Achieving a research career is often imagined or constructed as a smooth, linear trajectory that individuals expect and are expected to follow once they have completed their doctoral studies. The Economic and Social Research Council recognises three distinct career stages for early career researchers (ECRs) in particular, which comprise the time during doctoral study itself, the time immediately post-doctorate and the transition to becoming ‘an independent researcher’ (largely envisaged as achieving principal investigator status on a major, funded research project).
Definitions of the category ‘early career researcher’ are unstable and vary across organisations. It is sometimes hard to know whether you count as an ECR or not. Feeling like or identifying as an ECR is not enough. To qualify for increasingly available ECR support – such as funding, workload protection and opportunities to develop increased levels of social and academic capital – you need to be able to demonstrate that you meet these changeable criteria, which usually include seemingly objective and neutral markers such as time elapsed since the completion of your doctorate and/or obtaining your first academic appointment. The prevailing rhetoric remains that research careers take place overwhelmingly in higher education institutions and that attaining a research career is a transparent game or benign competition with clear rules and equal chances. ±«ÓãÖ±²¥over, that support and guidance are being generously provided to make this process easier and more equitable for all individuals at the start of their research careers.
This keynote aims to contest and challenge such normative, meritocratic discourses of careering in research in general and specifically in relation to careering in educational research. It is important to continue to unsettle these linear, homogeneous narratives of ECR experience. Indeed, a growing body of research in this area tells us that ECR experience is far from fair, equal or equitable and is therefore profoundly political. Here I want to think about how the ‘ideal’ early career researcher subject is constructed, before reflecting on the diversity and heterogeneity of ECRs, particularly in educational research career contexts. Using examples from my own experience and praxis and building on the recent work of critical scholars (including Rola Ajjawi, Kalwant Bhopal, Maddie Breeze, Kate Carruthers Thomas, Raewyn Connell, Karen Gravett, Sarah Hughes, Catherine Manathunga, Maria Do Mar Pereira, Nicola Rollock and Yvette Taylor) I will explore how we might challenge the constraining limits of linear research career narratives that perpetuate neoliberal and performative normativities of discourse and practice to the exclusion of many. Finally, and on a more hopeful note, I will pause to consider what inclusive and equitable research career landscapes look like and how these might be better fostered and supported.