Researcher Development 2.0: Wellbeing and Talent Management?

If September is conference season (and the fact that I have been to three conferences in the first half of this month suggests that it is), then a flurry of blogs about the conferences encountered will follow. Here is the first of these.

This week, I attended my second Vitae International Researcher Development Conference. I went for several reasons:

• Firstly, as part of the University of Hertfordshire’s biennial review of its work in researcher development for the HR Excellence in Research award, the University was told by the assessors that we have good practice to share as case studies. As well as publishing case studies on our website, I had the idea of myself and colleagues also contributing to this year’s conference as a way of sharing our work in person with the researcher development community.
• I also wanted to foster engagement with the conference among my colleagues because after six years, this summer I stepped down as Chair of the University of Hertfordshire’s Researcher Development Group. Attending the conference together seemed like a great way to round out the handover to incoming Chair, Dr Elizabeth White.
• Finally, I wanted to take another chance to encounter the conference myself - it is big, busy and informative and the things I learn there have not only enhanced my work as RDG Chair, but have also informed my Directorship of the world’s only Professional Doctorate in Heritage, DHeritage, my research leadership as Professor of Design History in the School of Creative Arts at Hertfordshire, and my mentoring of colleagues as part of that role.

At this year’s conference, though, I was struck by the tension between, on the one hand, addressing the pressing problem of mental health and wellbeing difficulties experienced by researchers and research students in UK academia (and not only the UK), and on the other, academia’s working processes which demand competition and overwork and are sometimes, frankly, divisive. Unless we address both of these, we cannot successfully ameliorate the situation.

The conference began with an opening plenary ‘What is the future we are developing researchers for?’ Among the speakers was Dr Gary Williams (Senior Research Officer, Mind) who gave a very practical, applicable talk about ‘Positive wellbeing at work‘. Williams reported on a study which showed that an unmanageable workload is a key threat to good mental health.

Dr Anne-Marie Coriat (Head of UK and EU Research Landscape, Wellcome) followed with an equally helpful account of how her organisation is aiming to create ‘A more positive culture for careers’. The Wellcome has published a rallying cry on its website to #reimagineresearch

This refreshing, understanding and emotionally astute beginning to the conference was undercut somewhat by some of the comments I heard at the next panel I attended, ‘How are talent pools of early career researchers being managed in universities? A comparison between industry and higher education’ led by Cathy Hastie (Coventry University) and Dr Kieran Fenby-Hulse (Teesside University). Any commitment to changing the research culture to foster more positive mental health and wellbeing has to be carried out consistently or fault lines in this improved practice will undermine our well-intentioned efforts.

I spoke in the panel ‘Supporting Researchers in their Leadership and Career Progression in Academia and Beyond’ about the Academic Women’s Advancement Group in the School of Creative Arts and the Women+ Professors Network, a University-wide group I founded inspired by a group at the University of Sheffield. I discussed the ways in which the group will respond to uneven gender ratios in the professoriate across the University, and the gender pay gap, as well as providing a pool of mentors and candidates for inclusion in committees of all kinds, to spread that work more representatively, among other things. Other panellists were Linda Ryan, Dr Raquel Harper and Elise Glen.

Read more of my thoughts about this conference and what it suggests about the current state of researcher development in the light of the new Researcher Development Concordat here.