Log in

goodpods headphones icon

To access all our features

Open the Goodpods app
Close icon
headphones
Changing Academic Life

Changing Academic Life

Geraldine Fitzpatrick

What can we do, individually and collectively, to change academic life to be more sustainable, collaborative and effective? This podcast series offers long-form conversations with academics and thought leaders who share stories and insights, as well as bite-size musings on specific topics drawing on literature and personal experience. For more information go to https://changingacademiclife.com Also see https://geraldinefitzpatrick.com to leave a comment. NOTE: this is an interim site and missing transcripts for the older podcasts. Please contact me to request specific transcripts in the meanwhile.
profile image

1 Listener

bookmark
Share icon

All episodes

Best episodes

Seasons

Top 10 Changing Academic Life Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Changing Academic Life episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Changing Academic Life for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Changing Academic Life episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Welcome to Part 2 of my discussion with Dr Darragh McCashin. In Part 1 Darragh discussed his PhD in Digital mental health and his path to being an Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology at Dublin City University during COVID. In part 2, we start off replaying what he was saying about the mental health challenges faced by PhD and early career researchers in particular and then we get into a focus on the imposter, something that we can probably all relate to. Based on his work and that of his colleagues in the EU ReMO COST Action, ReMo standing for Researcher Mental Health Observatory, Darragh talks about what is imposterism, how it is experienced, the importance of raising awareness and the power of sharing our imposter experiences. He also talks about the importance of taking both top down and bottom up approaches for dealing with imposterism, and shares practical strategies for doing this.

“You see the value in putting oneself out there”

“It's incredibly powerful when somebody beside you a different career stage ...spews the same type of impostor stuff”

“It's multi level... it has to be top down meets bottom up”

“You're externalising it. And you're living with rather than...living under the feelings of impostor”

“At an institutional level, there needs to be an acknowledgement matched with resources”

Overview (times approximate):

0:30 Preamble

01:40 How he got into this work in the first place – by putting himself out there

07:29 The themes that come up in discussions about mental health, how mental health issues practically play out and the patterns he sees

12:28 The importance of taking both a top down and bottom-up approach

15:50 How he defines imposter

19:13 Moving to talk about the levels and practical tips for taking action; Being aware of the imposter cycle - ‘It’s always the next thing’ and imposter awareness

21:44 Changing toxic lab environments by connecting, and sharing to disrupt the imposter cycle by increasing awareness

27:50 Externalizing the imposter as a common experience, finding ways to disrupt the patterns – the importance of language framing – living with rather than under the imposter

34:15 More about what can be done to support each other at the group level

37:03 The systemic issues and working at the system/institutional level where there needs to be acknowledgement matched by resources, and the challenges of a duty of care

42:59 Final thoughts wrapping up – signposting ReMO COST Action and their manifesto re multi-level change

44:35 My reflections at the end

47:29 End

Download a full transcript of the conversation here.

Related Links

People/Projects/Webinars:

Darragh’s ReMO Webinar on ‘Understanding the Psychology of Impostor Syndrome in Academia and Beyond’ YouTube link

ReMO COST Action

ReMO Researcher Mental Health and Wellbeing Manifesto

Gábor Kismihók, Brian Cahill, Stéphanie Gauttier, Janet Metcalfe, Stefan T. Mol, Darragh McCashin, Jana Lasser, Murat Güneş, Mathias Schroijen, Martin Grund, Katia Levecque, Susan Guthrie, Katarzyna Wac, Jesper Dahlgaard, Mohamad Nadim Adi, & Christina Kling. (2021). Researcher Mental Health and Well-being Manifesto.

Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5788557

ReMO on twitter

Hugh Kearns https://www.ithinkwell.com.au/hugh-kearns

Papers:

Katia Levecque et al, 2017 Work organization and mental health problems in PhD students. Research Policy, 46:4, 868-879.

Interview with Katia

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

Dr Darragh McCashin started as an Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology at Dublin City University during COVID. In Part 1 of this conversation, he reflects on his experiences doing an interdisciplinary PhD in digital mental health, on the importance of interdisciplinary thinking, and on starting a lecturer position at a new university during COVID times. Darragh is also part of the Core Group for the EU COST Network on Researcher Mental Health Observatory, called ReMO. In sharing what he loves and what he finds challenging in his lecturing role, we start to touch on the theme of the imposter, a theme that we focus on in Part 2, coming soon.

“It's so hard methodologically logistically to manifest that interdisciplinarity.”

“Taking up that [lecturer] position early September 2020. So .. I'm excited for that. But like anything, it was all on Zoom. So it almost didn't feel real.”

“[Likes] the flexibility in being able to say, okay, I can set my research agenda”

“It's always the next thing ... the cycle of imposterism, you'll achieve that thing that you thought you'd never achieve. ... And then almost like lightning, it's the next thing that the anxious gaze shifts towards.”

“It's incredibly powerful when somebody beside you in a different career stage or in a different discipline, spews the same type of imposter stuff, ... You're like, okay, so it's not it's not just me”

Overview (times approximate):

00:30 Preamble

02:07 Darragh introduces himself

08:07 How he manifests interdisciplinary thinking

09:35 His men in rural Ireland study for a Movember project

14:43 Experiences of taking on his first lecturer position in the middle of a pandemic

20:13 What he loves about his job

22:38 What he is afraid of – the imposter.

25:39 The recognition from audiences when he talks about the pressures of academia and the imposter

30:01 My reflections at the end

32:46 End

In more detail: PART 1

00:30 Preamble

02:07 Darragh introduces his background in sociology and psychology, getting to a PhD in digital mental health and now being an Ass Prof in Dublin City University

08:07 How he manifests interdisciplinary thinking but having to be located within a discipline and the shift to transversal skills (soft skills)

09:35 His men in rural Ireland study for a Movember project bringing together qualitative thinking/methods and psychology constructs

14:43 Experiences of taking on his first lecturer position in the middle of a pandemic, the zoom haze and the challenges getting to know processes, culture and colleagues

20:13 What he loves about his job - the flexibility and learning that he can facilitate and is good at it

22:38 What he is afraid of – the imposter.

25:39 The recognition from audiences when he talks about the pressures of academia and the imposter, and on hearing the research that says 1 in 3 PhD students experience mental health issues

30:01 My reflections at the end

32:46 End

Download a full transcript of the conversation here.

Related Links

Darragh on twitter, on LinkedIn

Marie Curie TEAM Innovation Training Network & David Coyle & TEAM twitter account

Movember Men’s mental health initiative

Age Action Ireland Report (funded by Movember): EU COST Action ReMO

ReMO on twitter https://twitter.com/ReMO_COST

Related CAL podcasts:

Dr. Julie Kientz is a professor and Chair of the department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington in the US. In part 1 of our conversation, Julie shares her fascinating journey from first wanting to be a vet to then getting into a small town college to do computer science and then eventually doing a PhD at Georgia Tech and later getting a tenure track position. Her telling of the story is rich with reflective insights and nuggets of wisdom, whether it is about the about the value of good mentors, advice to PhD students, doing a job search as part of an academic couple, how to survive that first year as a faculty member, making decisions and managing boundaries, and parenting alongside work. In Part 2 we will focus on her path into leadership and being a department chair.

They were such good mentors. And life changing.

The first year is all about survival. So many things you have to learn in that first year [as Assistant Professor].

I learned I can’t do it all so I developed this [decision] framework: will I have fun doing it, will I learn something from it, ... am I uniquely qualified to do it?

There are a lot of parallels between mentoring and parenting

Overview (times approximate):

02:22 Julie introduces herself and how she got into computing

05:00 Discovering research and the life changing impact of good mentors

09:25 Getting into Grad School and doing her PhD

11:57 Challenges/experiences doing a PhD and learnings as advice to other students

16:47 Finding her post-PhD path

18:40 Doing a job search together with partner

25:08 Surviving the first year

29:45 Making decisions about service, learning about setting boundaries

34:14 Managing parenting and being more focused and strategic with work

41:25 End

Download a full transcript of the conversation here.

Related Links

Julie Kientz - Bio

Anind Dey - https://ischool.uw.edu/people/faculty/profile/anind

Jen Mankoff - https://www.cs.washington.edu/people/faculty/jmankoff

Previous podcast conversation with Jen Mankoff - http://www.changingacademiclife.com/blog/2019/4/23/jen-mankoff

Gregory Abowd - https://coe.northeastern.edu/people/abowd-gregory/

Gillian Hayes - https://www.gillianhayes.com

Acknowledgements:

Auphonic for post-processing, Otter.ai for help with transcription.

profile image

1 Listener

bookmark
plus icon
share episode
Changing Academic Life - End of 2022 Reflections

End of 2022 Reflections

Changing Academic Life

play

12/30/22 • 19 min

In this short podcast [19:16 mins], I reflect on some of the themes from across the podcast discussions since Sept 2022 - themes around listening, leadership and stepping up to make a difference. I also conclude with a call to take some time now to reflect on and savour your 2022 and to think of your theme for 2023.

Full transcript: [Also downloadable as pdf]

00:05 Welcome to changing academic life. I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick. And this is a podcast series where academics and others share their stories, provide ideas and provoke discussions about what we can do it individually and collectively to change academic life for the better.

00:30 As 2022 draws to an end, I thought it would be useful just to step back and reflect on the different themes and the conversations we've heard in this series. So far. As I shared in the first short podcast in September 1, actually, this year, it's been a bit of a strange year, I think still trying to reconnect and get reestablished or to find new ways of being and working, and living and then in, in the ongoing situations that we're dealing with worldwide. So the podcast series only really started up again in September. And I think across the conversations that we've had, so far, there's some really interesting common themes around the power of good listening, the different ways of doing leadership and being leader, and how any of us can step up and be part of making a difference.

01:27 So we started off this series, listening to Oscar Trimboli, who's who's an expert on listening, and whose mission is to create 100 million deep listeners in the world. So he's not an academic, per se, but does draw on a lot of research based work to promote different ways of listening well. And just as a little sidebar, I was talking about this in a workshop, we're running around mentoring and mentioning about deep listening. And someone just had a little chuckle, because talking to a group of computer scientists, deep listening is DL, which is deep learning, you know, so that you can think of it as DL. But what I think Oscar really was good at just drawing attention to was the importance of just how we're present with people. And the importance of really listening deeply, so that we can also then ask great questions that aren't for our own understanding, but helping other people better understand and develop. And he also talked about or unpacked for us five different levels of listening. So different ways that we can really listen.

02:39 He also talked about us needing to communicate more in how we communicate. So for me, I think that thing of being really present with people and trying to listen well, and being more explicit in how we're communicating is a useful thing to pick up. And, and interestingly, that was something that Julie Kientz mentioned in her discussion as well about taking on a head of department role, where she talks about needing to be very explicit with people that she was working with, especially some of her students and that which hat she was wearing, or which hat they wanted her to wear an interaction. So I think that's a nice example of communicating how we communicate.

03:28 We also then, after Oscar heard from four different people, Julie Kientz, who stepped up and took on a head of department role, Darragh McCashin, who stepped up and was part of creating a COST network on how to promote better mental health amongst researchers. We had Stuart Reeves, who stepped up to become part of the University Senate as a way of trying to affect change in his local institution. And we had Aisling O'Kane who stepped up as a as an interim department head as well. And what I think is interesting about all of these people, you know, Aisling talks to talked about the fact that she wasn't, she always sort of associated these roles with the grey hairs, the lots of experience, and all of these people are relatively young, career wise. And yet all of them demonstrated that it is possible if we see something that needs to be done that we can step up and do it and we don't need to be senior.

04:44 So, you know, Darragh was talking about the, the stepping up and setting out sort of working with others on mental health initiatives as part of the cost network and touching upon issues of imposter. And for me the discussions of impostor wasn't just about the fact that it's dealing with impostor, which is perhaps a common experience that many of us share. But again, that that thread of the value of listening to each other, of sharing our own stories and hearing that we're not alone in dealing with these issues, and, and the power of that, and a lot of the interventions and events that they've held, we had Stuart who's talking about slow h...

profile image

1 Listener

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

Cliff Lampe is an associate professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He also plays numerous key service roles in the HCI and CSCW peer communities. He talks about faculty meetings and peer service being joyful, the importance of social capital and relationships, how he decides what to say yes/no to, how he manages his work. He also talks about concerns around the production of busyness, the push for quantity not quality, and the increasing community burden of peer review. He challenges to think about new models and to play our role in making academia work. If nothing else, he will change the way you think about faculty meetings and peer service.

“Academia runs on social networks and relationship development is something we spend not enough time training PhD students to do”

“Academia requires a rich heterogeneous set of people to make it work and we can all play different roles”

He talks about (times approximate) ...

01:45 On being a Michigan boy... building a career in Michigan

04:44 On being willing to work hard and having 80 different jobs

06:38 On work being its own reward... being joyful ... and loving faculty meetings

09:51 Being a better participant in meetings by attending to what is being talked about

11:00 Experiences in coming back to Michigan as a faculty member after having been a student there

15:00 Being a bad grad student by only having one paper published but being good at knowing what makes an interesting research problem

18:00 His first faculty job, what was challenging eg re-establishing work-life-balance in a different way, and what clicked eg building relationships

21:34 Social capital building and reciprocity in academia

23:20 Taking network building out of the shadows – Phil Agre’s paper ‘Networking the network’

24:42 Mentors, Judy Olson, and the generosity of senior researchers

27:10 Paying it forward with his research group, advisees

28:38 Various peer service roles

30:10 Always being dedicated to service – “if you can do something you should do it”, loving the service work

33:00 How he decides what to say yes to – and saying no to things that he thinks he won’t particularly add to or if someone else can do a better job or if he’s just not interested – working to his strengths

35:32 How he fits it all in, being unwilling to rob time from his wife and son, and his practical strategies

38:02 High commitment to teaching as well, doing client-based classes, and his service learning perspective – the intersection of teaching and research and service being compelling

40:38 Practical strategies for managing the work, differentiating between managerial work and creative work, setting up bundles of like work in the same day, delegating and letting go

44:08 The importance of humour, not taking anything too seriously, having a strong capacity to let things go – “if you project positivity everything becomes more positive; we can choose how we react to things”

48:12 The problem of the “production of busyness” and the “cult of being overwhelmed”, and wanting us to slow down - artisanal craft research - where we take our time, and appreciate the heterogeneity of different types of research, the willingness to listen to each other

51:38 Also concerned about the burden of review and service load for volunteers; the continuous amping up of expectations re numbers of publications that is going to break the community or degrade its quality - thinking through options to make this more sustainable

54:40 Over the next 5 years we need to fundamentally re-think how we disseminate our work

55:44 What a good academic life will be, what sort of senior professor he wants to be

58:02 Encouraging everyone to get involved in service and to choose how we think about service – academia requires a rich heterogeneous set of people to make it work and we can all play different roles

1:00:27 End

Related Links

Why I love academic service: https://medium.com/@clifflampe/why-i-love-academic-service-8c7e4da19092#.dmayhcwty

Phil Agre’s article on Networking the Network: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~ksheth/astr8500/networking_the_network.pdf

Cliff and others serving SIGCHI: http://www.sigchi.org/people/officers

Cliff's article on Citizen Interaction Design: http...

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

Evan Peck is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Bucknell University in the US. Evan has a passion for teaching and also wants to do good research but when he was looking around for a faculty position, he decided he didn’t want to trade off family life and life quality to do it all, as he considered he might have to at a top-rated school. He also wasn’t sure about industry where he could have better life quality but would miss teaching. He is now an evangelist for Liberal Arts Colleges, like Bucknell, as a middle way for PhD students to include when considering career options. Evan talks about his decision processes getting there and his current experiences as a new faculty in learning to be deliberate about his use of time so that he can include teaching, research and time for family. He also has a great blog post written on this topic.

"It's all trade-offs."

“Put on the calendar, this is when I am done for the day and this is the amount of time I have to get work done and if it doesn’t get done it happens tomorrow and not through dinner”

“So have to be deliberate about how you use your time.”

“In Grad School it’s really easy to fall into this trap that your identity is the work you are doing and that’s why these rejections feel so much more personal”

He talks about (times approximate) ...

01:30 Start

02:15 Background starting out at a Liberal Arts College and having a broad education, teaching focus, courses capped at 30 students

04:30 Path getting to Bucknell via an UG degree at a Liberal Arts College and a PhD at Tufts Uni with Rob Jacob on Brain Computer Interaction, having a child during Grad School and starting to think about what measures of success and impact means and what he wanted

06:00 Up to then a typical grad student perspective re rankings and top school as measures of success; realised “even if I were to be productive at the rate of someone at a top school, I think I would be miserable doing it” – something about the pace, can fit others beautifully but grants and away from teaching not how he wanted to spend his time, or emotionally or the stress of the tenure process

08:20 “They say, here are the things that are valuable to us and if those don’t align with the things that are valuable to you ... things you don’t want to do are more taxing ... if you are at a university where the benchmarks involve things that you don’t what to spend all your time doing... then it can seem very overwhelming”

09:00 Thought he was going into industry because he thought academic was two pillars, either research or teaching focussed. Loves doing research but not all the time. Had industry internship and saw good work life balance, didn’t consume them, not their entire identity and this aspect appealed to him. And getting to end of grad school was a grind so it seemed attractive.

11:15 After having a kid, shifting own work habits. If he continued his old schedule he would lonely see his son half hour a day. So getting up early and trying to set boundaries on the upper limit.

12:42 How to put up boundaries – scheduling wise, almost “put on the calendar, this is when I am done for the day and this is the amount of time I have to get work done and if it doesn’t get done it happens tomorrow and not through dinner”. Priorities becoming much more important and industry seemed more appealing as could see structure in industry. And in appealing places to live. Factors line up.

14:15 Very lucky in lab culture and advisor who was very sensitive to family issues, told him to go be with his family; the only he can figure out how to do 3 CHI papers is to work 15 hrs a day, may be different for others.

Challenges when you set these boundaries – could be more productive without boundaries but “It’s all trade-offs”. “First level says I’m missing out on something, second level says would I trade it” and no he wouldn’t, helps come to terms with those decisions

16:20 Role of supervisor in setting culture, and previous grad students who had children so wasn’t breaking new ground

17:15 Comparing self to others – very challenging, easy to compare yourself to the best teacher and the best researcher, very tempting – but remembering they only take one of the jobs

18:15 Heading back to liberal arts via advice to apply everywhere, supervisor a wealth of good advice, can always decide you don’t like it later; hoping grad students think about this more in advance; having options and opportunity to figur...

bookmark
plus icon
share episode
Changing Academic Life - RW4 Rejection, tenure and so-called excellence
play

02/11/21 • 21 min

In this short related-work podcast, I share the stories of two people we’ll call Alex and Blake who are facing the challenge of meeting tenure criteria. From this I reflect on the personal, professional and societal impacts entailed in this push for so-called excellence. I then discuss two different papers that point in different ways to the need for institutional and cultural level response and present ideas for practical actions – for how we can address academic rejection and what it means to focus on soundness and capacity instead of excellence. As Moore et al state, excellence is not excellent and in fact is at odds with qualities of good research.

[Note: anonymised stories have been told with the permissions of ‘Alex’ and ‘Blake’]

Related Work:

Allen et al, Journal papers, grants, jobs ... as rejections pile up, it’s not enough to tell academics to ‘suck it up, The Conversation, February 3 2021. https://theconversation.com/journal-papers-grants-jobs-as-rejections-pile-up-its-not-enough-to-tell-academics-to-suck-it-up-153886

Allen, Kelly-Ann; Donoghue, Gregory M; Pahlevansharif, Saeed; Jimerson, Shane R.; and Hattie, John A.C., Addressing academic rejection: Recommendations for reform, Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 17(5), 2020. Available at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/jutlp/vol17/iss5/19

Moore, S., Neylon, C., Paul Eve, M. et al. “Excellence R Us”: university research and the fetishisation of excellence. Palgrave Commun 3, 16105 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2016.105

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/03/donna-strickland-nobel-physics-prize-wikipedia-denied

Geraldine Fitzpatrick, 2017, ‘ The craziness of research funding. It costs us all’. , TEDx TUWien https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66_DRDYJz4g&list=PLq-OfvAJu5UZtNcBLLwsgmDRPbkARew6G&index=6

TRANSCRIPT: CAL Related Work 4

(00:26):

Reflections for this week are triggered by two interactions I had recently that highlighted for me the significant human impact of our so-called drive for excellence in academia and especially so for people who don't have traditional career paths or tend to do more cross-disciplinary work. Both of the people that I'm talking about are postdoc people in tenure track positions or tenured positions at two different universities in very different countries, not the UK or the US and I'm going to call them Alex and Blake.

(01:05):

So for Alex's story, Alex moved countries a couple of years ago to take up their first full-time faculty position at a university in a, in a, we can call it an Eastern European country. And this was after a long number of years on precarious short term projects with European funding. And a lot of that funding was about conducting more near to market research and involving industry partners.

(01:32):

So it wasn't always conducive to very deep, theoretical, journal papers, if you like. And so they were really excited to finally get a position that was full time in a faculty position and with the longer term output and where they could really shape their own research identity. We had a call last week as Alex was really anxious about their future prospects and wanted to talk it through. And let me tell you that Alex does really great work at the intersection of design and technology. They take a very participatory approach to their research and invite invite participants, or you might call them stakeholders or target audience to engage with them as co-design partners. So there's lots of hands on making and design and deploying technologies often with, within an activist agenda. And they really care deeply about this work and the values underpinning it. And the, the outputs of their research do tend to end up in highly ranked conferences in our field. And Alex also has a long list of international collaborators and co-authors, and they've also had some really excellent local public exhibitions and local community impacts as well. And if public engagement and impact were assessment criteria, they would definitely score really highly.

(02:55):

Alex is also really active in their peer community...

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

Alex Taylor is a sociologist and a Reader in the Centre for Human Computer Interaction Design at City, University of London. Alex moved into academia in Sept 2017, having worked at Microsoft Research Cambridge prior to this for over a decade and as a post doc researcher at Surrey University before this. Alex talks about his work at the boundaries of disciplines where he doesn’t feel like he has a clear disciplinary home, and about his experiences working at Microsoft. He explains his very conscious decision to then move into an academic position. The trigger for this conversation was a twitter post where he commented on the many different skills that he had to draw on as an academic. He reflects on the labours of academia, and the need to prioritise and make choices. He also talks about generative resistance in the face of the demands of the academy, taking principled stands, saying no and offering alternatives. And he talks about doing this as a collective endeavour and the power of small everyday actions. In all he does Alex is deeply reflective and values-driven and asks How do we create the opportunities and the spaces to do the academy differently? He shows many of the practical ways we can all be part of this.

“I never felt I had a [disciplinary] home and that took a while to come to terms with. ... maybe that’s just the kind of person I am, the work I thrive in.”

“We all have to make choices within our lives about what we prioritise. And I realised for me being a parent and partner were very important.”

“[Recognising] the sheer number of skills that were required of me in one day. ... It’s a very clear indication of the labours involved in being an academic. And the recognition that you can’t be good at them all.“

“How do we create the opportunities and the spaces to do the academy differently?”

“Important for me in the Centre is how do collectively say no to that? ... It’s not just about saying no, what other things might we offer up as a solution?”

Overview (times approximate): [You can also download a full transcript here]

02:07 Research background and dealing with the press/impact

13:49 How he decided to work at Microsoft & sticking to his guns

34:24 Consciously deciding to move from MSR to university

43:40 The labours involved in being an academic

57:42 Collective generative resistance

In more detail, he talks about...

Research background and dealing with the press/impact

02:07 Alex talks about working at University of Surrey and Xerox Europarc and then going to Microsoft Research. A sociologist with an interest in the sociology of technology and he did his PhD on teenagers and mobile phones, a long time ago when it was still a surprise to the industry because SMS was originally something to be used a back channel for engineers. Fortuitous in a way that he realized young people might be the thing to look at.

07:55 Alex reflecting on his use of words like fortuitous and luck. “It was just about meeting the right people at the right time. I fully recognize I’m in a privileged position.” And the topic was an important one at the time, how youth were using mobile phones and SMS at that time. Talks about being on the Radio 4 today program as a PhD student and wondering what he was doing there.

11:12 We discuss more on his experience engaging with the press over the years, especially having worked at Microsoft and their PR machine. Told throughout his career about the need to make his writing more accessible. Part of him as resisted/struggled with that, making it accessible to a public audience. He has written pieces for a journalism context and been on radio and TV but doesn’t find it easy. Attuned to the demands of UK’s academic impact from his years at Microsoft.

How he decided to work at Microsoft & sticking to his guns

13:49 We discuss his decision to go to Microsoft Research. At some point he recognized he was going to be in academic life and he did do a post-doc at Surrey straight after PhD. Then Microsoft approached him to work for a couple of years as a contractor, he asked for something ludicrous thinking they wouldn’t take it up. He was uneasy working for a big institution working for a profit. But they said yes. Then Richard and Abi set up this group together and he ended up swapping 6 months in into full-time employment.

17:57 So how ...

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

As we leave 2024 and embark on the new year, I want to share the reflective template I used for myself, playing with the LP (long play) record concept. I introduce the table structure of the personal, people, play, and projects (Ps) categories, paired with reflective components like land, love, labor, and learn (Ls) for the past year review, and look forward, let go, let grow, and let be (Ls) for the next year. I share some illustrative examples from my own reflections of 2024, including milestones, achievements, and lessons learned. And I share some of the feedback from you that helps make the work of this podcast worthwhile – thank you! I hope this encourage you too to reflect on your LP last year, celebrate your accomplishments, and be more intentional on how you approach the coming year.

You can download the LP template here.

00:29 Episode Introduction

02:29 Introducing the LP Table Template

06:27 Reflecting on my 2024 Landings

16:10 What I Loved and What Feels Like Labour

19:13 What I Learned

23:21 Taking Time to Savour and Celebrate

25:06 Celebrating Feedback on the Podcast

31:42 Looking forward to the 2025 LP

36:44 Wrapping Up and Summary

39:48 Final Pointers

41:01 Outro

41:50 End

Related Links

Past Episodes:

Remembering Volkmar Pipek - on being curious, being you

Liam Bannon (Part 1) on a career outside the box – April 2024

Liam Bannon (Part 2) on values & what matters – Sept 2024

On research identity, meaningful work and funding (solo) - Jan 2024

RW9 Progress and praise – July 2021

Other links:

Linked In Post by Rachel Ratz-Lubashevsky on the research identity episode

HCI Group, TU Wien

Online Academic Leadership Development course – Spring 2025, early bird deadline 2 March 2025

To explore more of my offerings: geraldinefitzpatrick.com

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

Pejman Mirza-Babaei is an Associate Dean Industry Partnerships, and an Associate Professor of User Experience Research, in the Faculty of Business and Information Technology at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Pejman’s story spans Iran, the UK and Canada as he discusses his path from Masters to working in industry to doing a PhD closely tied with a start-up, and then his experiences moving into a tenure track position immediately post PhD, well in fact before his PhD, and later taking a break to work back in industry before working out that academia is what he wants to. What’s particularly interesting in his story is how strategic he has been in exploring his options and making decisions, leading to him getting tenure in very quick time. And what else is interesting is how he is always seeking feedback and open to learn. There is a Part 2 of this conversation (coming next) where he talks about the uncertainty of life post-tenure and how he has navigated these new choices, as well as what he has learning moving into more faculty leadership roles.

“One thing I do a lot is ask for feedback... The important thing about feedback is to listen carefully but not necessarily do all of them... Ultimately it’s your decision and you know what is good for you.”

“Going to a faculty position with mindset that you are doing everything is the fastest way to burnout. “ 

He talks about... [You can download a full transcript here]

2:05 Pejman talks about his background, doing a Computer Hardware Engineering undergrad degree working in a bank as a network manager, finding it boring and deciding to continue his education and ended up at Sussex Uni doing a Master of IT for Commerce and took an HCI course there. But never knew what he wanted to do.

5:05 Being fascinated by computer games as a kid, but never thought of it as a career. Working in a college back in Iran then coming back to Sussex to start a PhD. The teaching part got him excited about a PhD. Originally wanted to study something to do with technology to support people with visual impairment but ended up working with Graham [McAllister] doing games user research.

7:20 Geri provides background on the serendipity of it and Graham being new at Sussex, bringing an interest in games and starting a games user research company.

8:15 Pejman talks about his PhD being relatively unique, working with a start-up games company and working on real cases. Changed his understanding of approach to research questions and how to communicate results back. Applied research. What was challenging then but he benefits from it now was that many academic papers couldn’t be applied to the commercial work they were doing which was more formative evaluation and usability studies, similar to papers but needing to think more on how to apply it.

10:35 Did it feel stressful then? No. Didn’t have stress that this one study had to be the best. Had loads of opportunity to iterate as always new game to test next week. And supportive supervisor. Both understood no-one had done this before, no recipe to follow. Now very proud of what they did in the projects.

12:50 Turning this into a thesis? At some point it felt like a job he was doing. Learning a lot. End of second year [of a 3 year program], tried to capture what he learnt from each project – wrote a page for each and put them on the floor to look for connections. Knew broad aspects eg physiological measures etc but not sure how the story would be. Last year of PhD then more focused on how to visualize this data. So only finding story at end of second year. Ran close to 30-40 studies but only included 4 in the thesis, picking relevant ones. Not a common PhD training.

16:15 Stressful about finding focus? Not that particularly. The whole experience was stressful. But being able to run lots of studies and having a supportive group helped a lot. Benefited a lot from Ben [du Boulay] he would run surgery sessions as open office door and spending a lot of time with him. And the advice about creating the one page of each project to help find the connections. Was also under pressure to publish as were presenting a lot in industry conferences and didn’t want others doing academic publishing on his ideas.

18:55 Went from Sussex to Canada before he finished his PhD. Never thought he would live in Canada. Always thought he would end up somewhere in Europe. But did 3-4 months as a visiting position in Canada in 3rd year of PhD. They had an open po...

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

Show more best episodes

Toggle view more icon

FAQ

How many episodes does Changing Academic Life have?

Changing Academic Life currently has 124 episodes available.

What topics does Changing Academic Life cover?

The podcast is about Podcasts, Education, Business and Careers.

What is the most popular episode on Changing Academic Life?

The episode title 'Darragh McCashin on interdisciplinarity, a new lecturership during COVID, and his imposter (Part 1)' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Changing Academic Life?

The average episode length on Changing Academic Life is 45 minutes.

How often are episodes of Changing Academic Life released?

Episodes of Changing Academic Life are typically released every 14 days, 8 hours.

When was the first episode of Changing Academic Life?

The first episode of Changing Academic Life was released on Jul 3, 2016.

Show more FAQ

Toggle view more icon

Comments