Returning to academia and research

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NC for this one. Long story short but I have had a 7 year break from a research active role. Currently senior director in a research policy role in government but I am really fed up and want to move back into more research focused roles. Anyone made the shift? And how did you go about it? Any ideas what sorts of roles are out there? Mainly social science, policy roles. Salary less of an issue... I am done with high pay awful jobs. And I miss lecturing. Would it look really odd to go back in at the bottom in my late 40s?
Or is there a chance I could go back in at a more senior level even though I haven't published for a while?

You can tell me I am foolish. I just need to hear people's stories/advice.

Thanks!

not sure how it works in social sciences. for science, the Daphne Jackson Fellowship is set up to help women return to academic science careers after a break.

I work with civil servants. They are paid far more than me (actually almost everyone is paid far more than me). But they don't get anything done. They have meetings about meetings where they plan meetings about how something might get done. It looks awful. They joke about keeping other CSts off their patch (it's not a mere joke).

You wouldn't be odd where I work. Plenty people don't finish PhDs until age 45+ so only start becoming lecturers after that (if they want to lecture).

It's more common to see people wanting to jump ship from HE into the Civil service/NGO/policy world! As you'll probably have seen from the other active threads, HE is in a very, very dire financial position at the moment and voluntary redundancies are being put on the table at a growing number of universities... Staff morale (already at a low is even lower) and workloads are becoming unfeasible and even Professional services staff are leaving because of it.

Unless you jump into a short-term, fixed-term research associate role (with its own problems & precarity), the scope for actually doing research in a lectureship is very small - the admin and teaching load and emphasis on student evaluations have grown enormously over the last few years. Competition for any permanent position is as stiff as it ever was - we were hiring for a lecturer position recently and had people already at senior lecturer level applying as well as people with multiple books, publications and prestigious grant funding from all over the world.

Thanks everyone @MedSchoolRat would love to know more. And @plating I know. It was pretty dire 7 years ago to be fair. Government pays better but honestly it isn't great at the moment either... ideally I would like to do a bit of a portfolio career. But still have a mortgage to pay!

@parietal Daphne Jackson looks great but I don't think there is an equivalent for social sciences...

Is setting up a consultancy an option? Not perfect, but you'd have your own autonomy and scope to do research more on your own terms...

Like you, I really love research and academia too, but am looking at another 7 or 8 years of moving across the UK/world before I could maybe secure a permanent post, but even then, I'm seeing friends and colleagues in permanent posts threatened with redundancy... so I always have one eye outside of academia!! Some days academia really feels like that bad boyfriend who you're always being advised to LTB 😂

Honestly it's far far far worse now than it was 7 years ago, particularly humanities and social sciences.

Daphne Jackson Trust now offer fellowships for the social sciences as well.

https://daphnejackson.org/

This. It's fallen off a cliff, really, in the past 2 or 3 years. My university (top 10 or top 15, depending which ranking you look at) is currently culling (currently at voluntary severance stage, almost guaranteed to go to compulsory redundancies as they need to make an insane amount of savings in the next three months) and in a hiring freeze (unless you're a senior manager of course - they're still hiring those 🙄). However, if you can find yourself a job at a more stable/ wealthy institution (Oxbridge? LSE? Top 'Russell Group') then you might be ok.

The PP who described academia as a 'bad boyfiend' is right. It really is. We should leave, but we don't because we neither know what else we can do (academia very good at making us believe we are not good for anything else) nor do we want to because we really do believe that it will love us better soon and everything will be great again. Spoiler: it won't.

So this is one option I am exploring too. Have done it before. It isn't as easy as it sounds and hours can be long but it is an option.

It is also sounding like things may be a lot like where I am now if @HippyKayYay @jobStuff etc are saying this. There seems to be very little in the way of any public sector roles in a great place.

Without getting political... it is all politics. Have spent most of my day dealing with an issue which at its heart is a direct result of Brexit, Truss, and a poorly managed pandemic. Couldn't make this stuff up!

Daphne Jackson Fellowship is for all subjects now

Daphne Jackson does cover the social sciences - daphnejackson.org/

Sorry, missed the previous post making the same point.

As you'll probably have seen from the other active threads, HE is in a very, very dire financial position at the moment and voluntary redundancies are being put on the table at a growing number of universities... Staff morale (already at a low is even lower) and workloads are becoming unfeasible and even Professional services staff are leaving because of it.

Yeah, our entire uni is currently under voluntary redundancy, with compulsory redundancy likely. You might kick yourself if you leave your secure boring job op ...

I have a lot of experience in academia and I think the following need to be considered -

Many unis are struggling financially so many of the 'so-called' softer subjects are being stopped. I know of one friend who only recently had to make a case for psychology to continue as it was not making enough money to sustain itself.

There is a real issue with scientific integrity at the moment, especially in the social sciences. Gender ideology has caused a lot of damage and created a chilling effect.

There is a growing push for 'bums in seats' over quality of teaching. I know many lecturers who are having to hot desk to the detriment of there role.

The cost of living is having a massive impact on mental health. It is impacting what lecturers are expected to do. They are no longer just there to impart knowledge and provoke curiosity (although see above regarding chilling effect), they are having to act within a more support worker role.

I have seen a shift in the type of students coming through. IME they are more vulnerable (claiming victimhood much more easily) and there is an increase in an awareness of liability which can make lecturers fear saying the wrong thing in case they offend.

Thanks everyone for the continued advice. @BloodyAdultDC yes having done a bit more digging seems like a lot of unis are in a similar position. However I wish mu current job was boring... the turmoil in government is no better. And @Sparklybutold I think from what you are describing I could end up jumping from one frying pan into exactly the same frying pan... just a different colour.

Fwiw, what you are all describing is mirrored in a lot of sectors at the moment. I am not hearing much good news anywhere right now. Except in the private sector.

I worked in HE, left to have kids and worked in a different role for a couple of years (that was more flexible and less workload to fit around young kids). Then tried to return to HE. I was told it was impossible to return, and that proved to be correct.

There are so many applicants (due to redundancies everywhere) so competition is huge. You’re not only competing against local or even British people now, it’s an international market and people will relocate halfway round the world for that job. There were tons of applicants already in HE with recent research publications, so they wouldn’t even consider someone who was outside of HE and hadn’t published in a while.

I was also told that they didn’t want to employ people who didn’t contribute to an international image, they wanted teachers to have accents from America or European countries, because it created a sense of diversity while maintaining the perception of quality. One person told me point blank I’d never be hired with a local accent because they had enough of them.

The key thing for every employer was money. How much money will you bring with you if we hire you? Do you have a current research grant? Publications that will get us money in the REF? They literally picked the person who’d bring the most money. If you’re not bringing any funding with you then you can forget it.

How about one of the think tanks - King’s Fund or similar?

It's a scary time as job security is low and then with cost of living there comes a point where even if you do earn a ‘decent’ wage, you cant afford down time as all money goes on paying the basic bills. So you're left with what the point? What's the point with the stress and actually not bring able to enjoy the time out you have? No wonder people are leaving ‘higher’ paid jobs. My in laws generation don't get it as they were of a generation where they had jobs for life - this is no longer the case.

I now work third sector and although my work is only guaranteed in funding cycles I am at least happier. So far, the gender ideology bollocks hasn't impacted my work. But then I suspect the fact I work with the most vulnerable in our society means pronouns and all the other gender woo woo is the last thing on those who use our service minds (hope last sentence makes sense, ran out of coffee this morning and having to survive on tea 🥺)

If you aren't desperate to go back into a conventional lecturing job, you could look at the various public policy research institutes that exist within many universities. Which ones would depend on your specific research area, as they tend to be quite specialist.

Some people work in these institutes for their whole career, but others see it as a stepping stone to a more conventional lecturing job as you do research, win funding, publish in academic journals, supervise research students and so on and build your CV up in those areas, but you do a much more limited amount of teaching or even no teaching at all beyond PhD supervision.

For these kinds of institutes, your experience would be looked on favourably not just in terms of your substantive research area, but also for your contacts with government and policy that would be useful in winning funding and for impact.

The downside is much the same as working in consultancy, as these institutes are kind of a hybrid between consultancy and academia with the good and bad parts of both - you are constantly looking for money, don't always get to choose what you research, and it can be stressful and long hours.