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While kinesiology scholars have focused on how future faculty members are socialized, recruited into, and prepared for academia, limited attention has been given to the apprenticeship of observation for faculty roles when college students first develop impressions and initial understandings of faculty work. This qualitative study aimed to understand undergraduate kinesiology students' perceptions and beliefs about faculty roles and careers in higher education. Data were collected from 58 undergraduate kinesiology students at a large doctoral-granting institution in the Midwest region of the U.S. The findings were communicated through three themes: (a) incomplete understanding of faculty work limits motivation to pursue faculty careers; (b) positive associations but distal relationships with faculty through coursework; and (c) research involvement fosters an understanding of research process and faculty work. This study has implications not only for the recruitment and socialization of future faculty, but also for building public trust in kinesiology and higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since gaining academic and financial autonomy in 2018, a number of leading private universities in Kazakhstan have separated teaching and research into two distinct career tracks and implemented outcome-based faculty performance evaluation. This initiative aimed to increase the quality of both teaching and research, boost faculty’s research productivity, and improve the competitiveness of these universities in the local higher education market. However, despite being central to the development of universities, the restructuring of academic careers in Kazakhstan has received little scholarly attention. This study employs the framework of managerialism and collegiality to explore how faculty in research-track and teaching-track positions perceive and respond to the new career structures. Drawing upon the thematic analysis of 25 semi-structured interviews with faculty members working in the country’s top private universities, the study provides nuanced insights into the changing career structures in Kazakhstan by examining faculty experiences related to research and teaching, faculty evaluation and promotion, development of research culture, and work environment. By interpreting the study findings in light of the concepts of managerialism and collegiality, the study offers a fresh perspective on the neoliberal trends in university governance in the context where universities historically lacked autonomy from the state. The paper concludes by discussing the potential implications of the findings for improving the conditions of research-track and teaching-track faculty. The study may be of interest to policymakers, university administrators, and researchers concerned with changes in academic careers in transitional economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Dental faculty enter academia, after a career in practice or directly from school, without any formal education training. Faculty development programs have been designed based on survey needs assessments, but not on in‐depth descriptions of junior faculty transition experiences. The purpose of this research project is to describe the transition experiences of dental faculty from clinician to educator within the last 5 years. Methods: A qualitative multiple case study approach from an emic perspective was used. An emic approach is an analysis from the perspective of one who participates in the group being studied. Data were collected through semi‐structured interviews with 12 junior dental faculty. Thematic analysis identified common themes in the data through the lens of the social cognitive career theory. Results: Three salient themes were extracted from the data: guidance, job satisfaction, and motivating factors. Guidance was the main theme with participants revealing their need for more formal preparation regarding teaching, formal mentorship, and career progression goals. Participants find academia highly rewarding, and a unique finding was that physical injury was a major factor to entering academia. Conclusion: This study reveals that junior dental faculty members feel unprepared for their teaching role and highlights the benefits of mentorship in helping them develop their vocational goals and advance their careers. This study illuminates why clinicians choose to leave clinical practice, the preparation they receive, the areas in which they feel unprepared, and how they develop their teaching skills. These insights can help academic institutions better support their faculty and improve student learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the various career path types and impact factors that influence the career trajectory of PhD graduates, with a view to understanding how they pursue their careers inside and/or outside the academic sector after graduation. Based on data from the Austrian graduate tracking system ATRACK (N = 24,610), seven distinct career types were created. The first three of these career types target a consistent stay within the higher education (HE) sector, a consistent stay within the research and development (R&D) sector, or a consistent stay within the research sector (either HE or R&D). Our findings indicate that approximately one-third of PhDs remain within the Austrian research sector, while another third consistently pursue careers outside of it. On the one hand, the income of graduates 36 and 120 months after graduation indicates that earnings outside the higher education (HE) sector are significantly higher. On the other hand, the gender pay gap is also more evident outside the HE sector. In light of these findings, it becomes pertinent to question whether the prevailing academic career orientation in PhD programmes remains an accurate reflection of the professional requirements of the labour market, and whether it should be further adapted to ensure a diverse range of employment opportunities within and beyond academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use longitudinal data for the entire population of Norwegian PhD recipients over five decades to examine why only one-third of full professors in Norway are women, despite gender balance among current PhDs. We find that 90% of the lower female representation is due to lower female proportions in earlier PhD cohorts, increasing sizes of cohorts, and decreasing overall rates of promotion, which together we call ‘compositional/historical factors’. We find that the remaining imbalance is not caused by women dropping out, but rather by 14–18% slower average promotion rates calculated using hazard analysis. However, on average, women eventually catch up with men after about 20 years, although this differs by field. A similar hazard analysis for the US shows that women doctorates are less likely than men to enter tenure-track academia although more likely to enter non-tenure-track academia. This leads to larger US gender differences in advancement to full professorships and no eventual convergence. We suggest possible reasons for the differences between Norway and the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why you should read this article: • To learn about a training programme which develops nurses, midwives and allied healthcare professionals’ research skills • To understand how the training programme was evaluated • To find out the extent to which participants’ confidence in research-related activities increased during the programme. Background: Research forms an important part of clinical practice for nurses, midwives and allied healthcare professionals (NMAHPs). However, it is known there is a lack of confidence in this community in the development and use of research skills. The 4Ps Programme is a bespoke research-training programme that focuses on four areas: place, project, person and plan. Aim: To report an evaluation of the 4Ps Programme that used a survey to record the confidence levels reported by NMAHPs. Discussion: An increase in participants’ confidence was observed across all modules in the 4Ps Programme. This exceeded the standard deviation in the ‘place’ session, demonstrating genuine improvement. It was not possible to demonstrate a significant improvement in all cases. Low response rates affected the quality of the data obtained in the study, which would have benefitted from a more targeted approach to questions and better enabled the tracking of individuals’ improvement over the course of the programme. Conclusion: Participation in bespoke, targeted training related to research could lead to an increase in NMAHPs’ confidence in research-related activities. Efforts need to be made to refine the evaluation approach and improve response rates. Implications for practice: The 4Ps Programme can improve research-related confidence. Improved and further longitudinal evaluation will assess its impact in developing future clinical academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic has not only highlighted preexisting inequalities in academia but has also exacerbated them while giving rise to novel forms of disparities. Drawing upon our experiences as women, parents, and early career academics (ECAs) in Switzerland and enriched by feminist theory on reproductive labor and carework, we examine the unequal impacts of the pandemic. First, our analysis reveals how the pandemic disproportionately impacted ECAs, a group already in a position of precarity within academia. Second, we identify the broad range of tasks brought about by the pandemic as "COVID labor". This essential labor—undervalued, invisible, and often unpaid—had a particularly negative impact on ECAs. Third, looking at various intersections of difference, we emphasize that the experience of COVID labor was far from uniform among ECAs with institutional responses disregarding its extent and unequal distribution. In conclusion, we underscore the importance of acknowledging the long‐term consequences of COVID labor on ECAs, particularly those belonging to underrepresented groups. Neglecting these issues may lead to the loss of a wide range of talented scholars for reasons that are not related to the quality of their academic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Early career investigators (ECIs) in the Social Sciences and Humanities need to receive adequate information so that they will be empowered to progress in their academic career and deal with the various evaluation processes that constitute an essential part of their professional development. This article relies on an informational-ecosystemic approach originally developed in the context of resilience studies and crisis communication and uses it as a theoretical framework to analyse and understand the “early academic career building information ecosystems” (EACBIEs), into which ECIs professionally develop. The characteristics of these ecosystems are then refined through the analysis of interviews conducted with ECIs from all around Europe in the framework of the European Network for Research Evaluation in Social Sciences and Humanities (ENRESSH), European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action. The analysis reveals the remarkable heterogeneity of the information ecosystems into which early career researchers have to build their career in Europe, articulating a diversity of formal, non-formal and informal learning environments, and several related information channels, as well as showing a geographical spread that covers institutional, national and international levels. Furthermore, although the diverse information channels at hand and geographical levels at which they operate appear in some cases to be complementary, and even mutually reinforcing, they can also, in other cases, be dysfunctional, fragmented and unfair to some extent.

Early career investigators (ECIs) in the Social Sciences and Humanities need to receive adequate information so that they will be empowered to progress in their academic career and deal with the various evaluation processes that constitute an essential part of their professional development. This article relies on an informational-ecosystemic approach originally developed in the context of resilience studies and crisis communication and uses it as a theoretical framework to analyse and understand the "early academic career building information ecosystems" (EACBIEs), into which ECIs professionally develop. The characteristics of these ecosystems are then refined through the analysis of interviews conducted with ECIs from all around Europe in the framework of the European Network for Research Evaluation in Social Sciences and Humanities (ENRESSH), European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action. The analysis reveals the remarkable heterogeneity of the information ecosystems into which early career researchers have to build their career in Europe, articulating a diversity of formal, non-formal and informal learning environments, and several related information channels, as well as showing a geographical spread that covers institutional, national and international levels. Furthermore, although the diverse information channels at hand and geographical levels at which they operate appear in some cases to be complementary, and even mutually reinforcing, they can also, in other cases, be dysfunctional, fragmented and unfair to some extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity of interdisciplinary research, including the time needed to understand multiple approaches and develop skills, within a university structure organised in disciplines, means that interdisciplinary research can be difficult for a developing researcher. However, early- and mid-career researchers (EMCRs) are key to the future of interdisciplinary research. This paper asks, 'Why and how do EMCRs become interdisciplinarians?' It draws on analysis of interviews supplemented by ethnographic observations from a research project exploring the development of interdisciplinary expertise in universities. This paper outlines six common intersecting career pathways through which EMCRs come to work across disciplines. The diverse and often ad hoc nature of interdisciplinary research careers implies that support systems, resources and training need to be adaptive and flexible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic career development relies on a combination of teaching and research skills. In Australia, it is common for recent Doctor of Philosophy graduates to have a short-term post-doctoral research experience to build publication track-record and increase grant competitiveness, before securing a combined research and teaching or 'academic' role at a university. Other scientists work as full-time researchers for several years before transitioning to academic roles with expectations they can teach. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of health and biomedical science researchers transitioning into academic roles using a mixed methods design. Sixty-six participants working in health and biomedical sciences at over 20 Australian Universities who had been in an academic role for 5 years or less completed an online survey. Of 66 participants, 18 (27%) had never been in a research-only role before, while 48 (63%) had held a research-only role for up to 11 years before starting their current academic role. Findings showed most academics were not trained nor equipped to successfully undertake scholarly teaching. They reported a lack of awareness of teaching expectations, practical resources, and direct support provision at the start of their appointment. For former researchers specifically, these experiences led to low confidence and poor enjoyment in their academic role, with the potential to decrease overall teaching quality, student learning and student satisfaction. We postulate that these issues may be mitigated by the implementation of teaching-specific training programs catering for the research-only background of staff entering health and biomedical academic roles in the higher education workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are currently broad moves to reform research assessment, especially to better incentivize open and responsible research and avoid problematic use of inappropriate quantitative indicators. This study adds to the evidence base for such decision-making by investigating researcher perceptions of current processes of research assessment in institutional review, promotion, and tenure processes. Analysis of an international survey of 198 respondents reveals a disjunct between personal beliefs and perceived institutional priorities ('value dissonance'), with practices of open and responsible research, as well as 'research citizenship' comparatively poorly valued by institutions at present. Our findings hence support current moves to reform research assessment. But we also add crucial nuance to the debate by discussing the relative weighting of open and responsible practices and suggesting that fostering research citizenship activities like collegiality and mentorship may be an important way to rebalance criteria towards environments, which better foster quality, openness, and responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates the hiring procedure for research assistants in Turkish universities to see if it complies with fair employment law. According to the law, applicants should be ranked according to the weighted average of their GPA (30%), graduate examination score (30%), academic examination score (30%), and foreign language skills score (10%). However, the subjective academic examination score is widely believed to shadow other factors. To test whether the applicants are ranked according to the fair employment rules, 2409 applicant data for 530 positions is collected from 53 Turkish universities. The findings suggest that the final score of the applicants is almost entirely based on the highly subjective academic examination score conducted by the hiring institution. It is also found that the academic examination scores are inversely related to the candidates' GPA, which is against common sense. This inverse relation suggests that favoritism is the primary reason for the inequity in the hiring practice at Turkish universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the issue of women's position in research was studied both for developing and developed countries Women participation in research increased substantially in the past few decades. Globally, women make up 33.3% of researchers (in head counts), according to data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics for 107 countries covering the years 2015-2018. Several countries are collecting and reporting sex-disaggregated data on researchers than 20 years ago. However, a large data gap remains. Further increase in the involvement of women in research is crucial both for the development of the research and for the empowerment of women by increasing their role in society. This recantation is devoted to the comparison of involvement in research between European developed and developing countries in recent years. Examples from larger context have also been provided. There is no straightforward correlation between a country's wealth and its success in achieving gender parity in the research. Therefore, the origins of the differences are more complex than it is usually expected, which requires quite attentive study of the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Changes in drivers of academic roles within higher education institutions globally have resulted in increased proportions of academics in education focused (EF) posts. International and UK research suggests that EF academics can experience dissatisfaction with career progression and the perceived value of their work, including those in research-intensive universities. Previous UK research was conducted prior to the introduction of the TEF which has altered the landscape. Therefore, it was timely to examine the current experience of EF academics in research-intensive universities through a theoretical lens to understand barriers and facilitators to career progression. This interview-based study used two theoretical frameworks, Feldman and Ng’s Framework for Career Mobility, Embeddedness, and Success and Kanter’s theory of Power within organisations to explore the experiences of 43 EF academics across 12 research-intensive UK universities. Four contract types were identified, some of which allowed promotion. Three broad themes were derived from the data, including (1) Lack of agreement on the definition of education-focused academic roles, (2) Level of value and appreciation of educational expertise and the impact on education-focused academics, (3) Career development opportunities for education-focused academics. Recommendations to further enhance the experience and career progression for EF academics in research-intensive universities further include; ensuring transparency in recruitment into EF posts as to whether career development is possible within that post, the need to continue the sector-wide discussion on the definition of EF roles that recognises the complexity and diversity of activity and continued work to value and recognise appropriately educational expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The globally expanding doctoral education and the diminishing availability of academic job opportunities have prompted an increasing proportion of PhD graduates to seek employment beyond academia, drawing a growing scholarly interest. However, the existing literature on doctoral career pathways tends to be fragmented and dispersed, given the idiosyncratic individual and educational characteristics of doctorates grappling with the complex structural factors. To depict a comprehensive picture of the diversifying employment trajectories of doctorates across various geographical, disciplinary and sectoral contexts, this study conducts a systematic review, scouring 831 pertinent journal articles from the Web of Science. Following a set of inclusion criteria, 31 papers were ultimately selected to identify the key factors shaping employment trajectories of PhD graduates at structural (national supply and demand), institutional (employers' perceptions) and individual (doctorates' characteristics) levels. Drawing on the boundaryless and value‐based career theories, the authors develop a four‐dimension analytical framework, within which the findings of the 31 papers in East Asian and Western contexts are analysed. Overall, stakeholders in Western systems generally recognise the trend of PhD graduates securing non‐academic employment, whereas East Asian nations appear less receptive to this agenda. Meanwhile, due to their strong emphasis on research skills utilisation and employment stability, PhD graduates in certain economies find it challenging to pursue satisfying and successful careers, warranting increased attention. Building on the findings, we propose a four‐quadrat model in an effort to provide a tool for evaluating the capacity to absorb doctoral workforces of specific systems by categorising the doctoral professions. Highlighting shared patterns observed across various higher education systems and distinct trends prevalent in specific economies, this paper addresses key topics in doctoral education and doctorate employment literature such as labour market conditions, employment outcomes, job satisfaction, skills (mis)matches and sustainable careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Department heads are central in the university setting as an important buffer between university leadership and academic staff. However, taking on a middle management role can lead to significant disruptions in academic careers. To investigate the career trajectories of 31 academics in middle management roles, two waves of semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2015–16 (N = 31) and 2021 (N = 26). By exploring (dis)continuity in academic careers and (dis)engagement with participants' managerial roles, we identified four types of trajectories that appeared to influence participants' possibilities of future academic career development. We labelled these trajectories as follows: temporary managers, early managers, duty-served senior managers, and acclaimed managers. We argue that temporary managers, who are appointed to a fixed-term managerial position early in their academic careers, face the highest risk of disruptions in their academic career development, while duty-served senior managers, who are appointed to a fixed-term managerial position later in their careers, represent the most sustainable group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The persistent gender inequalities in higher education are an ongoing concern among academics. This paper investigates how male and female academics perceive the need for gender-related changes to support academic women's career advancement in China. Drawing on 40 interviews with male and female academics at a leading Chinese research university, this paper finds that attitudes among male academics were overwhelmingly negative toward the necessity for gender-related changes, whereas the female academics' responses varied. Two underlying issues cause the relatively similar degrees of unwillingness of men and women to make gender-related policy changes at universities. First, these academics had a strong belief in merit-based rules for promotion, which embedded gender blindness in the name of 'fairness'. Second, the power of individual choice was the determining factor for women's career progression, although both men and women acknowledged that their traditional cultural beliefs were rooted in processes and practices that systematically disadvantaged women. The findings expose academics' low expectations for the successful creation or implementation of institutional policies that support academic women's career development, considering that male academics did not support gender-related changes, and female academics were not united in their perspectives. In addition, socio-cultural norms were a critical obstacle. The findings suggest that the successful implementation of any gender policies must meet two conditions: they should stress equal opportunities for both sexes and should not jeopardize the perceived 'fair' meritocracy in academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Field placement is a milestone in every student's journey towards degree completion. The experience influences career choices, professional identities and emergent practices in the dynamic social work field. While there is a growing body of knowledge regarding this development, as well as research-as-placement for students, there remains a paucity of documentation on what this experience is like, especially regarding the outcomes for students post-placement. To address the gap our team of authors offer a reflective and reflexive autoethnographic account of our experiences as social work students (and supervisor) undertaking research field placements. Our aim is to offer readers a critical perspective of research-as-placement that highlights the potential to enhance academic aspirations post-placement. We promote the benefits for students when supervised/mentored by a social work academic, particularly the personal and professional opportunities that come from the experience that help students locate placement success, research skills development and an academic career pathway. A key finding is the need for further research regarding the experience of students requiring ready-made skills in self-directed and self-paced learning. Ultimately, through this work we propose that research-as-placement creates avenues to build symbolic and social capital in the lives of students and ultimately enrich their social work education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academia today is deeply hierarchical and continues to be centered around perceptions of prestige and symbolic capital. The symbolic capital, or pedigree, associated with the training one receives at the graduate level greatly informs how academics navigate their careers and how they advance professionally. In investigating the formation of the professional habitus of Indonesian academics, we are interested in how their graduate training informs both their career progression and their teaching practices. We theorize graduate training using the terms 'hybrid' for the participants who have a mix of overseas and domestic training and 'homegrown' for those who were educated solely in Indonesia. The data suggests that hybrid academics in Indonesia are more open to innovating their teaching practice and advance at a quicker pace than homegrown academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of a transforming doctoral education landscape and the emergence of nontraditional doctoral students, this article investigates strategies to promote the success of students balancing academic studies and their careers. Prevailing discussions on doctoral success strategies have often centred on "traditional" doctoral students. This article examines the doctoral success challenges confronted by "non-traditional" doctoral candidates who pursue higher education at different stages of their lives, often juggling such with work and family or other responsibilities. The study was informed by Ward and Brennan's model to analyse the compatibility of student-doctoral education. This framework introduces the concept of student-doctoral fit that asserts that non-traditional students achieve optimal success when there is alignment between the student's values and those upheld by their organization and social structure. Therefore, doctoral success for non-traditional students lies in the alignment of three main spheres, namely, the 1) student-doctoral environment, 2) student vocation, and 3) the student-doctoral culture. Indepth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 non-traditional doctoral students employed by a research organization. The findings underscore the intricacies of balancing academic and professional demands, shedding light on the challenges arising from the lack of integration between academic work and doctoral pursuits. They highlight the need to challenge the conventional separation of these facets. Notably, participants highlighted that they received more substantial academic training and support from the research organization and work mentors, emphasizing the variable nature of support by university supervisors. Given that the majority of challenges reported revolve around the fit between the student-doctoral culture and environment, it is recommended that research organizations and universities collaborate and establish robust support structures. This collaborative approach is essential to ensure academic success and facilitate non-traditional doctoral students' smoother transition into professional careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic career development relies on a combination of teaching and research skills. In Australia, it is common for recent Doctor of Philosophy graduates to have a short-term post-doctoral research experience to build publication track-record and increase grant competitiveness, before securing a combined research and teaching or ‘academic’ role at a university. Other scientists work as full-time researchers for several years before transitioning to academic roles with expectations they can teach. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of health and biomedical science researchers transitioning into academic roles using a mixed methods design. Sixty-six participants working in health and biomedical sciences at over 20 Australian Universities who had been in an academic role for 5 years or less completed an online survey. Of 66 participants, 18 (27%) had never been in a research-only role before, while 48 (63%) had held a research-only role for up to 11 years before starting their current academic role. Findings showed most academics were not trained nor equipped to successfully undertake scholarly teaching. They reported a lack of awareness of teaching expectations, practical resources, and direct support provision at the start of their appointment. For former researchers specifically, these experiences led to low confidence and poor enjoyment in their academic role, with the potential to decrease overall teaching quality, student learning and student satisfaction. We postulate that these issues may be mitigated by the implementation of teaching-specific training programs catering for the research-only background of staff entering health and biomedical academic roles in the higher education workforce.

Despite the progress made in recent years, achieving gender equality in academia is still a major challenge. In general, studies have revealed that women progress more slowly up the academic ladder, that they tend not to attain essential leadership roles, and that they earn less than men in comparable posts. Using the framework of gender as a social structure in order to capture the interplay between the cultural and the structural dimensions at the micro, meso and macro levels, this essay aims to introduce a debate on how gender inequalities are produced, reproduced and combatted in academic organisations located in different countries (Spain, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, and USA), and with different experiences of external policy levers and internal networks and alliances that lead to different combinations of fixing numbers, knowledge or institutions from a gender equity perspective.

Why you should read this article: • To be able to demonstrate the multiple impacts of research educational initiatives to the organisation funding them • To appreciate why changes in culture are needed in the health professions to support an evidence-base to better serve our populations • To understand how to build research capacity and show the benefit of investing in training opportunities Background: There is increasing emphasis in the UK on developing a nurse, midwife and allied health professional (NMAHP) workforce that conducts research. Training for clinical academic careers is provided by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). However, the low number of successful applicants suggested there were barriers to achieving this. The Centre for Nursing and Midwifery Led Research (CNMR) launched a fellowship programme in 2016 to backfill two days a week of NMAHPs' time for up to a year, to give them time to make competitive applications to the NIHR. Aim: To report a study evaluating the CNMR fellowship programme. Discussion: The making Visible the ImpaCT Of Research (VICTOR) tool (Cooke et al 2019) was developed to describe the organisational impact of research. The 2016-17 CNMR fellows completed VICTOR and their responses were analysed using a framework approach. The analysis found the main benefits of participating in the programme were protected time for research, opportunities to develop collaborations, increasing intra- and inter-professional awareness of NMAHPs' research, peer-reviewed publications, and conference presentations. Challenges included a lack of support from line managers, limited value placed on NMAHPs' research and failure to backfill posts. Conclusion: There were some challenges with the fellowship programme, but all recipients found it to be a positive experience and undertook significant scholarly activity. Implications for practice: A contractual agreement must be established to foster committed partnerships between higher education institutions (HEIs) and the NHS. HEIs and the NHS should conduct frank discussions of the challenges encountered in fellowship programmes. Positive initiatives and outcomes in tertiary education and clinical settings should be shared to improve fellows' experiences and enhance partnerships between HEIs and the NHS. Job descriptions should include time allocation to review fellowship candidates' applications regardless of outcome. The showcasing of research successes and the benefits of NMAHP research must evolve to secure organisational 'buy in', which is the precursor to widening access to clinical academic pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conditions of mainstream research funding constrain risky, novel research. However, alternative grants are emerging. We study grantees of a double-blinded funding scheme targeting risky, novel research: The Villum Experiment (VE). Without prompting, scientists juxtaposed the experience of performing research under these conditions with that of performing research funded by mainstream grants: fun and less fun. The conditions of VE felt less intrusive and appealed to their self-perceptions and idealized views of scientific work, which shaped how they conducted the funded research. This paper makes three contributions: (1) it reaffirms that how researchers experience grant conditions affects whether a scheme affords what it intends, (2) it highlights that the affordances of research funding are relative to other concurrent funding options, and (3) it shows that small, more broadly allocatable grants can afford scientists a protected space for autonomous research, usually associated with elusive tenure positions or European Research Council (ERC) grants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal Impact Statement Botanical careers are more important than ever, given that environmental challenges such as climate change and deforestation threaten plants daily and because plants contribute to solutions to these problems. Plants act as our sources of food, medicine, textiles, and oxygen, which means finding ways to mitigate these environmental challenges is crucial. Despite this, little is known about what career opportunities exist for botanists outside of academia and how well academia is training graduate students for these careers. This study centers on the current state of academic botanical careers and how well students completing post‐baccalaureate degrees (herein referred to as graduate students) are being prepared to fill careers within the botanical workforce. Summary Plant science plays a crucial role in our society and in ongoing efforts to address many global challenges, including food insecurity and climate change. Despite a predicted increase in botanical career opportunities, little is known about how well academia is training graduate students for careers outside of academia. To further our understanding of the current state of academic training for botanical careers, we surveyed 85 faculty and 40 graduate students working in academia in the plant sciences in the United States. We found that the top challenges to university professors in academia are lack of support staff and funding, whereas students completing their post‐baccalaureate degrees cited finances and lack of supportive mentoring as their top challenges. Despite the fact that most graduate students surveyed wanted a career at a research‐intensive university, many botanists in academia are retiring without being replaced by more botanists. Faculty expertise is also misaligned with needs from industry and government employers, causing challenges to training graduate students for these careers outside of academia. Although our data point to a lack of career opportunities within academia, we also note that current graduate student education still emphasizes such careers and is not properly preparing graduate students for the careers they are more likely to obtain within the private and government sectors. We discuss the implications of these findings and present several recommendations for preparing future generations of plant scientists for more realistic career trajectories.

Addressing university-based teacher educators' complex work in current higher education contexts requires identifying the variables influencing their professional agency. However, limited related literature mostly falls within boundaries of the global North, while the specifics from those in the global South remain under-researched. Thus, focusing on Chile, a country with a highly marketised education, this study explores how teacher educators agentically navigate contextual and personal factors by drawing on Archer's theory of reflexivity. Qualitative analysis reveals how participants' reflexivity mediates factors (i.e. collegiality, precarity) and yields diverse forms of agency (i.e. weak, progressive), reflecting their professional identities, concerns and professionalism. The findings suggest that participants' dominant communicative reflexivity relates to managerialism in education and Chilean society's collectivist nature. Implications are presented for future research on broader structural and cultural factors influencing teacher educators' reflexivity and agency and the role of policy implementation and institutional cultures in supporting their professionalism and careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

David R. Maines was a founder of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, a fierce defender and practitioner of interactionist sociology, and cross-disciplinary pioneer, bridging sociology and communication research in the study of narrative. He invariably gathered collaborative circles of colleagues and students around him wherever his intellectual travels took him. Here, I recall the collaborative circle that formed with him at its center at Penn State in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was a time of both personal and professional turmoil for David, and also prolific scholarly achievement. I then introduce other contributions to this volume that feature others' remembrances and appreciations of David's life and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology's tendency to branch into applied scientific disciplines is regularly debated. This debate focuses either on the organisation of sociology in academic institutions or on how the content of sociologically informed interdisciplinary research diverges from disciplinary sociology. This article bridges these debates in a study of the sociology of food in Sweden. The aim is to analyse how Swedish food sociology reflects the tension between disciplinary sociology and interdisciplinary research. The data comprise the doctoral dissertations and post-PhD career paths of Swedish sociologists whose dissertations are about food. The article finds that these dissertations treat food either as an inherently social phenomenon or as a social lens (i.e. a social phenomenon viewed as instrumental for analysing something else). Second, it is found that sociologists whose dissertations treated food as an inherently social phenomenon were more likely to pursue careers in food sociology but also to hold affiliations outside of sociology departments. The article concludes that the academic locus of Swedish food sociology is organised outside sociology departments but that its approaches are not necessarily any less sociological. Thus, the analysis questions the basis for arguments that interdisciplinary research represents a threat to the critical and analytical core of sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore how management and organization scholars theorize when undertaking research on extreme contexts, which are organizational settings where potential adverse events arise from risks, emergencies and disruptions. We propose that different 'modes of engagement' arise as researchers connect different aspects of the self to the extreme context; namely, personal self, professional self, moral self and vulnerable self. Each self-context connection plays out in different modes of engagement in the conduct of empirical research and enables different theorizing practices. We present these self-context connections as four ideal-typical modes of engagement. Adventuresome inquiry connects a personal self to the extreme context and theorizes by phenomenon-driven problematization. Instrumental scholarship expresses a professional self in the extreme context and theorizes by theory elaboration. Ideological improvement galvanizes a moral self in the extreme context and theorizes by change-driven abstraction. Reflexive labor exposes a vulnerable self and theorizes by dialectical interrogation. Our comprehensive framework of theorizing as mode of engagement contributes to extreme context research by elucidating how theorizing in and through such contexts is accomplished by researchers with multiple selves and by offering some guidance on how the four modes can be used dynamically to ensure generative theorizing. We also contribute to the broader literature on theorizing in management and organization studies by highlighting the need to consider the interplay between the researcher and the academic contributions they produce and by proposing a reflexive and dynamic framework of theorizing as modes of engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal Impact Statement: Botanical careers are more important than ever, given that environmental challenges such as climate change and deforestation threaten plants daily and because plants contribute to solutions to these problems. Plants act as our sources of food, medicine, textiles, and oxygen, which means finding ways to mitigate these environmental challenges is crucial. Despite this, little is known about what career opportunities exist for botanists outside of academia and how well academia is training graduate students for these careers. This study centers on the current state of academic botanical careers and how well students completing post‐baccalaureate degrees (herein referred to as graduate students) are being prepared to fill careers within the botanical workforce. Summary: Plant science plays a crucial role in our society and in ongoing efforts to address many global challenges, including food insecurity and climate change. Despite a predicted increase in botanical career opportunities, little is known about how well academia is training graduate students for careers outside of academia.To further our understanding of the current state of academic training for botanical careers, we surveyed 85 faculty and 40 graduate students working in academia in the plant sciences in the United States.We found that the top challenges to university professors in academia are lack of support staff and funding, whereas students completing their post‐baccalaureate degrees cited finances and lack of supportive mentoring as their top challenges. Despite the fact that most graduate students surveyed wanted a career at a research‐intensive university, many botanists in academia are retiring without being replaced by more botanists. Faculty expertise is also misaligned with needs from industry and government employers, causing challenges to training graduate students for these careers outside of academia. Although our data point to a lack of career opportunities within academia, we also note that current graduate student education still emphasizes such careers and is not properly preparing graduate students for the careers they are more likely to obtain within the private and government sectors.We discuss the implications of these findings and present several recommendations for preparing future generations of plant scientists for more realistic career trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Careers in academic dentistry are failing to attract a new generation of academics to steer dental education and research. Dental academia is further limited by inadequacies in levels of ethnic diversity. There is a stark contrast between the diversity of graduates entering the dental profession and those in academic positions, especially in senior ranks. Dentistry is not the only field in academia, which lacks representation and lessons may be drawn from other faculties. This paper focuses on what is known about dental academia in the United Kingdom, where there are formal research training pathways. There is an emerging recognition of the requirement for action, and it is hoped this will stimulate debate and impetus for research across Europe. The terminology used throughout this piece follows the United Kingdom Cabinet Office recommendations for writing about ethnicity (Writing about ethnicity, 2021; https://www.ethnicity‐facts‐figures.service.gov.uk/style‐guide/writing‐about‐ethnicity). Where cited sources have employed less acceptable terms (Please don't call me BAME or BME!: Civil service, 2019; https://civilservice.blog.gov.uk/2019/07/08/please‐dont‐call‐me‐bame‐or‐bme/), these have been changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, social scientists have begun to study the implications of increasing pressures in the early academic career. Studies focusing mostly on the life sciences have shown junior scholars making research decisions based on a productivity logic to increase their chances of career success. In this paper, we extend this literature to the very different context of economics, characterized by a dominant mainstream, a clear hierarchy, and an independent/small-team approach to scholarship. Adopting a culture-in-action framework, we analyze how cultural repertoires help early career economists deal with the sometimes competing career pressures associated with working in high-status departments. Drawing from in-depth interviews with tenure-track economists in three Scandinavian countries, we find that skillful use of discovery-talk and delivery-talk helps respondents respond to the challenges they face as junior academics. Implications for research include the avoidance of, e.g., interdisciplinary work and questions of only regional importance. Furthermore, the data indicate that discovery and delivery notions partly overlap and so contribute to preserving economics as a relatively coherent and homogenous field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family background has been shown to be a strong determinant of educational attainment, yet relatively little is known about the role that family background plays in PhD attainment or in the selection into academic careers. In this study, we estimate sibling correlations from Finnish full population register data to comprehensively assess the importance of family background in selection into academia. Our results show that family background accounts for over a third of the overall variation in becoming a PhD and subsequently an academic — a share which is up to four times as large as implied by conventional comparisons by parental education. However, we did not find evidence that family background would be an exceptionally strong determinant of doctoral outcomes when compared to other educational outcomes. Our findings further suggest that sibling similarities in PhD attainment and academic careers may largely be attributed to sibling similarities in prior educational achievement rather than to other family background characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internationalisation of higher education (IoHE) has become a prominent topic in higher education research. While there is increasing institutional and governmental commitment to IoHE, it is important to consider the actual outcomes of these processes critically. Despite the significant issues raised by the academic migration of professors, researchers, and post-docs regarding migratory trajectories and epistemological aspects of scholarly work, this area of research remains understudied. This article adopted a qualitative approach, drawing on semi-structured interviews with migrant scholars pursuing academic careers in Portugal. Our findings suggest that a complex interplay of factors influences the pursuit of an academic career by migrants, including the influence of institutional and governmental policies regarding science and the impact of marketisation of higher education institutions that have jeopardised academic career possibilities. Moreover, science and academic-related work seem to be the main drivers in pursuing an academic career for migrant scholars rather than primarily career-focused and economic strategies. Notwithstanding, our study highlighted the challenges that migrant academics face at the epistemological level, pointing out that their experiences are embedded in neocolonial logics that are further aggravated by current unequal societal arrangements related to what constitutes valid and legitimate knowledge and the power relations therein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which gender equality measures do Nordic universities use, and to what extent are the measures effective in increasing the share of women in top academic positions? Based on theories that distinguish between actor and structure-oriented measures, and between strategies of inclusion and transformation, we identified four types of measures: career enhancing measures offered for women, training and awareness-raising measures, organizational responsibility measures and preferential treatment measures. We investigated the use and efficacy of the four types of policy measures in 37 universities in Sweden, Norway and Finland, implemented between 1995 and 2018. The policy data was collected through on structured interviews with universities' HR staff and equality officers. By combining these unique survey data and register data on universities' teaching and research staff we assess the impact of institutional gender equality policy on the gender composition of academics in grade A positions. We find strong growth in the use of organizational responsibility and awareness-raising measures over time, and weaker use of career enhancing measures and preferential treatment. Overall, the institutional measures have a limited effect on the growth in the share of women in grade A positions. Nonetheless, we find that the implementation of structural measures is associated with the growth of women in grade A positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how organizational mobility and foreign nationality affect a researcher's chances of an internal career promotion in university systems that do not have rules preventing inbreeding and where teaching occurs mostly not in English but a local language. As a case study, we have examined the Flemish university system, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, and developed expectations on the chances of promotion for mobile and foreign researchers compared to non-mobile and nationals. We use data for all postdoctoral and professorial staff between 1991 and 2017, for a total of 14,135 scientists. We calculated the chances of promotion with a competing risk model to take time into account and to disentangle the probability of two mutually exclusive risk events: promotion and leaving the university. The results show that international mobility and foreign nationality reduced the chances of promotion in the same university, and that mobile and foreign scientists were also more likely to leave any given university. These effects were particularly strong at an early stage: in the study period, 21.9% of non-mobile national postdocs became professor compared to just 1.2% of internationally mobile foreigners. These results would suggest that internationally mobile and foreign scientists struggle to advance in universities that lack rules preventing inbreeding and with little opportunity to teach in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the extent to which career competencies (knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to manage one's own work and learning experiences to achieve the desired career progression) are prevalent amongst early career researchers (ECRs). We adapted the Career Competencies Questionnaire [Akkermans, J., Brenninkmeijer, V., Huibers, H., & Blonk, R. W. (2013). Competencies for the contemporary career: Development and preliminary validation of the career competencies questionnaire. Journal of Career Development, 40(3), 245–267] to ECRs' training and career specificities, considering the two career tracks facing them: within and outside academia. This questionnaire was sent to PhD students and junior PhD holders in 16 countries (n = 727). Our results show that career competencies for within and outside academia are clearly contrasted. Furthermore, compared with their female counterparts, male participants generally reported stronger career competencies in preparation for careers both within and outside academia, while PhD students perceived having more career competencies in preparation for careers outside academia than PhD holders did. We also found a positive link between ECRs' career competencies and their perceived employability, and those who perceived themselves as having strong career competencies were more likely to consider their current work meaningful. While most PhD holders pursue careers beyond academia, the concept of career competencies offers an innovative theoretical contribution to the field of ECRs' development, by highlighting how this population perceives their preparedness for diverse professional paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the contemporary global higher education sector, there is an increased focus on gender and the academic profession, particularly inequalities. Previous studies construct a clear picture of the academy as an unfriendly profession for women, particularly highlighting the challenge to 'belong'. A growing body of literature demonstrates how conferences contribute to the development of academic careers but are also shown to be exclusionary spaces for many different groups, including women academics. This study focuses on how gender manifests in cultural representations of conferences – and the academics involved. Based on a qualitative gender analysis of symbolic references to academic conferences from a sample of written fictional texts, the article reveals how fictional representations of conferences portray gender and especially how they contribute to depictions that reproduce gender inequalities. Focusing on who is attending fictional conferences and what these characters are doing at or in relation to conferences, our analysis highlights how women's viability as academics is challenged across a range of texts. We argue that cultural representations of academics cannot be ignored in gender analyses of academia, due to the role they play in constructing a dominant imaginary of academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]