Reconstructing Researchers at Risk and Risky Research: Some Answers to the Organising Questions

Mulligan, Deborah L.; Danaher, Patrick Alan

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-53857-6_21

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…(Jürgen, physicist) Hence, whether we look at physicists or historians, the question of whether they are going to get a permanent position in academia is characterized by great uncertainty. In this respect our results support the claims of other studies on academic careers (Bone, 2021;Mulligan & Danaher, 2021). However, if we allow ambiguity not only in terms of whether or not they can reach their goal of tenure, but also in terms of whether they aspire to that goal at all, the picture gets more complicated.…”

Section: The Common Uncertainty To Remainsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…Under New public management (NPM) governance of the academic labor market, short term contracts and high levels of competition became the norm, making precarity and acute future uncertainty a continuous challenge for scientists planning their careers (Bone, 2021;Mulligan & Danaher, 2021;Roumbanis, 2019). In Germany, future uncertainty in academia recently breached into public discourse due to an all-time high of political mobilization of contingent faculty against precarity in academia 1 .…”

Section: Literature: Exit Decisions Uncertainty and Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Surviving Science – Coping with exit-decisions in physics and history

Fenkner,

Gottschalk-Rayling

2024

Preprint

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Academic careers between the completion of a PhD and the acquisition of tenure are characterized by short term contracts, high levels of competition, and uncertainty about the future. Existing research indicates that this uncertainty is one of the main causes for postdocs of all fields to constantly question the continuation of their career. Despite this commonality between the fields, we argue that the problem-constructions, coping mechanisms and ultimately the decision-making practices to exit or remain in science differ from field to field. Drawing on 60 qualitative interviews with physicists and historians, we compared imaginations of the job market inside and outside of academia, as well as narratives about how they perceive their agency to exit or remain. Our data shows that the imaginations of the job market outside of academia, despite ‘only’ being imaginary, have real consequences for their sense of precarity and planning of career paths. We propose that the uniform concept of future uncertainty must be separated into ‘existential uncertainty’ and ‘secured uncertainty’, which changes the very questions postdocs are asking when it comes to deciding whether to stay or leave. Physicists base their decisions on the question of ‘do I want to stay?’ whereas historians wonder if ‘I am able to stay?’, resulting in different coping practices. While those who consider their uncertainty to be existential see ‘survival’ as their only option or start a parallel career, those who perceive their uncertainty as secured rely on their ability to decide or postpone the question altogether.

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Section: The Common Uncertainty To Remainsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Literature: Exit Decisions Uncertainty and Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Surviving Science – Coping with exit-decisions in physics and history

Fenkner,

Gottschalk-Rayling

2024

Preprint

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“…2016; Evans et al. 2018; Mulligan and Danaher 2021; Oancea 2014:91; Peake and Mullings 2016; Woolston 2020). Ever more researchers are tackling the impact of science's ongoing transformation in the realm of fear, whether by way of empirical investigation (Martínez‐Nicolás and García‐Girón 2021; Weinstein et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Fear Factor(y)”: Academia. Subtle Mechanisms of Symbolic Domination in the Academic Field¹,²

Beyer

Schmitz²

2023

Sociological Forum

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The structure of and recent transformations in science affect the structure of the academic field, and ultimately the actors themselves: Today, academics often experience pressure, stress, and emotional discomfort. In this contribution, we show how emotions such as fear and concern may arise in reaction to the contemporary conditions of academic life, and how these emotions can operate as elements of the hierarchies between human actors (scientists) and institutional actors (universities). Using qualitative interview data with scholars from the United States, we illustrate how fear structures the actors' social practices-and how fear is thereby translated into the positional structure of the academic field. We discuss two sets of relations-intraand inter-institutional-that entail structuring mechanisms. We thus attest how fear as an individual trait and social characteristic becomes part of the (re-)production of the fields' hierarchy.

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Reconstructing Researchers at Risk and Risky Research: Some Answers to the Organising Questions

Cited by 2 publications

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Surviving Science – Coping with exit-decisions in physics and history

Surviving Science – Coping with exit-decisions in physics and history

“Fear Factor(y)”: Academia. Subtle Mechanisms of Symbolic Domination in the Academic Field¹,²

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Reconstructing Researchers at Risk and Risky Research: Some Answers to the Organising Questions

Cited by 2 publications

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Surviving Science – Coping with exit-decisions in physics and history

Surviving Science – Coping with exit-decisions in physics and history

“Fear Factor(y)”: Academia. Subtle Mechanisms of Symbolic Domination in the Academic Field1,2

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“Fear Factor(y)”: Academia. Subtle Mechanisms of Symbolic Domination in the Academic Field¹,²