The Independent Researchers Project

Introduction

Academic precarity in English Studies has become a pressing issue in the last few years. Of course, the use of casual labour delivered by well-qualified staff is nothing new in academia. Most full-time academics will probably have experienced this kind of employment at some point in their careers. However, precarity has become intensified by the recent wave of redundancies and the shrinking of English departments, thus diminishing opportunities for secure employment. This has occurred within a political and cultural landscape in which there is a broader sense of our subject being devalued by an increasingly consumerist approach to education and with it a reductive attitude towards what a Humanities education is, what it is for and what it can do. 

Rather than viewing the Humanities and STEM subjects as complementary and necessary to each other in the broad arena of knowledge of the universitas, they have been pitted against each other in an unhealthy, limiting and sometimes divisive opposition. In recent years some of my students were routinely subject to casual derisory comments about their decision to study English at University by students studying STEM subjects, as if this had become an accepted cultural norm.

We should of course campaign against such working conditions and such views. However, what practical support is in place for independent researchers whose expertise, teaching and research are crucial if our subject is to continue to flourish, but who have no secure institutional home? What support might be needed to overcome the potential isolation and marginalisation from the academic community of scholars and teachers that can go with being an IR?

These questions came into sharp focus for me when my subject area went through a painful redundancy process in 2020, ending with a 50% reduction in staff. When such a decision is made, not only do you lose your job and a secure income, but also many of the means of retaining connection with the academic community and of continuing to pursue research. This situation is of course all too familiar to those working on short-term, insecure contracts.

During the redundancy process the Institute of English Studies, the English Association and University English provided invaluable support in offering practical advice and in helping my team to maintain morale, clarity and focus. But what next? Once the process was over, I felt I’d reached a point in my life in which I’d like to do something in return and to direct my 30 years’ experience in HE towards some constructive activities.
After a few discussions with the IES and EA, the idea of an Independent Researchers Project began with a view to creating a community in which IRs could more easily contact each other, share ideas, advice and support and also potentially receive some practical support from IES and EA. I was invited to assist in setting this up. 

In the first instance, it was suggested that I should investigate the kinds of support that IRs would ideally like to have, bearing in mind that such colleagues may well come from different career stages. Hopefully, this blog, hosted by the IES, can provide a starting point for this.

If you would like to add to the responses below and / or suggest ways in which this Blog could be helpful to you or to others, or contribute to the Blog itself please contact this email address: irlitproject@gmail.com.

Dr Bronwen Price,
Principal Lecturer, University of Portsmouth 2002-2020
Member of the Higher Education Committee, English Association
 

Initial Feedback

I began by putting out a social media alert, shared by the IES and EA. Feedback came primarily from early career academics who were on precarious short-term contracts, others had lost or been pushed out of their jobs through cuts to English Literature Departments, a few were retired or had chosen to work independently. Below is some of the feedback that I received, which I have grouped under several headings:

Areas of Support Requested

1.    Access to resources  especially an email address and library access, such as EEBO, Cambridge Core and JSTOR, journal databases. This was identified by all as the single most important support needed. 

2.    A forum / members' group in which scholars could share draft grant applications, book proposals and articles, and receive feedback.

3.    Opportunities to share with others in the same situation, e.g. a space for people to talk about the realities of early career life – rejections, job hunting, having to find other ‘day jobs’ for financial support, not being able to take those jobs for contract or visa reasons; a supportive, safe space for those experiencing redundancy.

4.    Networking Opportunities to share information about funding and job opportunities.

5.    Career support and mentoring, perhaps including:

      a) Career development workshops/events to help ECAs. E.g. mock interviews, extra feedback on applications;

      b) A database of what English Ph.D.s go on to do and specific sectors to which they go outside of academia;

      c) More formalised links between the academic and non-academic worlds, e.g. opportunities for meeting employers from industries outside academia, including discussions about what people with Ph.D.s can bring to other industries, how they might make themselves attractive/employable to them (and what might put off a potential employer from taking someone with a Ph.D.).

      d) Data of job opportunities that don’t already appear on jobs.ac.uk and notice of last minute hourly paid teaching and library / admin roles.

6.    Grants 

       a) For Ph.D. students who have submitted and are waiting for their vivas.

       b) Access to, and more accessible information about, small pots of money to attend conferences and / or for membership of learned societies.

7.    Support for International scholars and support from individuals who are familiar with the visa regime, which is complicated and often prohibitive in terms of cost, to those who are not. 
 

Bad Practice

Besides identifying areas of support which would help IRs to function more easily, a number of respondents identified bad practices they had either witnessed or experience directly:

1.    A sense of unfairness about the ways in which some posts and grant opportunities are advertised (or not), e.g. job adverts where the application window is only 4–5 days; postdoc/RA positions which have not been advertised. 

2.    A sense of discrimination against older academics in applying for grants and jobs

3.   A sense that IRs are not taken seriously by publishers.

Some ideas about dealing with bad practice are given below:

4.   Keeping a database of anonymised accounts of bad management practice during redundancy processes. This would provide an overview of what has been happening in the last few years.

5.   Keeping a database of bad management practice in reference to part-time hourly paid staff. 

 

Suggestions for promoting English

A number of respondents felt that English academics needed to be more active and assertive in promoting their subject, especially in the public domain, through social media and in schools, where students are increasingly being encouraged to take STEM subjects.

More could be done to use the skills of English Literature academics in other subject areas – e.g. critical thinking and textual analysis skills, research skills, interpreting primary material, writing and communication skills, as well as contributing to a broader education in the humanities. 

Digital Humanities is another important area to develop further.

Summary of feedback from September 2021, collected by Bronwen Price