(S2E11) 'There isn't only one way to be an academic' - practice research, challenges and barriers..

Intro: 00:00:00

Welcome to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast, where in every episode we explore what is research culture and what should it be? You'll hear thoughts and opinions from a range of contributors to help you change research culture into what you want it to be.

Tony: 00:00:25

Hello, I'm Tony Bromley and welcome to the Research Culture Uncovered Podcast. This is season two where we are in conversation with presenters from the Researcher Education and Development Scholarship Conference of 2022. The conference theme was 'How Do We Stop Losing Talent in Research Careers?' And today I'm with Sian Vaughan, so hello to you Sian.

Sian: 00:00:49

Hello Tony.

Tony: 00:00:50

Um, we were just talking in the preamble there. Um, and I, I do like to do a little ice break at the beginning, but 'Great North Run' slipped in in there. So when did you do the Great North Run?

Sian: 00:01:01

Um, I did it I think three times in total, but last time was probably 13, 14 years ago. Not sure I'd make it round these days, , but.

Tony: 00:01:11

Yeah. And, and I always, I watch it on the television and when, um, the top athletes run it in an an hour, it's, uh, , it's 13 miles an hour. I, I, which you doing the mathematics of course is 13 miles an hour, which is quite a running speed.

Sian: 00:01:25

It is. I I was nowhere near that .

Tony: 00:01:27

Look, look, I've done some half marathons and am nowhere near that.

We, perhaps we'll move on quickly, shall we? To the, topic, 'Supporting the jugglers, the challenges and barriers for academics in creative disciplines becoming research active'. So it's interesting because obviously this podcast is about research culture. And one of the big aspects of research culture always is, is academic workload particularly.

Um, and I sometimes forget about people like yourself who have the three aspects. So I think, yeah, you know, research and teaching and of course the admin, but, so perhaps it's four aspects. So, um, you, you mentioned juggling things. I just wondered if you can get some context, really. So how, how is it for you with the, uh, well, I'll let you talk about the creative aspect.

Sian: 00:02:14

Yes. I mean, I, I should be, be honest and say I'm not a creative practitioner. Um, so I don't have a professional creative practice, but I work in an institute with a long history. I'm based in the School of Art at Birmingham City University, which goes back to the 1840s.

Okay. So a lot of my colleagues are artists, designers, architects, jewelers, um, textile makers, all sorts of things. And I've spotted that they have these three identities I hadn't thought of ad as admin as a fourth professional career .

Tony: 00:02:48

Well, it's the kinda thing that we end up having to do, obviously, but yeah.

Sian: 00:02:53

So it's really seeing for these, these colleagues, these different identities that they have to juggle and the different pressures on their time. Um, that, that got me thinking, I suppose,

Tony: 00:03:04

And I suppose it, it's all interrelates because I guess for the students on courses and the research that goes on, the fact that the individual has a creative practice as well, benefits the teaching and, and the research.

Sian: 00:03:18

Yeah. It's often why people have been employed. Um, you know, we want the, the students, the employability agenda, but the skills, the professional knowledge, the contacts that these colleagues have. In a, in a virtuous world, it would feed into their teaching. It would feed into their, their researchers practice research, which would also then feed into the academy and into teaching.

But I think often it feels like they're being pulled in three very different directions at once. .

Tony: 00:03:46

So it's more, it's more than one job. It's, it's three different, three separate jobs. Um, so I did just wonder, and I think you probably explained this a little bit al already, what's brought you into this piece of work?

What's the drivers behind you that thought that you made you think, this is something that I want to look at?

Sian: 00:04:03

For many years I led the PhD program in art and design for my institution, supporting, uh, PhD researchers, doctoral researchers with the, the struggles that they go through in terms of moving from a practitioner to a practice researcher to an academic, the issues of belonging and identity that they go through.

And then this summer I've actually changed roles in my institution, um, and become the Director of Research. So responsible for our unit of assessment and looking after strategy, but also supporting colleagues and growing our research community, but amongst staff rather than amongst PGRs (PostGradaute Research). And it just struck me that there's a lot of similarities with those two tasks and challenges, and we're probably more honest about it at P G R.

And we just kind of expect staff to get on with it and know what they're doing. Um, another thing I should mention is that a lot of staff in creative disciplines, because they're employed for their professional expertise, don't necessarily come having had well done a doctorate themselves and have that sort of research training, and they often have very established practices, what we would consider practice research with international reputations.

And then they're thrown into the, the bureaucracy and the, the language of research in universities.

Tony: 00:05:30

So how do, it's an interesting angle on it. I mean, how does that affect them? Is it a negative aspect to their identity that, um, that they haven't got the PhDs in in background, or does it matter to them? How do they feel about that?

Sian: 00:05:43

I think it, it depends on the individual. For some people, they really want the PhD, they want to learn, they want the doctor title. Although of course there are doctorates or doc PhD by published works, um, that staff can go for, that includes creative outputs. For some people it's a real challenge. And this was acknowledged in

with P G R students, with doctoral researchers, with research 10, 15 years ago by people like John Hockey, that they're having to juggle these competing identities where they're both the professional expert with recognized expertise, the teacher, and then they're a novice researcher or considered an early career researcher.

Um, some of them take that as a bit of a slight, if I'm honest. They don't feel that their, their expertise has been recognized. .

Tony: 00:06:31

Yeah. And I just know from my own experience the, I don't know how long practice in the University of Leeds, we call it practice-based research for the PhDs. I dunno how long that's been established, but certainly in the 10, 15 years I've been at Leeds, there's been some evolving, uh, views on, on what practice-based research is and how people get used to it and understand it.

And that's taken some time to grow out if that's similar sort of experience or I don't actually know how far back it goes with practice based PhD.

Sian: 00:07:00

I mean, in my own institution, there was a PhD awarded, I think in 91 right? As a investigation and a response through artistic practice was how it was, um, framed there.

And I think it is a, it's a moving field. Um, and there's lots of different nomenclatures, whether it's practice based, practice led practice as research, I tend to default to just practice research, um, as an umbrella

Tony: 00:07:26

That makes that That makes a lot of sense. Um, go on. Sorry.

Sian: 00:07:31

No, I was gonna say, I mean, it's, it's been around for a long time, but I think a lot of our university systems, um, which happen I suppose at a higher up level that go across many different disciplines still don't understand practice research.

Um, and there can be that, that sort of unfamiliarity that can lead to othering and hierarchical positioning.

Tony: 00:07:56

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So, which I think, uh, possibly leads us into, um, the barriers that you've, you have talked about in the abstract, uh, in the presentation. So, um, what are the main barriers, do you think, for creative practitioners?

What do you see as the main barriers?

Sian: 00:08:13

Um, I think they're on a number of different faults. One of them is definitely the question of identity. Is their, their practice being questioned in some way? And the practice is often very personal and it's so built up into their identity that, um, uh, a well-meaning peer review type criticism can be taken much more harshly perhaps.

Um, although I think we all, we all respond badly to peer review at times it can feel very, very personal. Yes. But when it's also hitting your, your established creative identity. Um, there are logistical, practical barriers. Um, a lot of these colleagues are on fractional contracts. Um, Often through choice because they want the time for their creative practice, for their other professional identities.

Universities also don't tend to fund that professional practice and professional identity, even though they desire it and want it to feed into the teaching. Right. So a fractional contract is kind of an uncomfortable halfway house.

Tony: 00:09:17

So is that where some, just for clarification, that's where perhaps somebody works for the university for two days a week.

That sort of setup?

Sian: 00:09:25

Yeah. Uh, probably more likely three or four days[right] a week in my experience of teaching, but time for practice or other professional commitments around it. And I think those of us that have in the past tried to juggle more than one part-time job, know how difficult that is. An academic job never fits into contracted hours anyway.

[No]. I don't agree with the culture of overwork, but we all know how pressured academics are. Um, so there are, there are practical challenges. There are also financial challenges. Universities might support staff with a bit of time to be research active and they might support conference fees, um, traveling to conferences, field work costs, although even that's getting challenging.

Um, but universities don't tend to support the costs of producing creative practice. So whether that's material costs, space hire, venue hire collaborators, costs specialist equipment, um, so colleagues are having to find these costs as well. And of course, because it's not available from the university, it can, it can feel as though your practice is not being recognized and valued.

Tony: 00:10:41

And I guess, um, it, uh, it will depend on the individual, but it is, is it also possible the particular nature of the creative practice means that it goes up and down? You, you talked about incomes, um, I presume, is it predominantly freelance type work where there maybe some income for a period of months and then there may not be?

Is it that sort of thing?

Sian: 00:11:00

Yeah, and it's very, depending on the creative practice, I mean, fine artists tend to struggle to make money unless they get big commissions. Um, colleagues working in architecture that run architecture practices along the side. You know, there's different income level potentials. Um, so it's, it's really tricky and it just adds to this sense of your work not being fully understood or valued whilst at the same time, the university wants to benefit from having the research output, the REF return, um, and the input to curriculum.

Tony: 00:11:35

Yeah. I'm really sort of beginning to understand your choice of the word juggler in, in the title it. You know, I, I kind of look at pr, um, academic careers and find them quite complex anyway, but this really is an additional degree of complexity in something which is already complex, if that makes sense.

Um, sorry. Yeah,

Sian: 00:11:57

It does. And the, the, again, on the practical side, I think the way that university systems are setup. Um, so auditing, um, monitoring processes, institutional repositories, they default very much to the sense of a text based output, a journal paper, or a monograph. Um, and it can be very difficult to work out how to translate a creative practice output that might be multi components,

it might be artwork that's been produced in collaboration with community groups, exhibited in a number of different venues, including internationally. And how you figure out what the bibliographic format for that is, to put it in a, an annual review or a report or a repository entry can be really tricky.

And again, it adds to this sense of feeling that you, you are being othered and you're not being supported. Um,

Tony: 00:12:50

Yeah well, it, I remember many years ago when, um, Leeds University was introducing a system for recording people's references and what have you. Um, and I have a science background to declare. Um, in that lecture, uh, they were talking about the, the databases to draw from to, uh, populate automatically.

And somebody from the art side said, well, the best database for the sort of thing I do is Amazon. Yeah, they've talked about the books that they did and that really, I mean, I hadn't even thought about it until then. So, you know, I'm used to the standard scientific type databases, so that's even for books, there's, there's difficulties.

Um. So in, you talked about in your, your abstract and in your title about what we can do about this and perhaps the developmental support for researchers in this sort of field could do with, um, change or perhaps we need different approaches from what we've had so far. So I just, I did wonder, uh, what your thoughts were on how we support and develop researchers given the juggling that you've really described well to us.

Sian: 00:13:55

I mean, I think it's, it comes to a, a number of things. I think understanding the complexities and being open to understanding the complexities and the identity challenge that these colleagues are, are dealing with. Um, and a bit of sort of respect for that.

It's also about helping colleagues become what I'm starting to call research literate, which is understanding that the, the way that the same thing, the same project, the same practice, the same research can be spoken about in slightly different words to fit the dis discourses around the, the research ecosystem and research funding and 'REF-erable' outputs.

[Yes]. Um, and it's not often that the colleagues aren't doing practice research and it's not having an impact and it's not significant, but they maybe don't know how to fill it in. And again if your, , um, faced with a form that asks for bibliographic details and you just list exhibition titles. It won't be perceived as being research.

Um, so it gets tricky. So I think it's, it's empathy. Um, I think it's also to say about helping people understand the different terminology and also all of us who aren't practitioners putting some time in particularly institutions where there are creative disciplines to try and understand practice research and not default to sort of the normative textual expectation that there's a journal paper or a particular database and metrics.

Um, a really easy win in some ways would be for any research development activity in those institutions, it's predominantly post 92 institutions, but not only in the UK, just use practice research examples. [Yes]. In sort of every training program that we, we provide or workshop or delivery so that it's, it's visible and embedded.

[Yeah]. Um, and you know, it is acc it's been returned to, to the REF to the RAE, the earlier version of the assessment exercise in the UK, um, for many years. So, you know, it's accepted. We've just gotta make that visible.

Tony: 00:16:03

Yeah, I'm wondering as, as you're speaking, if there's parallels to other, um, sectors, um, and other disciplines.

I'm wondering if there's any parallel with the medical field where people may well be still, um, practicing medically and also doing the research, teaching administration, and all other things. So, uh, there's probably. The sort of things you're talking about are probably quite widespread actually.

Sian: 00:16:28

I think those sorts of issues are, I think also we have to recognize that creative methods are starting to be used more and more across different disciplines.

Um, so the, this issue of things may be not having only a textual output is, is spreading across different disciplines and into different places, but yeah, definite similarities with identity challenges faced by colleagues in health professions, even in some elements of education as well.

Tony: 00:16:57

Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. Um, I'm conscious of time.

Um, I just want to see if we could pull things together. Is there, uh, one or two things that you think are really key that perhaps, um, institutions or, I mean, I'm a practitioner in the researcher development field myself. Is there one or two key thing, key things or key messages you'd want to leave us, uh, with to take away?

Sian: 00:17:20

I think it is the, the openness, the recognition that this is difficult. And that there isn't one mould or way to be an academic. Um, that other routes are as valid. And as I say, that simple thing of using practice research examples mm-hmm. , um, in how we talk about research, um, just makes people feel more included.

Tony: 00:17:44

Yeah. So I'm gonna have to bring it to a close there. So thank you for joining us. Thank you for listening. It's been a really fascinating con conversation. So thank you.

Sian: 00:17:53

That's okay. Thank you.

Intro: 00:17:59

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