UKRSA at the Vitae Researcher Development Meeting!
Wow. What a couple of days! Firstly, as an interloper from the world of scientific research, I feel I should first thank everyone from Vitae and the world researcher development who has made me feel so welcome. In many years as a researcher, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so included or like my views were so important. Researcher developers are the best!
For those who don’t know, Vitae are the world leaders in career and professional development of postgraduate and early career researchers and are based in Cambridge. UKRSA are supported by Vitae and get most of our funding and practical support through our Vitae liaison Katie Wheat.
The Vitae conference gives UKRSA a chance to meet all those people who make our work possible, as well as those people who might be able to help us extend our influence. Over the past couple of days I’ve been lucky enough to speak to a lot of important members of policy and funding committees, so I am very hopeful that we might be able to start developing more of a role there!
UKRSA had two workshops at the conference. The first, developed by Emma Compton-Daw and Louise Stephen was built around identifying the potential issues around the recent REF2021 consultation and developing ways in which researcher developers (RDs) might support us. A lot of the discussion focused on the importance of the researcher voice and ways in which RDs can help that voice be heard. In light of this, Helen and Lucy are now working on developing a ‘researcher developer’ page for the website. This will allow us to better communicate our message to RDs and provide them with targeted information that might help them advocate for us. Louise will be bringing the workshop to the National Postdoc Meeting next week, where we will think about what support researchers feel they need from RDs.
The second UKRSA workshop was in conjunction with the Marie Curie Alumni Association. Louise Stephen, John Chisholm and Lucy Thorne co-hosted a session based around recognising the networks researchers use to help us implement mobility in our careers. We went on to think about how those networks can be strengthened and links between them forged. The findings are being written up now and with participants from The British Council, The Royal Society and local associations we can’t wait to see where they will take us next!
UKRSA selfie with our new MCAA pals! F:Louise, L-R: Lucy, Juliane Sauner, John, Maria-Antionetta
<Our groups had lots
to discuss about networks!
John and Maria-Antionetta
make lovely display boards>
The final day of the conference was centred around wellbeing and inclusivity. UKRSA were very well represented when Anna Slater took to the stage to present the findings of her survey on the needs and provisions for researchers taking parental leave on a temporary contract. This is always going to be a complex subject and Anna and Katie are still wading through the huge number of responses they received, but the take home message was the importance of communication. In order to have a positive experience of parental leave it seems you must have good communication between the researcher, line manager and HR. Anna also emphasised the importance of the line manager’s attitude in these situations – so if you are a line manager, please remember researchers are people too!
All in all it has been a wonderful couple of days that has really opened my eyes to the world of researcher development! I can’t wait to start working through the ideas we’ve come up with as we move forward with UKRSA!
If you would like to get more involved in UKRSA we’d love to hear from you. We are currently looking for reps in the South West, Wales and the South East, as well as looking for social scientists with interests in taking our parental leave study forward. If you know anyone who might like to get involved, please send them our way – ukrsavitae@gmail.com
