Am I crazy for spending money on research?

[theferry]

I suspect the answer is yes. I’m tying myself in knots about this.

My university has announced redundancies are going to happen. It is on the verge of bankruptcy within two years. I am in the Humanities. We have been targeted for job losses for the last 15 years and have lost 7 members of staff in the last 5 years so there are only 11 of us left. There weren’t any compulsory redundancies. All of them left and haven’t been replaced.
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Nobody knows how the university is going to drop the jobs. It’s all unknown.

My research requires me to travel to the USA. I need to go out this summer, otherwise my research is going to stall. I will be stuck without anything to do until I can go out in summer 2026.

I have no funding for this travel. All travel/research funding from my work has been withdrawn. I’m in the difficult position where I need to get a grant to do the research, but I need to do some of the research to put together a grant application that stands any chance of success.

That leaves me having to fund this trip in the summer myself. We’ve done it before and it’s not unusual at all in my discipline. DH is my carer so he needs to come and that means DDs are going to have to come. So for a 4 week trip for the 4 of is will cost £10k easily

Would I be crazy to do this, given the currently precarious situation with work? We can afford, although it will sting. If I don’t go, my research won’t advance at all for a year and that will make me more likely to be redundant. If I keep my job,, I’m going to really get it in the neck for twiddling my thumbs for a year.

I am very dubious about Air B&B set up. Heard too many horrid stories.

I say there’s only one hotel—there are more, but this particular one is a 2 bedroom suite with full kitchen for a pretty good price. Not much more than the other hotels for a regular room. That’s why it books up early.

No way would the 4 of us cope being cooped up in a small hotel room together for 4 weeks. Plus the kitchen will help us keep food prices down a lot. We can cancel it and get our money back up until the day of arriving. It’s the same for the car hire.

If we had to cancel, the only thing we’d lose would be the flights (although they can be changed for a fee)

I am a historian at a US university. Hang on, if you have all these boxes and interviews, clearly you have a next project?

Would it not be cheaper to hire an RA and pay them to digitise this material?!

As to whether this research could save my job….it depends. The last two instances of redundancies (which didn’t happen in the end as enough people left), they have made us write a statement telling them (basically) how great we are. They then ranked people and the lowest ones were selected as at risk. I was told on both occasions that I was put near the top because I had/had just had large grants.

I need to go to the archive to get a better sense of how I will organise this project and therefore produce a grant application.

but then it might be over before I’ve got chance to write a funding application.

And we may escape the cut as we’ve been cut so much already. I really don’t know!

Have you looked at Sabbatical Homes and the like?

Yes, I said it’s for my next project. It’s a British project that I don’t have (& don’t have any desire to do anything on the UK).

I don’t think it will be much cheaper to hire someone (but I could be wrong) ? Between DD and myself, we can get through a lot. Some of my best work has come from me skimming over material that wasn’t relevant to the project. I’m reluctant to lose that opportunity.

Would hiring a carer locally not be cheaper than taking three extra people to the US for a month?

If the hotel is cancellable then it totally makes sense just to go ahead and book it.

Is there anyone you can talk to at your institution that might have a better feel about how the cuts are likely to impact your department?

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don’t need that kind of care. It’s a mental health condition that can be exacerbated by sleep loss so I sometimes crash while I’m out there. DH is very good at picking me up. I also need DH to drive me around. I can’t drive and if you know anything about America, you need a car to get around!

DH and DDs love being out there so it is a bit of a holiday. It’s not that much more for the 4 of us to go so that’s OK with me

I’m on the verge of just booking the hotel for now, which would keep my options open.I can cancel it with no penalty. We would be flying into Boston so there’s plenty of flights so no rush there. Then I can see how things go at work. There is someone who might have an idea of what’s happening.

I think you would be very unwise to do it, unless you could guarantee a 3/4* article based on that research in time for the cut decisions. Which nobody can.

There must be another way. You just haven’t thought of it yet.

I agree with a previous poster that your reasoning here is unfortunately very common amongst academics (particularly humanities) and opens the door to exploitation. Even if you don’t care about being exploited and propping up a broken system yourself, what about the precedent you would be setting for colleagues?

edited for typo

I say this kindly but I personally would never do this. Do the research that you can get funding for. If you cannot get funding then don’t spend your own money on it unless it is a hobby situation. Instead focus on a small but achievable grant proposal, deliver, then repeat. Universities rate the funding as a merit as much as the actual research in my opinion

If your DH and the kids would genuinely get a decent holiday out of it, it's not really £10k down just for your work.
Saying that, what's the longer term outlook like for your career. I don't think the financial problems in HE are going away anytime soon. If you did the trip and still lost your job, how would you feel?

How can an RA for a couple of weeks cost 10K? Yes in an ideal world you would mine the archive, go down unexpected pathways etc. But you have neither the financial ability, time or job security to do that. But in a couple of weeks an RA can take enough digital photos for you to get a sense of what you need? Even if you employed an RA for a month it wouldn’t cost 10 grand right?! Surely you know that- post docs don’t earn 120K a year in the humanities in the US.

I also say this as a historian that I have never been and don’t know anyone who doesn’t have bits of a project that was never done, that cannot be churned into articles if necessary. In fact isn’t it standard practice that you save a few off cuts from the book as you prepare the ground for the next project?

Also you do have interviews and files like you said? Why can’t you begin with those?

It feels like, and I say this with kindness that you really feel like you need a break, and this archival trip either feels like a last chance of one or a big blowout before you are made redundant. The research justifications seem very very flimsy.

Book the hotel as it is free to cancel and then wait a bit longer to think about whether to go or not.

Let me clarify the situation. The project that I’m revising the book for is finished. I have used every scrap of material I have for articles. There’s nothing left. It is a very, very crowded area of expertise. I’ve had enough.

This proposed trip is for a new area of research—an area I’ve not worked in yet at all. I’d be starting from nothing. It is a topic that no historian has worked on so far. There is a huge archive that is largely unused. It is an area that is very close to my heart.

Anyway, for now, I’m going to book the hotel and see what happens over the next month or two . That would keep the options open while I think about it.

I'm also a Humanities academic who doesn't always get the money from other sources for their own research. Yes, it is exploitative and crap, but if I were you and can do it without going into debt, which it sounds as though you can, I would absolutely take the risk for a new project that may help job security down the line. Trying to get a house swap (or could you do a short term rental on your own house to offset some costs?) sounds like a really good idea.

It sounds like you want to go, basically.

I absolutely want to go—it’s more than work, the kids and DH love it, we would have a bit of travelling. DD1 is particularly excited to be in Boston for July 4. We can afford it. I wouldn’t be questioning it if it wasn’t for the threat of job losses. I’ve been through 15 years of on-off threats of job losses, but this one feels different. I’m going to mull it over for a while.

I think two things are simultaneously true:

1. Yes, especially since institutional budget cuts it's very normal for Humanities researchers to sometimes spend a few hundred pounds here or there self-funding their research. While clearly very far from ideal that we are effectively paying to do our jobs, when the amounts are not enormous this is a reasonable improvised response to a bad situation, and often better than the alternative when applying for research funding is so time-consuming.
2. No, it really isn't normal to spend anything like £10,000, especially if facing redundancy, because most of us couldn't afford it. If you have that much to spare, it would make far more sense to put it in a high-interest account until 2026 to help cushion the blow to your family finances from possible redundancy. Anyway, in the current climate there is no guarantee that simply making some advances in your research is magically going to stave off redundancy. In the crazy situation we are now in, many senior managers (these decisions are typically taken high up, by people who may not be familiar with the norms of your discipline) would look more favourably on a grant, maybe even an unsuccessful application for one, than actual publications - let alone one that you are simply working towards completing in future. An incomplete monograph will surely be of limited value in a situation where a university in real crisis is just looking at saving cold hard cash. So I'm sorry but I think you would be better off either starting another exciting but cheaper research project (e.g. one feasible using digitised archives), or if you are determined to pursue your preferred project, apply for a research grant to cover the actual costs of it. Best of luck!

You are saying DDs have to come ... Doesn't the 18 year old have other commitments, or could they look after the other child? If you're going to be working and your H caring, then following you around won't be much fun for them anyway.

I would take a realistic look at how precarious your position is. Are you the least qualified/least productive/ last hired member of staff? Are there people with your competencies or are you the only person in your field? What is your track record for bringing in external funding? On the basis of those answers, I think you could get some idea of how precarious your position is (obviously not 100%, but some idea), and then you can revisit whether or not this trip is a good idea.

See I have never ever done a single archival trip for a project. You go to the archives, you see what there is, you start, you read around it, you go back to see what else there is. If you are going to spend 10 grand on this then clearly this is a one and only trip unless you get a grant? As a research strategy that seems risky. As a financial strategy for some who is a sole earner in their family this also seems hugely risky.
It would be entirely reasonable to get an American grad student to digitise some of the material, for a fraction of the cost, write up a grant, and do some preliminary work, wait to find out if you are being redundant and then spend 10 grand…(or use the grant to do the next tranche of research). As it’s near Boston there will be grad students a plenty willing to digitise some preliminary material for you.

Last year I used an RA for a difficult to get to Asian archive. She took photos of over 150 files for me and made notes from another 50 more in a month. It was more than enough to get going before I could make a trip myself.

Can you look into potential way to get this archive digitalised? Reach out to organisations like JISC or the big uni libraries in USA such as Chicago. Use the time to try to establish and research opportunities for digitalisation (and hopefully this would give you useful new experience and connections).

I'm an academic so the worst person to ask because I've funded and subsidised my research a lot over the years. I'm surprised you have literally nothing to write otherwise. Definitely go. Apply for funding first (sounds like British Academy or possibly Leverhulme, BA is now effectively a lottery if you meet the quality criteria). Remember your costs are tax deductible so do a tax return if you have to self fund. It's also improving your chances of getting the next job. Good luck OP.

I hope you got what you were looking for from the thread OP.
I’m honestly a little gobsmacked that this is according to multiple posters, normal in history, and it must make it impossible for anyone without independent wealth to pursue an academic career. Are there any other disciplines where this normal? (I’m social science, and have never heard of it, and can’t help but disapprove!)