Research lives and cultures

Dr Sarah Brooks is a senior lecturer in Organisational Behaviour in the Management School at The University of Sheffield. Sarah combines coaching in her work, in different ways.  She is teaching undergraduate students to gain thinking tools for career development planning, and she integrates coaching into her research portfolio, for example, with a project using coaching as a route to voice, for individuals who have experienced sexual harassment. Sarah has also built a private coaching practice called Powerful Dreaming.

Sarah’s entry into academic work came after several years working in the corporate sector as a management consultant. She was disillusioned working in this environment and started a part-time course in Psychology at the Open University. This course opened her awareness that developing people was central to her interests. She pursued this with a Master’s in Psychology. It was during this early period of uncertainty about the kind of career to pursue next that she experienced a coaching conversation. This early conversation helped her navigate her career decisions.

Even though she returned to consultancy work after her Master’s, she trained in coaching skills whilst still a consultant and later continued with a formal coaching qualification and accreditation. Her combined interest in coaching and developing people led her to undertake a PhD on voice and silences in upward communication in the workplace.

Sarah has chosen to align her academic role with her growing interest in coaching. Instead of splitting these two parts of her life and professional identity, she has found a way of bringing coaching as a core anchor that underpins everything she does.

She describes that it felt bold and daring to have coaching as a visible anchor in her academic focus. She started to talk to other people about this integration of coaching and academic research. Hearing others share that her integration was thought-provoking helped her build confidence that this integration made sense. Interestingly, her research thread over the years has been about finding voice. This integration of her coaching into her academic work has been about finding her own authentic voice and research niche, as an academic.

 Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking: 

• How coaching conversations at critical career junctures can help ease decisions and transition
• How to bring together different parts of yourself to build your research niche and your authentic voice as an academic
• How coaching skills can be woven into so many levels in academic lives

 More on Sarah: 

https://sheffield.ac.uk/management/people/academic-staff/wp/sarah-brooks

Prof. Jenny Clark is a Materials Physics research leader in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at The University of Sheffield. Jenny has sailed the fellowship boat to build her research career while putting her family as one of her priorities. She is an example to showcase that whilst no one can ever “do it all”, researchers with parenting responsibilities can progress in science and protect their family time.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• What are the boundaries between work and other parts of your life that you want to reassess and work on?
• What could be more in control/ feeling more balanced look like for you?
• What are you prepared to push away/ say no to/ accept not to be involved in to reclaim a sense of control?

Read the full blogpost:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/jenny-clark

Dr Phil Elks is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Medicine and Population Health at The University of Sheffield. His research career has been dedicated to using Zebrafish as a model to study human diseases. Being part of a vibrant community using this animal model has shaped his career.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• How spotting small funding opportunities is part of shifting towards research independence
• What informal opportunities may you consider to construct your leadership development
• What could be your best recruitment strategy for building your team

Read the full blog post here:
tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/phil-elks

Prof Alex Rothman is a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Career Development Fellow and Professor of Cardiology at The University of Sheffield. He is also an Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. His focus for research culture aims to benefit both patients and people in the research team.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• What would you need to build your resilience and want to keep going if one of your research projects fell apart?
• What would it look like to better align your different research projects with your clinical practice? 
• What values are shaping your approach to engaging in research as a clinician?

It was the phrase “I dare you” graffitied on a bridge over the Charles River that changed the course of Alex’s engagement in research. As a trained doctor, Alex had started on an academic foundation programme and was working on a clinical trial research project when things went pear-shaped. The project team he had been involved in collapsed, with the Principal Investigator and other team members leaving the institution when the study appeared to have unexpected negative results. It took several long rounds of re-evaluation of the data to realise that actually the study had been correct and the data were positive. By that time, it was too late, as the team had disintegrated. Alex found himself without a team. 

It took immense determination for Alex to move beyond this negative experience. Whilst he could have chosen to leave the project behind and move on to other things, he felt that the data of this study needed to be published. It felt that publishing the work was morally and ethically the right approach, as they owed it to the patients who had volunteered to be involved. Alex took it upon himself to get the data published. This meant harnessing all his energy and self-beliefs to make this happen. He also had to work in his own time whilst working as a junior doctor.

Alex moved on from this challenging experience by slowly building new research relationships. He eventually identified a collaborative research relationship he was comfortable with and gained an MRC doctoral fellowship that enabled him to move out of clinical work and undertake a 3-year PhD. He made the most of this precious research period without his time taken up by clinical work. At the end of this period, the choice between returning full-time to clinical work or giving research a further go felt like a challenging decision. It was seeing this graffiti “I dare you” written on a brideg that crystallise the decision he needed to make. Could he carry on with research? What was needed for him to have a different experience of research that would allow him to build a rewarding dual clinical and research career?

Eventually, based on some of his PhD work, he got the pharmaceutical company Novartis to be interested in some of his work and he went to work in Boston. His dual clinical and research career stemmed from building a niche at the intersection of patient intervention, device development, pharmacology and clinical studies expertise. 

His collaborative stance has meant creating teams that can collectively enhance the quality of clinical studies. Whilst the expectations placed on clinical academics may overburden them, Alex reminds himself that focusing on the metrics of research outputs is only a distraction. He describes that whilst these expectations are difficult, trying to maintain focus on the impact for patient benefit is a better strategy to align your efforts. His approach is to align his values and clinical work, not aim for short-term personal rewards through shortcuts but continuing to focus on patient benefits.

Dr Cariad Evans is a virology consultant for the NHS, as well as an infectious diseases specialist. After a period of working in Africa, Cariad returned to the UK to work as a consultant.  A corridor conversation with a senior colleague kick-started her engagement in doing research via an MD. The recent pandemics have been fertile grounds to contribute to research, as well as impact national policy decisions.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• Do you know your motivation and drive to stay involved in research post-PhD or MD once you return to full-time clinical practice or training?
• When looking at different formulas for keeping your research going- full clinical practice with research on the side, part-time clinical and part-time research or any other possible combinations, what feels most manageable, achievable or exciting?
• What is going to fuel your desire and interest to remain research-active: a brilliant collaborative team, the pressure to access research funding to answer challenging questions, a mentor who believes you are bringing a unique set of skills/ expertise and perspective, a topic that you feel passionate about addressing, and/or a drive to create systemic change?

Read the full blog:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/cariad-evans

Deanne Bell is Associate Professor in Race, Education and Social Justice at the University of Birmingham. When I interviewed her, she was working at Nottingham Trent University as Associate Professor of Critical Psychology and Decolonial Studies. Her research has the potential to shift higher education towards an era where the colonial past is addressed, but first, it means “exposing and dismantling colonial systems of knowledge and exclusion.”

Working in banking and playing tennis for Jamaica were early steps in Deanne’s professional life that could probably not predict the research that she is doing now. Her re-entry into academic life came about through master’s courses. Her sporting life and psychology background articulated her initial academic interest in performance psychology.

She experienced a watershed moment when she encountered Frantz Fanon's seminal text, Black Skin, White Masks. Discovering and analysing this text meant opening the hidden literature of black scholars and intellectuals. This experience seems significant in the direction she started to pursue for her research. 

Deanne knows that being a black woman academic in a UK institution puts her in a limited pool of scholars. A recent report by the Women’s Higher Education Network indicates that in 2023, there were only 66 Black Women Professors in the UK out of 23,515 Professors (31% women). It can be hard to feel you belong when you remain one of the rare black woman academic scholar.

Believing that you can progress your academic career to the next level can feel challenging when, by researching racism and coloniality, the opportunities to access research funding remain limited. Accessing research funding is one of the thresholds on the promotion academic career ladder. The limited chance of accessing research funding and the position of her work within the REF structures could make her progression even more challenging. However, this is not stopping her from doing work that she cares deeply about, and that has immense importance in challenging institutions.

Deanne has been involved in several projects with Nottingham Trent University and the Wellcome trust to challenge the structures and framework that maintain a colonial past. This type of “gladiatorial” work is exhausting as it means battling on, and continuously having to justify the ongoing impact of our colonial past on institutional structures. The impact is not residual, it is at the core of how institutions function, educate, research, recruit and promote.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• What do you see in your own institution that remains of a colonial past which continues to shape ways of working, policies, assessments etc. and is likely to impact researchers/ academics from minority backgrounds? 
• If you have “white privilege”, how do you use your own voice to challenge practices and policies in your institution or even in your research group? 
• Can you break out of the silence and not be a bystander when you see/hear racism or behaviours/ comments anchored in our colonial past?

Read the whole blog post:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/deanne-bell

Professor Jo Richardson is Associate Dean of Research for Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University and Professor of Housing & Social Inclusion. 

Her expertise on homelessness and methodological stance in co-production have created solid and value-based foundations for her leadership style. 

Jo’s career was not planned from the start as an academic career. She started as a housing practitioner working in the public sector, such as a national professional body, a housing association and a local authority. Eventually, Jo entered academia via the professional services route with a role as manager for a research centre. The encouragement of an empowering line manager enabled her to get involved in some teaching and join a part-time PhD.

Her role at the time required her to gain consultancy funding to renew her year-long contracts. This was a strong motivator and excellent training for her to enter an academic role, as she was already devising different projects, accessing funding, and implementing delivery. She collaborated with multiple external stakeholders, so she built a deep understanding of knowledge exchange, getting her to grasp the ethos of the impact agenda early on.

Her research niche developed from her early practitioner experiences and consultancy projects. Her passion and curiosity about the issue of homelessness had been fuelled early during a gap year as a student volunteering in New York for a homeless charity. This experience and later work as a practitioner anchored her interest in applied research, asking real-world questions that matter to society. Her grant capture strategy was one of “mixed economy”, relying on funding from many different sources. This allowed her to build a significant grant portfolio, and she became a Professor in 2014.

Her next professional step meant stepping into more significant leadership shoes. Again, as with her initial line manager support to do a PhD, she was supported at this stage by the encouragement of peers and her head of department. She now sees her role as a university leader as contributing to the success of others – making them feel at home in the academic space – through working closely with early career researchers and embracing actions that support the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion agenda.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• Where is your curiosity driving you in your research journey right now?
• If you trusted your “open-hearted curiosity”, where would this take you professionally? 
• What are the gaps in your professional skills and portfolio?

Read the full blog:

Dr Cristina Nostro is a Senior Scientist at the McEwen Stem Cell Institute at the University Health Network (UHN), a research hospital, as well as Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. She recalls challenges in demonstrating research independence.

Cristina started her research career not taking no for an answer. As an undergraduate student in Florence (Italy), she had hoped to access the Erasmus programme. There had been strong links between her university and the University of Manchester. However, the programme had been stopped. She managed to challenge this change and created an opportunity that enabled her to go to the University of Manchester. She was encouraged by a professor from Florence to reach out to one of his collaborators. This led her to work in a research group in her spare time and the summer while on her Erasmus exchange; it allowed her to discover what doing research was about.

After she finished her degree in Italy, she returned to the UK for a PhD at The University of Manchester. Her PhD then became a springboard for further research opportunities. She initially considered doing a Postdoc in Europe and was quickly offered a position.

This first Postdoc offer built her confidence that she could indeed obtain a Postdoc. It allowed her the time to take a breather and consider more carefully what type of Postdoc she may want to do to optimise her research direction. Cristina realised this career stage was a turning point between different career directions. She also had a job offer for a position in a pharmaceutical company. Her family would have probably liked to see her return home. This can feel like being pulled in many directions. Conversations with peers and mentors were critical in convincing her that finding the right space to take her expertise mattered.

The right space emerged in conversations with an academic she had met at a conference, followed by an interview and the courage to pester this academic to see a Postdoc opportunity manifests itself. Taking the first offer could have been easy, but having the patience to build a chance to be in the right space took persistence and self-belief.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• How may cutting ties with your PI be needed, even when you would prefer not to, to demonstrate your independence?
• How supportive PIs invite Postdocs to build ownership of new research directions?
• What’s our role in getting others with less privilege the opportunity to discover the world of research?

To read the whole blog post:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/cristina-nostro

Prof. Milica Radisic is a Functional Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering Professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (University of Toronto, Canada).   Her work sits at the interface of engineering, stem cell biology and chemistry. Her ethos as a PI is to create interdependence between team members to build a collaborative and effective research team.

Milica is part of a generation of scientists for whom the transition from PhD to academic positions could appear to have been incredibly fast compared to the current generation of aspiring academics. The funding context and institutional expectations were different at the time. 

Milica explains that the start-up packages were small then, and the access to research funding took a long time. This meant it took several years for newly appointed academics to get started with building their teams. Milica feels that in the current context, whilst there is a higher expectation at the point of recruitment, those appointed may be able to access research funding more quickly to start building their research group.

Milica’s transition post PhD was likely helped by the fact she had done her PhD in an incredibly prestigious research environment at MIT and had been surrounded by a very talented research community.

Her experience at MIT was one of support, motivation and inspiration. We often make assumptions about the research environment in US highly competitive research groups and institutions. We assume that the environment will be highly competitive between team members, but also that work-life balance will be absent. We all have heard horror stories of Postdocs experiencing unsustainable research environments in this type of highly prestigious institution.

Of course, these cultures of overwork and high competition exist, and each person will experience the environment differently. Milica felt that the head of the research group was setting the tone for the research team. She experienced this environment not as one of competition within the lab, but as one of inspiration to thrive as a scientist. It all stemmed from the ethos held by the Principal Investigator to have a healthy environment for his research group.

It is not because a research group is highly successful and competitive externally that this equates with an unhealthy research environment internally. Some researchers may stop themselves from considering applying for positions in highly competitive teams for fear of what the environment will be like. There is no rule. You just need to see what it is like for yourself. You cannot make assumptions about the research culture within a team, a department or an institution. You just need to discuss it with others who are experiencing it themselves or may need to experience it firsthand.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• Are labels (e.g. “world-class”, “highly competitive”, “prestigious”, “high impact”) about institutions and research teams deterring you from applying for roles? 
• How much interdependence with your research colleagues are you prepared to have? 
• Who do you have to support you in crafting and refining new research ideas?

Access the blog inspired by this interview here:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/milica-radisic

Dr. Catarina Henriques is a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow at The University of Sheffield. Her journey into a research career was ignited by a TV documentary on telomeres she watched as a teenager, which fueled her enduring interest in the biology of aging. Transitioning from Portugal to the UK to pursue her research ambitions involved numerous daring conversations.

Not many people can claim they visited embassies to figure out where to study at university, but Catarina did. Before the internet made information readily available, exploring educational opportunities required courage and perseverance. With the support of the British Council, Catarina discovered various Genetics degrees offered across UK universities.

As an undergraduate, Catarina was on a promising path, with a degree in genetics, ample laboratory experience, and strong recommendations. However, personal circumstances required her to return to Portugal to support her family. This detour didn't deter her from her goals.

Determined to work on telomeres, Catarina reached out to anyone involved in related research, leading her to a cancer research group. She maintained connections with a Principal Investigator (PI) at The University of Glasgow, collaboratively developing a PhD project that bridged her interests and academic relationships. Although her PhD project wasn't directly on telomeres, she kept her eye on developments in that area.

After completing her PhD, Catarina stayed in Portugal, joining a new research group transitioning from yeast to zebrafish as a model organism. This period was instrumental in building her confidence to develop her own research team.

She didn't wait for her fellowship to end to explore future opportunities. Instead, she networked and visited research groups to identify potential hosts for a fellowship. Despite an initial unsuccessful fellowship application, her groundbreaking research showing that zebrafish age similarly to humans caught the attention of The University of Sheffield.

A group at The University of Sheffield was at the time looking to recruit a senior academic for zebrafish research; they contacted her PI who put her in touch with the Sheffield team. She was then recruited via some MRC funding that the department held.

 The timing worked in her favour as the institution at the time was running a round of internally funded fellowship recruitments which she was encouraged to apply for and was successful in gaining. This was an exciting period, as Catarina really felt that people were interested in her work and were prepared to help her, but also she was surrounded by many other researchers with expertise in zebrafish. Her momentum in building her research niche could be fuelled by colleagues in her department.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• Do you know what brings you energy in your research life?
• What would be the risk in focusing on key research activities instead of scattering yourself and feeling overwhelmed?
• How do you handle conversations about research ownership? 

Some reflections to ponder on the transition to being a Principal Investigator

Embracing Uncertainty and Authenticity

Even with a fellowship, there is a long journey to feeling secure in research careers. Learning to live with this level of uncertainty is a challenge.

Research fellows in their attempt to secure more permanent positions will contribute to their departments in many ways from admin roles to teaching. Excelling on all front is challenging. Knowing whether we have done enough is difficult to assess. 

For Catarina, like many early career academics, there is a risk of throwing yourself all over the place in your academic activities because you may feel th