Changing Academic Life

Continuing our culture theme, I revisit past podcast conversations that explore how to foster positive research environments and cultures. We hear from people such as Elizabeth Adams, Tanita Casci, Jolanta Burke, Janet Reed, Alex Taylor, Kia Hook, and Lindsay Oades, who share their experiences and insights on creating a sense of belonging and collegiality within academic settings. Their stories emphasize recognizing individual...

Continuing the theme of great research environments, I explore how to contribute to creating great research cultures with a focus on the concept of psychological safety. I contrast the prize winning example we heard about in the last episode with examples of experiences with poor research environments. This leads to a discussion of the value of psychological safety as defined by Amy Edmondson, and others for enabling creativity, co...

What are the ingredients for creating a supportive, inclusive research culture? Nina Molin Høyland-Kroghsbo from the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences , Microbial Ecology and Biotechnology at the University of Copenhagen discusses the Research Environment Prize established three years ago by the Danish Young Academy to promote and celebrate good research environments, as experienced by early career researchers in those...

In this solo episode (S6 E3) I invite us to rethink the concept of networking within academia, inspired by what the late Liam Bannon shared with us in our recent conversation and the evident relational impact he had on people. I encourage us, myself included, to view networking as being about the other person, not about us, and see it as an opportunity for forming meaningful impactful social connections. 

I offer some practical...

Update 22 Sept 2024: It is with deep sadness that I share Liam passed away this morning. May we honour his memory and his generosity in sharing his reflections by always reminding ourselves about what and who is really important.

Liam Bannon is a Professor Emeritus and founder and director of the Interaction Design Centre at the University of Limerick in Ireland. In April 2024 I released a conversation with Liam Banno...

Volkmar Pipek was a highly influential researcher from Uni of Siegen who sadly passed away in Jan 2024 after a long illness. This short episode draws from a written interview he gave to Mateusz Dolata on the occasion of his 2023 EUSSET-ISSI Lifetime Achievement Award. I read an extract where he shares his advice about becoming and being a researcher: Be curious. Be who you are. Be curious who you are. Wise advice for all of us.

Read...

Liam Bannon is a Professor Emeritus and founder and director of the Interaction Design Centre at the University of Limerick in Ireland.

Liam has been a hugely influential thinker writer and researcher since the 1980s, along with various collaborators, in shaping work around technology and design.   

Recorded in-person in 2017, he reflects on his interdisciplinary journey and contributions, covering areas such as A...

Jean Paul is a senior scientist at the Medical University of Innsbruck. In part 2 of our conversation, Jean discusses her experience leading an impact-led transcdisciplinary research project focused on supporting families with mental health issues. She highlights the challenges of stakeholder engagement, distributed team management, and transdisciplinary research. Jean emphasizes the importance of community engagement, virtual team...

Jean Paul is a Senior Scientist at the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria. Jean discusses her involvement in a unique research funding process called a sandpit or an ideas factory. Having then taken on the leadership of the project, she provides insights into the challenges and benefits of transdisciplinary research, stakeholder engagement, and arguing for their impact-focused approach. Jean also shares her a...

This episode is an edited extract from a ‘Beyond Phrenology’ podcast episode where Dr Madhur Mangalam chatted with me about the impacts of research funding challenges on academic culture and individual well-being. The conversation addresses the need for a shift towards more supportive and diverse cultures, the complexities of academic career paths, and the importance of leadership, mentorship and job crafting. We also discuss the i...

Taking this time to celebrate CAL100 – the 100th episode for the Changing Academic Life podcast series (actually 109th episode if we count the nine related work episodes) and thanks to all the people who have been part of making it happen.

To update and correct the information about Dr Paddy Barrett who inspired this podcast:

His original podcast was called 'The Doctor Paradox'. He is a preventive cardiologist not an anaestheti...

Triggered by a comment from Katta Spiel in an earlier podcast, in this solo episode I explore the tensions between the autonomy and freedom we have to shape our research identities and do meaningful work, and the systemic constraints from funding and promotion opportunities. The tensions particularly arise when research interests don’t align well with institutional expectations or funding trends. I explore various ways to navigate ...

Dr Katta Spiel is an Assistant Professor at TU Wien, a recent ERC Starting Grant recipient, and a good colleague of mine. In part two of our conversation, Katta discusses being neurodivergent, and experiences with ADHD, and being an activist for change with an example of how gender is dealt with in research, and about 'epistemic plurality and the importance of making space for different ways of being and knowing.&nbs...

Dr Katta Spiel is an Assistant Professor at TU Wien, a recent ERC Starting Grant recipient, and a good colleague of mine. 

In the first part of this two-part conversation Katta shares their experiences on a range of topics like career uncertainty, rejection of proposals, coming out as queer, having a formal gender change, dealing with chronic health issues, and being successful in receiving a prestigious research council grant....

There were some technical hiccups in Part 2 of my conversation with Irina Shklovski, making the original audio I released very choppy (a lesson in not relying on smart tools!). I’ve uploaded new audio version that is much easier to listen to and doesn't chop off words. So this is an encouragement to you to listen to this now as it is such an important raw honest conversation and Irina shares so many useful ideas about coming back ...

In this short episode I pick on the notion of self-compassion from the discussion with Mark Reed last week, and go back to Kristin Neff’s work and other related self-compassion researcher to unpack the three components of self-compassion and some practices for cultivating self-compassion and also point to some of the research evidence base for the benefits of self-compassion. I also share my own experience in needing to a...