulnerable as when you are writing your PhD. So, protect yourself.

This means getting involved in what you care about – your disciplinary association, perhaps, or working for a relevant journal (for free). Pursue tangents beyond the immediate scholarly problem: films, music, reading groups, sport, politics. Travel. Go to conferences. Get your research heard, known about and tested by an audience beyond your particular university context. Consider starting a blog.

Why? Because publicity brings benefits. Don’t kid yourself otherwise. Once your name is known in relation to a topic, you are more likely to be remembered when panels need presenters, chapters need authors, and jobs need filling. You may even get asked to write about things that you don’t care about precisely because of the strength of your research identity. Your name is your asset.

When I was a grad student, I volunteered to set up an email list, csaa-forum, for the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia. This was pre-blog, pre-Facebook; a different world of online experiences. It played an active role for a while, hosting some memorable exchanges between colleagues. A side effect of this initiative – one that the application genre lets me count as “service” – was that my name regularly appeared in people’s inboxes all over the country for several years. If people didn’t know what my research was about, at least they knew my name. I’m still convinced this was the main reason I was shortlisted for my first job interviews.

Bottom line though: publications are your best currency for career mobility. They are also the fastest way to get more publications. There can be a very swift transition from the PhD experience of thinking no-one will publish your work to the point where you are struggling to respond to multiple invitations. The strategy and etiquette needed to navigate that problem are part of the phenomenon we might call the “mid-career abyss”.

You don’t necessarily have to publish during your PhD if it means you finish it on time. Your biggest test is to show you can design, manage and complete a large project without getting side-tracked. But sure, publishing is key to the job market, and going to conferences is one of the surest ways to make it happen (see how these things start to reinforce each other…?). A physical audience is an initial and immediate peer review that can improve the quality of what you eventually submit to journals. Remember conferences are always attended by journal editors and board members. There are so many journals and they all need filling.

People will give you plenty of advice on the relative prestige of journals. But you know what? Getting used to the experience of peer review is what matters. It’s an imperfect and inconsistent practice, which is why it’s often worth learning through less prominent journals. These are the ones that tend to have a personal dimension to the editorial process (no robot emails from online repositories) and the commitment to give your work due guidance and attention.

Certainly I would question anyone thinking they should only submit to highly ranked journals. At the last ECR event I attended at Sydney this was literally the advice given. In the majority of university settings (that is, beyond the elite) you need fast publications as much as quality ones – you need to show there is an appetite for what you do. When I submitted my thesis I had 5 publications out or in press. “In press” is an important category to exploit because it shows that you have momentum.

In the pathways session I was also asked to talk about the transition from postdoc to teaching & research. I had to say: it’s hard. The skills you learn as a postdoc are limited and focused, so it should be obvious that all of the above advice is biased. Going straight to a postdoc after your PhD, you learn to view your research as the sole measure of your worth. In a teaching department, by contrast, you can show up for work every day without ever having to mention it. Research can even feel like a taboo topic, and for many it seems to be the thing you do on weekends since the rest of the week is overrun by teaching and admin.

I will say more about the inevitability of teaching and admin later. What I’ll say now is that serial postdoc fellowships risk giving you an unrealistic idea of research metrics. It’s a poor apprenticeship in learning a sustainable publication rate. To get a fellowship in the first place you have to show publishing form. To get another one you have to show that you used the privilege of a “research only” position wisely. (For the record: Sydney’s “research active” definition is currently 5 publications averaged over 3 years.)

The research career path also has collegial consequences that would be worth discussing more openly. That is, it can have a knock-on effect on the expectations placed on teaching colleagues trying to get a foot in the game. Your productivity affects others. I’m not at all convinced that the industry as a whole is adequately supporting teaching and research as the ideal model for academics. That would require a lot more serious attention to the question of workloads at every level, and the gendered, raced and classed bodies that are carrying them.

Category: Academia, Work

Comments

5 Responses to “Tips from an ‘ECR’ survivor”

  1. yes, well, after a few drinks
    August 20th, 2010 @ 10:34 am

    Hmmm. I want to problematise how you are setting up ‘worth’. Two points to raise in response, Mel.

    1) Networks mean nothing unless those you connect with think it is in their interests to promote ‘you’. It means that one’s research and activities are therefore partially conditioned and constrained by whatever is going to help promote the interests of senior academics that serve as gatekeepers. People will not help you if they do not think there is something in it for them. If ‘your’ research is too esoteric or not congruent with a given senior academic’s research interests, then forget it.
    2) Hegemony of the market of ideas. What if you have zero interest in whatever is the latest hotness being published by gatekeeping senior academics? There will not be a market for ‘your’ publications. This is moving beyond the ‘affable persona’ required for networking and moving into focusing your interests to reproduce and not disrupt the existing micro-hegemonic relations between the research capacity of senior academics and their seniority. This disjunction between what is published in journals and what is discussed online makes this gap obvious.

    It means that academic career paths and publications are what Delanda calls an anti-market. Research and publications are not primarily designed to fill a gap in knowledge (‘this’ is a problem, ‘this’ is what future students will need to know, ‘this’ is how I make a difference) but firstly to reproduce autocratic power relations.

  2. melgregg
    August 20th, 2010 @ 6:01 pm

    What do *you* mean by worth?? :-) I would agree with the thrust of the first two points, but I also think there are a lot of very committed and generous senior academics whose work it is hard to appreciate from afar. It isn’t as simple as you’re suggesting, but you know that.

    Your last point about publications was certainly the conclusion reached by the panelists (among them Ken Wissoker and Cathy Davidson) at a discussion at Sydney Uni last night. Well, maybe not about the autocratic power relations, but how participation in this anti-market is an instance of self-hate!

  3. Michael
    September 11th, 2010 @ 7:00 pm

    I do like the idea that it is ok to publish in journals that are not so high class especially early on.

    But I am not sure about publishing reproducing power relations. Surely every academic and researcher faces this issue. I had not thought of it that way. I was embarrassed that I, who only has an honours degree, with some grad certs was asked to write in a couple of fields. Well, I might look at my publications now and go, well maybe there were power relations, but the editors thought they were good enough to appear. Is that power? Yes but unless one really wants to be in a particular journal, I can’t see the problem with being asked. Sure, when I have the letters it will be better, but when I get invites to publish my research, that might be power, but I’ll say yes.

  4. yes, well, after a few drinks
    September 12th, 2010 @ 4:36 pm

    Michael, you have been sufficiently interpolated. Think about who asked you to publish. Do you mention their work? Do you discuss someone’s work or concepts that the editors also write about?

  5. Michael
    September 15th, 2010 @ 3:29 pm

    No I did not mention their work. It started when I published a conference paper which, on reflection, is not written at a high level but then again that happens when one is learning. A journal asked to publish the paper and it went from there. I’m submitting the last paper on this project this week. The editors were not strict really, I suppose they were B and C journals, but my point was to get published at all was an honour. Onwards and upwards.

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