Contributor role: Professor Discipline: Law Please note: This story reflects the personal experience and perspective of its contributor. Academic careers vary widely, and others may experience different challenges and opportunities. Career Story I began my career training and working as a Solicitor in a Magic Circle law firm in London. During my training, I took a secondment that helped me realise that what I most enjoyed was legal research. I could see that as I became more senior in practice, I would do less of the work I loved because I would simply become too expensive for clients to use for detailed research. My role would have been to check what others had done. I tested the waters by teaching for the Open University while still in practice. I realised I loved both teaching and the sense that I was making a positive, direct difference to students. So I took what felt like a bold step and applied for a funded PhD. Many colleagues were bewildered that I would leave a lucrative and promising legal career to become a student again. But I wanted a career that felt intrinsically satisfying. My PhD was hard going. In my third year, I became …
Redefining progression: building influence and expertise as a long-term researcher outside traditional academic hierarchies
Contributor role: Research Fellow Discipline: Environmental Science / Chemistry Please note: This story reflects the personal experience and perspective of its contributor. Academic careers vary widely, and others may experience different challenges and opportunities. Career Story I gained my PhD in 2007 and have been employed as a postdoctoral researcher since then. While still precariously funded, I am no longer an early career researcher. Instead, I see myself as a “long-term researcher” — someone whose role now includes some responsibilities and activities more akin to those of an academic or mid-career researcher, even if the title does not formally reflect that. This was not an intentional career path. For several years I worked part-time (0.4 FTE) in research while pursuing a separate career. For a complex set of reasons, I eventually returned to research as my sole career and am now navigating a university system that, in my view, benefits greatly from experienced researchers like me but does not provide many formal routes for recognition or progression. Over time, I have found being a more senior researcher – working across multiple projects and taking on informal leadership responsibilities – more enjoyable and rewarding than my early postdoctoral years. It suits my …
Moving from the NHS into academia, building confidence, and learning that asking for help strengthens rather than weakens you
Saniya Rabbani Role: Lecturer and Talking Therapies Clinical Tutor Discipline: Psychology – Clinical and AppliedInstitution: University of Sheffield Please note: This story reflects the personal experience and perspective of its contributor. Academic careers vary widely, and others may experience different challenges and opportunities. Career Story I moved between sectors, from the NHS into academia. That transition required confidence and patience with myself. Looking back, I would tell myself to believe in my own abilities and reach. To grasp opportunities that are in alignment with myself, even if I feel hesitant about doing so. I would also say: don’t try to do everything alone. Consult friends, family or colleagues to talk about plans and thoughts if you’re feeling unsure. Be open, people are happy to help and support. I had doubts about performance and not being enough. I was keen to continue my independence within the workplace and to manage alone. In reality, the opposite has been true. Being open, honest and accepting my inner thoughts and feelings has been impactful. It allowed me to see that I was not alone and that others merging into academia experience similar doubts. It was all quite new to me. Opportunities can sometimes feel difficult to come across. However, many …
Moving institutions into a professorial role, overcoming imposter syndrome, and learning to prioritise the work that really matters
Anonymous contributor Role: Professor of Biomechanics Discipline: Medical Engineering Please note: This story reflects the personal experience and perspective of its contributor. Academic careers vary widely, and others may experience different challenges and opportunities. Career Story I did my PhD, post doc and academic career up to Associate Professor at the University of Leeds between 2004 and 2022. I then moved institution to take up a professorial role at the University of Sheffield. The move, particularly as I was effectively being promoted to Professor, generated a lot of imposter syndrome. I was extremely anxious about leaving somewhere I was established and worried that people would not like me coming in at a senior level. I doubted myself more than I expected to. It turned out that those fears were not real. I genuinely feel that I joined my tribe when I moved. I have been very well supported and have had many opportunities. Looking back, I would tell myself not to judge my worth by other people’s interest in working with me and to try not to doubt myself so much. Within my new role, I have taken on responsibilities beyond my own research, including being PGR Lead within the School. The …
From over-extension to intentional focus: redefining progression while balancing leadership, maternity leave, and long-term impact.
Jiao Ji Role: Lecturer in FinanceDiscipline: Accounting and FinanceInstitution: University of Sheffield Please note: This story reflects the personal experience and perspective of its contributor. Academic careers vary widely, and others may experience different challenges and opportunities. Career Story Over the past several years, I have balanced a full academic workload with two periods of maternity leave, returning each time to a demanding teaching and leadership environment while maintaining an active research agenda. Alongside my role as Programme Director, I have taken on significant EDI and pastoral responsibilities, particularly supporting early-career colleagues and academic parents, while working toward long-term progression to Senior Lecturer and Professor. Earlier in my career, I equated visibility with progress. I said yes frequently, took on service roles, and absorbed expectations without always questioning whether they aligned with my longer-term goals. Over time, and particularly after maternity leave, I realised that sustainability and focus mattered more than constant availability. If I could advise my younger self, I would tell myself to be more selective earlier – about projects, service, and expectations – and to trust that focus matters more than visibility. I would advise myself not to internalise structural barriers as personal shortcomings, and to align effort with long-term goals rather than short-term reassurance. Most importantly, I would remind myself that sustainability is not a …
Avoid Overwhelm: Plan and review in waves
To prevent feeling overwhelmed, approach your planning in ‘waves’ or ‘horizons’, breaking down strategies and long-term activities into manageable phases. Planning too far ahead in intricate detail often leads to unrealistic expectations and potential setbacks and setting yourself up to feel a failure. An approach to consider: Rolling wave planning is used for projects where there are unknowns or risks, and so is very appropriate for research projects where all the data isn’t immediately available. You can learn more about the technique in the project management blog. This dynamic approach keeps your plans flexible, realistic, and aligned with evolving circumstances. ‘Stock-take’ to review progress Being strategic requires us to be honest with ourselves about where we are, what we have achieved, what’s working and what is getting in the way. In this video, you are guided through a structured process to review your career (have a pen and paper at the ready!). The same technique can also be used to review progress of a project, a relationship or collaboration, or a PhD student you are supervising. You can also download a Stock take – progress review (pdf) worksheet to use separately from the video or share with colleagues, students or collaborators. What …
Learn from your career timeline
Effective self-leadership comes from taking time to review the factors that have contributed to your identity and your career highs and lows. Noticing and naming these factors helps you to be more intentional and assertive in making better-informed decisions, requests, and in prioritising for the future. Sketching out the highs and lows of your career journey can be a powerful exercise, particularly for those of you who are well established in your careers. Ask yourself: Use the template in page 36 of this leadership booklet for research leaders to sketch out your career timeline over the last five or ten years and then reflect on the circumstances that contributed to the highs and the lows. This reflective blog is one example of where the authors have considered how their multiple identities shape their leadership mindset and growth. What will you take forward? One thing to consider: Looking back at your career highs and lows, what one thing can you point to as an important condition in which you do your best work?
Connect to your strengths, meaning and purpose: not systems and metrics
Reflecting on what makes an academic career meaningful for you, and how this might have changed over the course of your career, can help you make more informed decisions about what next. This episode of the Changing Academic Life podcast includes a discussion with Prof. Lindsay Oades on academic wellbeing, connecting to strengths, meaning and purpose, and not taking the system too seriously. It takes a relatable and honest look at the realities of academic life, sharing practical insights from someone who has successfully navigated the promotion journey to Professor, drawing on tools and approaches from positive psychology, including strengths-reflection using the VIA survey, job crafting, annual development conversations and aligning your work with what energises you, instead of getting caught up in metrics and systems pressures. What will you take forward? One thing to consider: Which aspects of your work give you energy rather than drain it, and how present are they in how you currently spend your time?
Recognise how your role has evolved over time
The nature of contributions you make to projects and your department will evolve over time. However, it is rare that we stop to reflect on how we have developed, what we have learned from experiences and opportunities and how we have built on that learning. The European Competence Framework for researchers defines the skills and behaviours of effective researchers for today’s evolving research landscape. Use this to reflect on how the types of contributions you are making evolve as you progress through your career. For example, you might have moved from ensuring good ethical practices in your own work, to drawing up guidance for collaborations, then to delivering training or contributing to policy or decision making around ethics at Faculty or Institutional level. What will you take forward? How has the nature of your contribution shifted over the last few years? What does that suggest about what you should prioritise next (and therefore what to deprioritise)?
Map your contributions
It’s easy to dismiss or forget quite how much you have achieved and keep focusing on ‘what’s next’ or what’s missing. Remind yourself of the range of contributions that you have made to your department, wider research discipline and other communities who engage with or benefit from you and your research. Narrative CVs were introduced by funders to reflect that there is no one ‘correct’ career path for academics. Your own path may look very different to that of others and reflecting on what you have achieved can help you to tell your story in learning how to put that across in a way that reflects your individual strengths and values. Download the UKRI Résumé 4 Research and Innovation template below and start to populate each of the four themes with activities and roles from your experience. For each of these, ask yourself how you might clearly demonstrate the contribution you made and how this has influenced your discipline or Institution. For example, if you were part of a committee, what did you achieve in this role? People often find it easier to write these by brainstorming with colleagues, join a narrative CV workshop at your institution, or you can look at the University of Sheffield’s example CVs to see the sorts of contributions people talk …
Explore tailored research leadership resources
Established researchers express a wide range of leadership and management needs such as recruitment, performance conversations, delegation, effective meetings, coaching and mentoring skills etc. There is an overwhelming amount of advice out there: some relevant to established researchers, some less so. Rather than re-create it all here, we recommend and connect you directly to open access resources that are tailored to research and academic leaders: What will you take forward? One thing to consider: What is one leadership challenge you’re dealing with at the moment? Which single external resource could you engage with this week to move forward?