The Fuse sandpit spa trip

Posted by Jean Adams

Quite often I have what I think is a great idea and I get all excited about it. I tell someone and they say “yes that is interesting”, whilst looking over my shoulder, and then walk off to do something more important. Occasionally the idea resurrects itself and is enacted without attribution. That’s okay: maybe someone else thought of it independently from me. Or maybe someone heard me talk about it, dismissed it, and then it came back to them as a seemingly new idea three weeks later when they were in the bath. But it’s not that common when I say “wow, I’ve just had this great idea” and someone says “that is an excellent idea, why don’t you write 500w outlining it, and we’ll discuss it at the next meeting of the Tedious Bureaucracy Executive Sub-committee”. Even rarer when the TBESC resolves to act upon my idea. 

Sandcastle by Joe DSilva

So, you see, I haven’t had much opportunity to learn that when you have a great idea and someone else likes it, you then get charged with executing the idea.* I think I sort of thought I was just here to have great ideas – which is obviously a very poor reflection of what I do all day, but perhaps a very good reflection of what I wish I did all day.

On the Saturday before May Day 2012, I was climbing hills. I remember this because we climbed Ben Cruachan and it was my 142nd Munro – which is half way around the 283 Munros there were that day.** As we romped down the broad shoulder of Stob Diamh, Cruachan’s sister peak, back to the car park and tea shop in the warm May sun, I suddenly had this brilliant idea. Why not run a residential grant writing workshop for Fuse’s early career researchers (ECRs)? It would be a cross between those UK GRADschool development workshops that everyone raves about, and an EPSRC sandpit which everyone seems to come home from exhausted but £0.5m better off. 

We would get real people working in real-life public health to come up with research problems, get our ECRs to work with them to develop research solutions, and intersperse the whole affair with little seminars on career building, grant writing, and advanced research methods. It would be experiential learning personified. We could maybe even fund the best research idea? No? Ok, maybe that would be a teeny step too far. On reflection, this was probably not entirely my idea. But it’s a good story, no?

The only Fuse committee I am on is the Fuse Communications Group. I don’t think it has a particular remit for capacity building or career development, but I took my idea there because it was the only place I had to take it. I wrote my 500w. People seemed to like it. The idea got escalated to some other acronym and Fuse agreed to pay for the whole adventure (with the Strategic Health Authority later taking on more than half of the costs).

And then someone said, “so Jean, how do you want to organise this”? Truly? I didn’t want to organise it. Why would I want to do that? I just wanted to go off and climb some more hills and have some more ideas. But, you know, the person who asked was kind enough to say “okay, we could do it together”.

So we did. Janet and Avril and Mark and Terry and Sue and me, but mostly the others and not really me at all, co-ordinated calendars, visited venues, cajoled people into taking on all the various different roles required, told hotels that ‘limited’ wifi was not wifi enough for the 21st century, organised games, prepared delegate packs and almost drowned in organisational paper work.

On Monday 25th February, 30 Fuse early career researchers will join seven senior researchers, and three local public health practitioners in the beautiful surroundings of Linden Hall Hotel. The practitioners will present contemporary public health problems that require research solutions. The ECRs will work in groups with the practitioners to design relevant research projects. Each group will be guided by a senior ‘mentor’. Over three days the groups will write and submit full research proposals. These will then be considered by a board of Fuse members and associates in open session. Each member of the team who submit the application judged most appropriate for funding will win £500 to spend career development opportunities. There will be seminars on research methods and what funders are looking for in grant applications, a pub quiz, indoor cricket and a chance to hear about how one senior professor got where they are today. Perhaps there might also be some time to spend in the spa.

I hope it all runs smoothly – we certainly seem to have enough paperwork to suggest it will. I hope everyone enjoys it. But, more importantly, I hope they learn something useful from it.

Thanks Janet for liking my idea.



*Although, note that is exactly what happened with the “wow, let’s have a Fuse blog” idea.

**The Ordinance Survey continuously re-surveys the Scottish hills and between it and the Scottish Mountaineering Club the decision on how many Munros there are seems to vary on an annual basis. As I write, there are only 282 Munros.

The PhD ‘Journey’

Posted by Lynne Forrest

Now that I’m in the final year of my PhD (and possibly because I’ve been forced to watch too much bad Saturday evening television) I’ve been reflecting, in true X-factor-contestant style, over my PhD 'journey'. None of it has exactly turned out as planned…

Ryan's tearful journey

Looking back, the first year now seems fabulously self-indulgent. It mostly consisted of deciding on a research topic and then doing lots of reading, whilst eventually consolidating this reading into an early literature review. I also went on a couple of training courses and planned my ethics application and data analysis. This was a great opportunity to get immersed in the literature and I wished I enjoyed it more instead of being anxious to get some data and crack on with the analysis.

My project plan assumed I would get through ethics and obtain the cancer registry data I required, early in my second year. However, in case this didn’t happen, I had a back up plan. I would conduct a systematic review of inequalities in receipt of lung cancer treatment, to provide an evidence basis for my analysis and fill in a few months until the data arrived. In fact, as it turned out, I didn’t get all the data I required until my 3rd year.

So, in hindsight, my advice would be to assume that everything will take much longer than you originally think and to always have a contingency plan. And not to worry because sometimes the contingency plan actually works out to better than the original…

The systematic review turned out to be a far more major undertaking than I’d anticipated, in terms of scope, volume and time, but did ensure that I had some results in my second year, which meant I was able to submit abstracts for a couple of conferences. I was lucky enough to win a prize for best pre-doctoral abstract and the chance to present in a plenary session at SSM2012. From this, a professor in the audience contacted me to discuss my research and I’ve now been invited to speak at a clinical conference. So, although I still find conference presentations terrifying, I’m now convinced of the value of conferences as networking opportunities.

My supervisors encouraged me to write as I went along and I think this is excellent advice. I wrote up my systematic review as a paper and, although it was turned down by The Lancet (boo!), it was  accepted by PLoS Medicine, another high-ranking general medical journal. So, a piece of work I initially undertook as a fill-in exercise has somehow turned out fantastically well….

However, the pressure is now on to keep up the momentum. In my third year I need to complete the data analysis, write up, submit my thesis and get through the viva. I also need to start thinking about what I’m going to do when it’s all over. In eight months time my PhD funding will run out, and so I need to start planning ahead now. I want to stay in academia and so am thinking about a fellowship. Hopefully by the time I come to apply I will have more publications, as good, first-author publications do seem to be one of the major deciding factors for entry into academia. My plenary presentation, prize and PLoS paper should all look good on the CV. But nothing is certain, there are many others all fighting for the same prize and the fellowship process does seem to be something of a lottery.

So, anyone out there want to offer me a job?

My New Life ‘As a PhD Student:’ Negotiating the Transition

Posted by Yitka Graham

My life is different now.

I’m not sure what has changed, but there has been a definite, almost intangible evolvement, prefixed by the term ‘as a PhD student’ over the last seven months. Superficially, the day-to-day aspects appear to be the same. But they’re not. I have noticed very subtle differences to the way I appear to be perceived by others. ‘As a PhD student’ I am picking up a range of messages from virtually unconditional support to outright negativity. The positive messages are affirming, inspiring, motivating and most importantly, much appreciated. The negative messages are very subtle and difficult to negotiate and unpick. After much discussion with other PhD students, post-docs, my supervisor and (of course), like any good researcher, looking for written evidence, i.e. PhD handbooks, I have discovered this appears to be a common phenomenon.

One handbook suggested the general population does not really understand the PhD process or the motivation for undertaking one. This in itself implies an air of ignorance and arrogance, which I don’t like. However, it is well known people may react negatively to something they don’t know much about. Do PhD students, myself included, come across as arrogant? Are we perceived by others as being arrogant? Are we assumed to be arrogant?

I had lunch yesterday with a dear friend about to submit her thesis. She is in education, not public health, and I raised my observations with her to gain insight from a different discipline. She understood straight away and had also experienced similar reactions. Little things, such as sarcastic comments and insinuations, but related to the status ‘as a PhD student’. We discussed this at great length and she encouraged me to blog, to see if others had similar experiences and how they negotiated the negative reactions from others.

Walking the tightrope between confidence and vulnerability: Tightrope Walking by jackol

I asked her thoughts on ‘confident vulnerability’, my current theory on life 'as a PhD student’. Description below...

‘As a PhD student’, one must be confident. Confident in one’s self as a person to undertake post-doctoral study; in one’s academic ability to develop and expand a variety of skills, academic and otherwise, and to present and indeed defend one’s research.

However, in order to successfully negotiate the ritual of the PhD, one is vulnerable on many levels, requiring submission to a constant process of questioning, negotiation, scrutiny and justification. A place where academia becomes intensely personal with you and your research becoming inextricably intertwined in the journey to becoming a Doctor of Philosophy. It will likely be the most challenging, personal, positive and fulfilling journey one experiences and in order to do it properly and gain the most from the experience, one needs to have the chutzpah to assume a vulnerable position. This again requires confidence. 

Does ‘confident vulnerability’ come across as arrogance to others outside the comforting world of academia and research, resulting in negative reactions?

Fun Finding Fees

Posted by Annette Payne

I’m one of those rare, unusual PhD creatures…..The Self Funder (waits for gasps of shock and horror).

I work for the NHS, where funding for academic study is based upon the qualifications required for the role, identified in your job description. For my role as a band 7 Health and Housing Specialist an MSc is the highest qualification deemed necessary. Now don’t get me wrong it isn’t that the NHS doesn’t support academic study, they do…..but that support might not be financial.

Selling your soul for your PhD fees?

Once I made the decision that I was actually going to embark on this PhD journey, I just automatically thought ‘I’ll self-fund’. I’m studying part time at Sunderland University and the fees aren’t too bad (gulps). I calculated that at around £2000 a year, or £166 a month, it was a financial investment in my future that I was prepared to make. Then the reality hit that it would be £2000 a year, or £166 a month, for maybe the next 7 years: a potential £14,000 financial investment in my future. That of course didn’t account for any printing costs, travel to conferences, poster prep and all those other hidden PhD costs. Now the cost of my PhD was hitting my poor brain and my purse!!

I started to get a bit annoyed. Whether justified or not, I was a bit jealous of those PhD students who didn’t have the financial responsibilities that I did. I live alone (yes, yes, I’m 40, live alone and I DO have cats!!). I pay my mortgage, cover the bills, run a car, and go on holiday and I fund all of this via my full-time job. I do admittedly earn a decent salary, some would say more than decent (I judge my salary in relation to my sister who works in banking so I consider myself the poor relative!). I can’t just walk away from my job to study full-time with a research grant - that would be too significant a drop in income.

I also started to get annoyed with my employer. I was doing my PhD for my own personal development, because it was something I wanted to do. But ultimately, my employer, the NHS, would be benefitting too. Why shouldn’t I be a little cheeky, push the boundaries and ask for a bit of financial help…….and that is exactly what I did!!

I’m a qualified District Nurse by background; a qualification that opens up certain channels of funding to me. For my first year fees I applied to the Non-Medical Education and Training (NMET) fund. I was successful and was awarded nearly all my fees. I covered the shortfall myself.

For my second year I did the same. But with huge organisational changes, the policy and process had changed. I was awarded the maximum for PhD study of £1500 again with me covering the slightly larger shortfall myself.

The fees for my third year are due in February and NMET is no more so I have applied directly to my Hospitals Trust for funding. For the first time I have been awarded my full fees (woops of joy) and a full 10 days study leave (broad grin as my social life takes a turn for the better). I have of course had to sign my life away in exchange for the cash. You know, the normal: I can’t leave my job for x many years or I have to pay every penny back. But for the moment I’m happy. I’m awaiting the outcome of an application with the Burdett Trust; a charity that helps nurses, midwives and allied health professionals with postgrad study. I have my fingers and toes crossed as if I’m successful this will mean the end to my yearly round of funding applications. I can actually just sit back and concentrate on the PhD job at hand!

I’ve made finding funding sound easy haven’t I?? Fill in a form=cash. But I found out on 5th November this year that I had my fees for 2013 from an application that was submitted in March, lost four times, and required numerous phonecalls and soul selling just in order to get that £2000. I am prepared to play the funding game, I make sure that my application highlights clearly how my PhD work meets the knowledge and skills outcomes on my job description, and how the skills developed will benefit the trust and meet organisational outcomes. I let the charity know how my work will improve patient care and service delivery. I have become funding savvy.

So why do I bother apart from the obvious payment of fees from somewhere else other than my purse?? Well I see these funding battles as an opportunity. Once I’ve gained my PhD I will also have shown that I can write an application to secure funding. I’m adding to my marketable skills post doctorate and therefore my prospects. I have indeed invested in my future and for once it’s not all about the money.

The yes-no game

Posted by Jean Adams

I try hard to be a ‘yes’ person. Not a yes-(wo)man - I like to think I’m fairly critical and independent minded. But the sort of person who will be helpful and enthusiastic and say ‘yes’ when I can. I am, after all, pretty off the scale in conscientiousness and tend to think that yes is inherently a good thing.

This is in contrast to the ‘no’ people: the lazy, unhelpful people who can be relied upon only to say ‘no’. Or at least nothing much until you’ve given up hope and asked someone else.

The yes-no game

Public health is a collaborative science. It is probably still possible to while away a career in epidemiology without speaking to many people – especially if you have a big cohort study, or other data set, nestled up your sleeve. But once you get into the realm of developing and evaluating public health interventions, or even just collecting another round of data from your cohort study, you start to need big teams of people with varied expertise – a systematic reviewer, a statistician, a health economist, a qualitative researcher (goodness me I sometimes wish I was did one of those tangible things that people could give a name to). The effect is that there are all sorts of people asking you to say yes to taking part in this and that.

University research departments are also supposed to be pretty collaborative places – more than just the sum of their parts, but interactive groups of people getting stuff done together. There’s teaching, and supervision, and tutoring, and marking to be done; committees to contribute to; strategy to be developed and executed; a website to be maintained; a Christmas party to be organised. A whole lot more things that you are asked to say yes to.

At the same time, I have all of ‘my’ stuff to do: projects that are supposed to be finished sometime around when the funding expires; papers to write for my REF return, and those I just want to write; new grant applications to develop; ideas for blog posts to dream up.

Faced with so many requests to say yes, is pretty easy to develop a no mentality. In fact, not so long ago, my partner and I decided that the only way we were going to free our weekends from the tyranny of work was to get a lot more strict with our yes’s and a lot more liberal with our no’s. There was going to be a daily fess up about yes’s and communal pats on the back for each and every no. No was going to be the new black.

It didn’t take long before we worked out that this wasn’t going to work. Partly because it turned out we couldn’t remember all the yes’s and no’s we’d said by the end of the day, or even to remember to talk about them; but mostly because it turned out that each yes and no needed to be qualified.

There were the things we really wanted to say yes to, but couldn’t because of all the other previous yes’s. And the stuff that we wanted to say no to but said yes because of the possible fall-out of saying no to particular people. Fairly quickly we’d worked out a 2x2 table of: what you said x what you should’ve said if you only did the stuff you wanted to do.

We abandoned the scheme before it deteriorated into unknown knowns.

The problem is that I want everyone else to say yes to my things, but to be able to say no to just about everyone else’s. And so does everyone else.

The value of being an imperfect research student

Posted by Heather Yoeli

In their posts of July 23 and 30, White and Adams provide a rigorously evidence-based summary of how to be the excellent research student. I found it a beautiful, if slightly disconcerting, read: carefully structured, convincingly argued, mindful of its chances of being published in the BMJ and (I assume) flawlessly citation-managed and submitted conveniently in advance of its deadline. In their two-part analysis, however, White and Adams neglect either to verify or to justify the imperative of their paradigmatic implication. Or, in less pretentious-sounding academic twaddle... they don’t really tell us what’s so brilliant about being the perfect research student.

And therefore, I would like to respond by proposing that the archetypal Perfect Research Student may not be doing any favours to him or herself or to his or her participants.

To begin with, I will critically evaluate the semiotics of the use made of their Lisa Simpson image. Lisa, as all fans of The Simpsons will know, is a perfect student; bright, attentive and thorough. Her brother Bart is, by contrast, somewhat imperfect; whilst no less intelligent and creative than his sister, he has a tendency to be impetuous, slapdash and prone to sending his supervisors things he is still working on.* And yet, outside of the classroom sphere, it is Bart rather than Lisa who displays the more competent social skills and interpersonal confidence; he has a relaxed, confident and slightly zany manner of engaging and communicating with others. He would make an excellent ethnographer or qualitative interviewer. Lisa, by contrast, has spent too much time at too tender an age seated with her laptop precariously balanced upon a pile of textbooks to know how to talk to anyone other than her laptop. 

And moving The Simpsons to the personal, I have learned through my ethnographically qualitative fieldwork that participants often respond more readily to imperfect than to perfect researchers. Ethnography is about regarding participants as real people, and about building relationships with real people, and real people are inherently imperfect.** I have been carrying out fieldwork on the Cowgate estate in Newcastle (glances distractedly up from laptop to wave to everyone she’s been chatting to) which is a community in which most thirty-something women possess more useful aspirations than to join the hierarchy of public health academia, and therefore a community which regards with confusion and cynicism the archetypal Perfect Research Student.*** I have therefore learned that participants find it easier to relate to me when I am imperfect; when, for example, I arrive at a meeting with half a bowl of my daughter’s porridge (or even half a tummy-full of my son’s puke) adhered to my leggings, or when I get halfway home with a participant’s gloves in my bag. Whereas most of my participants have had no personal experience of sitting in a postgraduate supervision session, many of them have experienced a stroppy toddler refusing her breakfast or a cheerfully regurgitant baby projecting his breakfast back towards the floor, and all of them will have done something as brainless and daft as walking off with someone else’s gloves because all people everywhere have done something similarly brainless and daft. 

 
Imperfection, therefore, is what connects us to our humanity. And our humanity as researchers is what connects us to other people. And being connected to others is a vital component of all qualitative research.


*Admittedly, the last bit isn’t true. It’s merely what I do on an almost monthly basis, and White and Adams tell me I shouldn’t.

**All of the clauses in this sentence should have been evidenced and referenced. I have neglected to do so merely to exemplify my own imperfection.

***Again, this statement should have been verified. It isn’t. As Bart Simpson might say, don’t have a cow about it, dude.

From aged PhD to aged Intern

Posted by Lynne Forrest

I’ve previously blogged on why I’m doing a PhD in my forties and how I regard it as a career ‘second chance’, having not really quite got it together, career-wise, for the first 20 years of working life. As part of that spirit of positive thinking, when I started my PhD I decided I would embrace all the opportunities that came along. One of these was the chance to do a three month Internship, via my PhD funder the ESRC.

Now Internships don’t generally get a very good press, being pretty much regarded as a way for businesses to avoid paying someone a salary whilst offering ‘job experience’ that mostly consists of filing and making the tea.

However, I’d recently read that doing an internship was a good PhD career move. Also, as these were paid internships that were being offered by a range of high profile Government and charity organisations which required specific skills (of which tea-making wasn’t one), it seemed like a good idea. As a mature student, I didn’t need an internship to gain general work experience. I was looking for an opportunity to develop my skills base and gain experience in an area that wasn’t covered by my PhD.



The internship that I was interested in involved working in the Strategic Research Team at the Scottish Government conducting health research and translating the research into policy and practice. They were looking for someone with systematic reviewing experience, advanced quantitative skills and who had worked with large datasets, all of which applied to me. It seemed a perfect fit. And it was – they’ve offered it to me!

Although I’m very excited at this opportunity, the same age and status-related worries apply to doing an internship as to doing a PhD. However, for the most part, PhD students are treated similarly to staff in my department* and so I’m sure I will cope just as well as an aged Intern as I do being an aged PhD student. Unlike young interns I also have children, who are not best pleased that I will be away for 3 months. I’m hoping to negotiate flexible working hours and will be home every weekend, so I’m ignoring the emotional blackmail and guilt and am going anyway. It’s just too good an opportunity to turn down.

I think it’s going to be very interesting to be able to observe the reality of how the translation of evidence to policy actually works in a political environment and, indeed, to see how much policy is, in fact, evidence-based.

As well as the amazing career opportunity, the other positive for me is that I will be spending three months in Edinburgh, my home town. Having spent the past 15 years in Newcastle, I’ve latterly become terribly nostalgic for Scotland (getting all misty eyed over VisitScotland adverts and watching tartan and bagpipe-style programmes at New Year. I know. I need help). The reality of a few months in dreich Edinburgh over the winter may be just what I need to get over this.

Anyway, I’ll let you know how I get on….

*except that PhD students are required to ‘hot desk’. When I complained and got a proper desk it was on the understanding that I gave it up if someone ‘more important’ required it…

Turning the corner

Posted by Jean Adams

In university research there are two sorts of jobs: research jobs and academic jobs.

Research jobs are all about getting a particular research project done. Contracts are time-limited and you do research – collect data, analyse results, write reports. Academic jobs tend to be permanent and involve the classic triad of research, teaching and administration. The research bit is more about leadership than in research jobs – submitting grant applications, and supervising researchers employed on your projects. But there is also classroom teaching and student supervision. And let’s just not talk about the admin.

You can see why many people might aspire to an academic position - for the job security if nothing else.

Turning the academic corner

I wouldn’t be an academic if I didn’t now say “well, that’s actually a bit of an oversimplification, really – but it gives you an idea, doesn’t it?”.

Even before I finished my PhD I wanted an academic position. I wanted to ‘lead’. I wanted to teach. And after all those years as a full-time student (n=9), you betcha I wanted a nice, healthy pay-check every month forever.

I spent four years as a post-doctoral researcher before getting my first academic position. Less time than many, and for this I am very grateful. Now, a further four years on, it occurred to me recently that only now am I actually doing the job.

Although I knew all that stuff about the difference between research and academic jobs, when I first made the transition myself it seemed like nothing changed. Yes it was nice to stop getting those letters telling me that my contract was due to expire in three months. Yes it was nice to get a little bump in my salary with promises of more in due course. Yes it was nice to put “Lecturer in Public Health” in my email footer. But that was about it. My day-to-day job was pretty much the same. I analysed data, wrote papers, suggested ideas for projects to senior colleagues, shied away from any real responsibility.

And then I got scared. I wouldn’t be the “new lecturer” able to hang on the coat-tails of more senior colleagues forever.

And then I got more scared. I knew I had to get some grant funding, make sure my post-grad students flourished, and deliver good teaching. I tried to do all these things. But I didn’t seem very good at any of them. My grant applications were rejected. My post-grads seemed unable to tie down their research questions, let alone do some research. The big lecture theatre petrified me.

But, you know, it does seem true what they say. Once you’ve started, it gets easier; you just have to start. I got a little grant funded. Then I got another, bigger one. Then I got another. My post-grads are making their own, individual, journeys towards completion. I look forward to teaching seminars (although not preparing them) and whilst the big lecture theatre still scares me, I don't think it shows so much anymore.

So here I am just starting to think that I have finally turned the corner and might truly be doing the job I’m paid to do. And guess what? From August, they've promoted me.

On realist approaches

Posted by Monique Lhussier

Whilst I was originally educated as a scientist (an engineer in biological processes), many years later, I wrote a PhD thesis in… Nomadology.

This is not only about the kind of nomadism that describes the life of Bedouins in North Africa. It’s also about a flexibility of the mind, which allows us to accept that all research paradigms have a point, but rejects the fact that any single one of them could provide answers for everything at all times. The approach is postmodern and offers perspectives that most, at best, consider iconoclastic. It is as far from science as one can go, but I found it liberating. My PhD journey was one of discovery and intellectual indulgence that we rarely have the opportunity to engage in. This, for me, is what working in academia is all about. In fact, my ambition in life is to reach a stage where I am paid to think and do little else…that unlikely dream is what keeps me interested. 

The hampter wheel career stage

After my PhD, I went through a hamster-on-the-wheel stage. Work needed to be done to attract funding, deliver, attract more funding and deliver some more, with little time to build some kind of cumulative knowledge. 

Then, in the past few years I discovered realist approaches (evaluation, synthesis), which are about building theories of understanding. Understanding of how things work, for whom and in what circumstances. The kind of theory that isn’t a million miles away from the realities of life, but explains it in a way we might not have thought about before. It talks about the way in which contexts interact with underlying mechanisms to produce favourable outcomes. 

I recently attended a seminar on realist approaches, where the presenter illustrated this beautifully. Imagine a tennis ball in a hand. On earth, if the hand releases its grip, the ball falls. The action of the opening hand is only the visible part of what made the ball fall, though, as it is gravity that attracts the ball to the floor. Take that hand in outer space and, when it opens, the ball floats. The same visible thing happened (hand opening), but gravity has ceased to work. Take that hand under water and the ball goes upwards, towards the water surface. Gravity still applies, but is outweighed by buoyancy. Take the same action in three different contexts, and it leads to three different outcomes. 

How relevant is this in public health? Unless we can understand what really happens as a result of a public health intervention, we have no chance of replicating its successes and avoiding its pitfalls. I am currently undertaking a realist synthesis. Existing theories provide me with potential ‘menu’ of forces that may, in isolation or combination, explain published outcomes in any given circumstances. We constantly operate a toing and froing from theories to published data, until we feel we have developed a comprehensive enough explanatory framework. This process forces us to step out of our normal modus operandus of understanding (engaging in some kind of nomadism), to develop a new area of knowledge that can readily be translated. 

That knowledge is also beginning to instil conceptual sense in many other things I have done – whilst unfortunately not all I do, I at last am being paid to think my way out of the wheel.

Communicating science

Posted by Jean Adams

Not so long ago, I promised never to do another degree again. This came after finally completing an MSc in Psychology and Health in London. For 20 long weeks I caught the early flight to London each Thursday morning, attended lectures for two days, and then struggled to make it back to Newcastle before midnight on Friday evening. I learnt some stuff. I did an interesting dissertation that I’m still pretty pleased with. But overall, the effort was not worth the gain.

But another fellowship application, and another blank ‘training plan’ section, and I found myself thinking that the only thing I needed to do to become an ‘independent researcher’ was a Postgraduate Certificate in Science Communication – at the University of the West of England, in Bristol. A PGCert isn’t a degree anyway. So it’s not like I was breaking a promise.

Love the box hedge logo at UWE Frenchay campus

So let’s be clear: Bristol is further from Newcastle than London is. The travelling was longer, more expensive and more arduous this time; each trip was three days, rather than two. But, I only had to make six trips. And, most importantly, I learnt so much more during those six trips than I did from the 20 I made to London.

In a nutshell, I learnt that it’s all about story. Communicating stuff is about narrative. Communicating difficult science to people who aren’t necessarily that interested in it, is about telling a good story. You catch people’s attention with a compelling tale, then once you’ve got them hooked, you can slip in whatever you want – complex methods, difficult concepts, mashed swede, whatever.

Which is not exactly rocket science. But, you know, the science communication field is full of used-to-be scientists – if they were rocket scientists, they might have stayed in science.

I also got to do some pretty cool other stuff. I edited a (pretend) travel magazine, I set up a blog, I recorded and edited a podcast, I got totally over-excited in the Knit-a-Neuron workshop, I bought a copy of The Sunday Telegraph – for research purposes (which wasn’t that cool, but it’s certainly something I’ve never done before). In order to complete my writing portfolio, I attended a conference and pretended I was journalist, not a researcher. At the end of each day I wrote a 500 word news article on something I had heard. It made the whole experience a whole lot more immediate and exciting.

Which is all well and good, Dr. Adams, and we are certainly trying to encourage our staff to do more in the way of 'public engagement', but not at the expense of research excellence and impact.

I think this stuff is important for research excellence and impact too. Good research papers also tell good stories. Not necessarily in the same way that a newspaper or novel does, but without narrative your paper is just a series of facts (or, if you’re a social scientist, just a series of 'facts'). That's why you remember some research papers so much better than others. Ditto good grant applications, teaching sessions, and conference presentations.

So, I’m thinking about doing a degree in creative writing.

Only joking.

Nothing personal

Posted by Peter Tennant

When I was four feet tall, and each year felt like a Chinese dynasty, certain annual events used to really standout. The first hot day of summer. That strange day when there were flying ants everywhere. And the day when young adults would cry in the streets.

Apparently they had 'A-levels'. Or more accurately, they didn't.

These days, I find it harder to notice anything among the blur. Christmas is a long lunch. Summer a short weekend. But every now and again, grown men and women can still be found crying. The tears are usually less visible. But there’s no doubt about it, Fellowship applications are the A-levels of the early career researcher.

Vladimir Putin, after hearing he didn't get his fellowship

In a recent post, Fuse director Martin White listed personal funding (in particular getting a Fellowship) as one of 10 "easy" steps to achieve "rapid and effective progression" in a research career. It reminded me of one of those weird logic puzzles. If Andrea is lazier than Beth, and Catherine is greedier than Delia, how many cakes will Delia eat before Andrea has woken up? In short, getting a Fellowship may make career progression easier, but it's certainly not easy to get one. At least not in my experience.

At this point, my academic enemy would probably volunteer a simple explanation. Like the overly-blunt PE teacher to the short fat boy (sorry, boy of below average height and above average weight) who doesn't understand why he's so rubbish at the high-jump. But as much as we might blame my own academic physique, the statistics tell a bruising story. For every 5-10 applications, only one will be successful.

On the surface of it, this doesn't sound too bad. At least not in a world where there are hundreds of applications for any one academic position. But firing off a job application and applying for a Fellowship are like chalk and cheese. Occasionally cheese may have a chalky texture. But I guarantee, the chalk and pickle sandwich will never catch on.

To start with, Fellowship applications belong to that special category of things that completely take over your life. Partly because they take up so much time – I reckon I did about 200 hours on my NIHR Fellowship application, not to mention the countless time staring into space 'thinking' about it. And whenever I did stop thinking about it, a friend would usually ask: "Have you heard about your Fellowship yet?".

But it's the personal focus that makes a Fellowship application so uniquely challenging. Yes, the project needs to appear excellent. But so do you. And, sadly, not just in the eyes of your Mum (sorry Mum, but I'm afraid 'having good A-levels' isn't quite enough any more). Which means there's lots to write about how great you are and why you deserve the money more than anyone else. There's no place for modesty. So if I ever come across like a egotistical jerk, I'm just practising for my next application. Honest.

Before finishing, I would like to offer some advice. Some magic formula that boosts those slim chances of acceptance. But as a twice-reject, you might as well ask McDonald's to help solve the obesity epidemic. All I can advise, is you try to keep your emotional distance. They might call it personal funding, but (believe it or not) rejection is nothing personal.

Older and wiser? Musings from a ‘mature’ PhD student

Posted by Amy O'Donnell

Recent posts from Martin White and Dorothy Newbury-Birch have sent me musing (and no, before you ask, this isn’t yet another PhD distraction, I promise!).

On the one hand Martin’s first tip in his "From PhD to PI in ten easy steps" is to do your PhD young; on the other, Dorothy writes convincingly about how you might juggle 'mature' study with the domestic stuff that grown-ups tend to have to manage.

So where does this leave me I wondered? I've just turned forty, have two school age children, five pets (do they count?) and to throw into the mix, am currently facing a somewhat challenging time due to my partner's (lack of) employment situation.

Times are indeed tough. And believe me I often look at my younger, child-free peers rather enviously, imagining all the amazing progress I’d achieve if I didn't have after school activities to organise four nights out of five, weekends packed with football matches and Stagecoach, and general mortgage related-stress.

But when I seriously ask myself - “Should I have done this sooner? Could I have done this sooner?” - the answer to both questions is a resounding "No".

For starters, I think that the long and confused path I've taken to get this far has provided me with an invaluable skillset and bundles of what they call ‘life’ experience. I've worked in public affairs so I have a keen sense of the need to stay policy-relevant; I used to manage the BBC corporate diary (yes really) so bureaucracy and seniority doesn't faze me (mostly); and I spent most of my thirties at the rough end of the contract research wedge: bid-writing and mega-quick project turnarounds were my bread-and-butter.

Along the way, I think I've become a better and more seasoned writer and I've developed a deep-rooted passion for tackling social and economic inequalities. In particular, as a mother, I feel a sense of urgency to see things change for the better before my boys have to go out and face the big bad world. Personally, I really don't think I was ready before now. And I also think that with the current focus on translational research, those of us who have actually worked outside academia might have a valuable role to play in bridging the cultural divide.

Of course I understand this will undoubtedly limit my long term opportunities (unless I plan on working to 80…which is possibly not too ridiculous a prospect under the current government). Things haven't always gone quite to plan with the PhD either, so I haven't (yet) rattled off those all-essential publications. But, future academic employers, I do think I've still got lots to offer. Come January 2013, let's hope someone else does too.

What do you get if you mix a scientist and a mother?

Posted by Bronia Arnott

I came across a headline on the way to work a few weeks ago “The data confirms: If you want to stay in science and see your children grow up, don’t have children before you have tenure”. As a post-doctoral science researcher, who doesn’t yet have tenure, and is already a mother of one did I dare read on?

The headline was the title of a post on the LSE Impact Blog. It referred to the findings of a study which found that childless women are “paid, promoted and rewarded equivalently to their male peers” but mothers are “far more likely to move out of the research-professor pipeline…”.



So for those just starting out who want a career and kids, they just have to wait until they have tenure to have kids. Right? But what if you get tenure and then find out that you’ve missed your biological window of opportunity? I can’t imagine many people regretting not getting tenure on their deathbed, but I can imagine the years of heartache that come with not being able to have the children you wanted.

And I’m not convinced that once you have tenure you can sit back and relax. All the professors I know are always talking about how busy they are! REF papers and successful grant applications don’t write themselves.

So what about me? Should I just give up and go home?

I wasn’t convinced so I thought I would do what I do best and do some further research… I found a piece in the Guardian suggesting that the proportion of women in science is much lower in the UK low compared with the United States. The article suggested that the problem wasn’t getting women into science, but getting them to stay. Apparently they often drop out to start families. This was beginning to sound familiar.

I got my coat.

But wait…on my way out of the door I remembered I had attended my first full institute meeting of the Institute of Health and Society, at Newcastle University. There was the usual IT updates and grant successes, but then they started talking about the Institute being awarded the Athena SWAN Silver Award, and suddenly the meeting got a whole lot more interesting. Some of the staff even put down their knitting needles.

This award scheme recognises good employment practices for women working in science and related fields in higher education and research. The Silver award recognises efforts, above and beyond university-wide policies, to identify challenges faced by women and implement effective solutions.

Professor Judith Rankin, who led the application, said that the Institute “has always strived to introduce good working practices to ensure that those women who wish to combine a family with a career can”. Professor Eileen Kaner, Institute Director, said: "Success in achieving this award acknowledges the considerable work to make working in science an attractive career option for women."

Did you notice that? Two quotes from two women, both Professors, one the director of the Institute! In fact the Institute is full of examples of successful women, including those who have children, some who even had their children before they got tenure!

On my way to pick up my daughter later that day the whole issue was still playing on my mind. While I was boosted by the news that there was such great work going on in the UK to support women in science, I realised that is was a sad reflection of the existing inequalities. Surely we should be better at supporting men AND women in their careers AND in their family life?

From PhD to PI in ten 'easy' steps

Posted by Martin White

Recently I’ve been reflecting on what it takes to make it in academia. In part, this was prompted by an invitation to take part in an event at the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine conference last year. ‘Senior’ academics from a range of disciplines formed a panel to take questions informally over lunch from a baying mob of PhD students and post-doc researchers.

The baying mob: El dos de Mayo de 1808, by Fancisco de Goya y Lucientes

The questions primarily focused on career development and how to achieve rapid and effective progression. The members of the panel were readily able to identify ways in which their careers had been atypical. But despite our idiosyncrasies, we agreed on many pieces of advice.

Here's my top ten tips for success:

1. Get a doctorate early on in your academic career – preferably while you are young and need less sleep, and while you can tolerate a student stipend for 3-4 years.

2. Learn to work independently, demonstrating that you have an enquiring mind and are able to define original research questions. This is the foundation of academia and one of the X-factors which will set you apart as PI material.

3. Learn how to write well, for both scientific and non-academic audiences. Get advice or training on how to do this. Practice every day (e.g. by writing blog posts - Ed.).

4. Publish your work. Start while you are doing your PhD - leaving these papers until later creates a backlog which you may never be able to tackle. Writing papers before the relevant thesis chapters will help you develop a concise, clear style for your thesis and prove it is of a 'publishable standard'.

5. Get a mentor. Identify an academic ‘hero’, or at least a good role model. Look outside your institution and don’t be afraid to ask very senior  people. They will be flattered and pleased to help shape someone else’s career. Meet with them at least once a year.

6. Be genuinely interested in your subject area; choose carefully! A lack of enthusiasm shows through any veneer you put on for project meetings or interviews.

7. Sell yourself. Think carefully about how you can make a case for your future employment. Make yourself indispensible and demonstrate how you can add value to any team. Take every opportunity to present at conferences, workshops, select committees, etc.

8. Get personal funding. While post-doc research posts, working on other people’s projects, will earn your crust and keep you busy, they provide limited opportunities to hone your skills as a PI. Fellowships are available at every level and will give you incredible freedom to develop and shine as an independent researcher.

9. Collaborate. Spread your wings and make new relationships with the most interesting and brightest people you can find. Involve policy and practice partners in your research whenever possible to help bring relevance and impact to your research.

10. Learn to love criticism – she's your best mate. You will not get anywhere unless you welcome objective peer review and understand how to give and receive it. The best way to learn this is to become a peer reviewer for journals and grant funding bodies. This also carries esteem and will open up doors for you through the contacts you make.

Lastly, enjoy yourself and don’t be afraid to break the rules!

Should I do a PhD mum?

Posted by Dorothy Newbury-Birch

I’m about to have a grandchild and am so unbelievably excited about it! My daughter is thinking that she might like to do some postgraduate studies after her baby is born and is starting to worry about how she will manage to be able to do this and have a child. This made me think about what advice I should give her.

I began my PhD in 1997 (not that long ago!) when my youngest was four and the eldest (the now pregnant daughter) was eight. My husband and I made a decision from day one to treat my PhD as a job. I also learnt that the only thing that was going to get me through it all was good, changeable, project management.

At least once a week, the diary would be put on the kitchen table and decisions made about who would do the drop offs (mainly me), who would do the pick ups (mainly me) and who would look after the girls at weekends so I could do some work (mainly him).



Dot's girls. Some time ago.

We didn’t have family locally so negotiations would happen in the school yard about me looking after friends' kids after school one day if they could look after mine another. School holidays were negotiated with friends the same way: I would have their kids for a couple of days (or from 3pm onwards) and they would have mine opposite times. These summer holiday days were fab: I would have three or four kids, we would go off for the day early and be back by about 3pm, then I would go up to the university for a few hours work.

I also wrote five papers during my PhD and attended a few conferences. I can honestly say, that from day one I worked at least 8 hours a day on my PhD - mostly in the office, sometimes at home. In the last year, of course this wasn’t enough and I did have to work at nights and every weekend.

Of course there were sacrifices: I didn’t spend nearly enough time with the kids when they were young. But this was a decision I made and if I hadn’t done a PhD, I would have needed to work anyhow. The money was terrible and there were at least three conversations in the three years about whether I should continue because of money worries. In the end I got a pub job for a few months at nights.

So my advice to my lovely daughter who is contemplating this? Pick a subject and topic that you really believe in, that you are going to be interested in for the time needed. Make a commitment to it and treat it like a job. Remember that your child (my precious grandchild) is a fact and not an excuse for working. You have support on your doorstep from family that a lot of people (including me) didn’t have. Go for it....

On Busyness

Posted by Martin White

Finally, I have committed pen to paper for my first blog post. Why has it taken me so long? The truth is, I just can’t find the time. Sounds like a lame excuse and one that is often interpreted as ‘I just can’t be bothered’. So, just in case you need convincing, here is a snapshot from a recent week.

Monday was a bank holiday. I helped organise and spoke at a two-day multi-disciplinary workshop in Glasgow, the previous Thursday and Friday. Spending the weekend Munro-bagging was a no brainer. Going to the hills is a great way to forget about the pressures of work, but by Monday afternoon, my in-box beckoned and deadlines loomed.

Stob Dearg from Ben Cruachan, Munro no. 79, 5 May 2012 (Photo: Martin White)

Sharing the five hour drive home meant I had time to read a PhD chapter in the car. Stopping for food in a pub allowed the first wi-fi access for three days and the chance to delete a mound of spam and identify priorities. Inevitably, this led to a couple of hours work back at home, responding to emails and assessing key tasks for the next week. I knew there was going to be no time to get all this done when I got back in the office on Tuesday.

On Tuesday I woke at 0555, an hour before the alarm. My brain was already in overdrive so I got up, made tea and tracked the changes on the PhD chapter from the previous evening. My diary was stuffed: seven hours of meetings with two 30 minute breaks.

Everyone wants a slice of my time. Sometimes for my scientific expertise, but more often these days because I can make things happen. I don’t resent this, it’s the nature of the job, but it’s frustrating not to be able to do more thinking, reading and writing.

The meat of my day was two one-hour research project meetings, one face-to-face; the other a teleconference with colleagues in Finland, Holland and the US. The rest of the day was taken up by individuals: helping a post-doc think through a fellowship application, a PDR, helping a senior lecturer work out how get the curriculum time we need for undergraduate teaching. 'The 'fillers' were unscheduled meetings relating to the day-to-day assortment of human and political (small p) complications a director comes across when dealing with staff on a personal level. No actual research, but all essential to keep the research going.

I usually go for a run after work, but having been in the hills all weekend, I ached. So I hung back and ground through the 50+ emails that had accumulated through the day. Then I had to go find my car, which I had left at the garage for an MOT when I went to London en route to Glasgow. Having been away for a week, the fridge also needed replenishing. After the supermarket, I eventually arrived home after 8pm.

Given the choice I would prefer not to work this many hours in a day or a week or a lifetime. But, everyone I know in positions of significant responsibility has a similar workload as far as I can tell. However, there are benefits. The job is incredibly stimulating – I learn loads from the interesting and talented people I meet at every research funding board, conference, research network, centre, school, consortium or project meeting I attend.

More importantly, for the first time in my career, I feel I am beginning to make a difference – in public health policy circles, with research funders, and, most importantly, supporting the career development of my daily ‘fillers’.

Academic rivalry

Posted by Peter Tennant

Last month I discovered I have a joke mortal enemy. Less Holmes and Moriarty, more Sylvester and Tweety. I'm a bit sketchy on the details, but according to my (evil?) spies he likens me to Dick Dastardly, chief antagonist of Wacky Races.

Sharing a joke with a fellow early career researcher

Jolly as this example may be (or so I hope), the issue of 'academic enemies' is an unfortunate reality.

Occasionally, two people, or even two research groups, become so attached to their methodologies, hypotheses, or paradigms, that they develop a sort of 'unfriendly competition'. It's actually quite like Wacky Races. Only with fewer flying cars.

I think it usually starts pretty innocently. A slightly nasty conference question. An overly harsh review. Sometimes, both camps are just so attached to their own way of thinking, and so disdainful of the opposite, that the idea of a polite exchange seems somehow inappropriate.

I guess the quest for the truth can sometimes be a very passionate one, despite the stereotype of Scientists as dull and emotionless. I myself can recall several moments when I've called a distinguished researcher an ignorant fool. Admittedly, they've usually just rejected one of my papers. And I would never insult them to their face. That would be immature. Far better to throw a tantrum in the safety of your own office.

Anyway, whatever the reasons, the effect of these rivalries can be startlingly plain to see. [Cue custard pie]. Last year I went to a bizarre talk that provides a convenient example. In it, the presenter discussed a debate between himself and his academic enemy Dr Weedypants*. Although dressed in intellectual fluff, the message was simple: Dr Weedypants is a fool.

It could be true. Dr Weedypants may be a fool (sadly, he was not available to defend himself). But I'm afraid I simply could not listen to the argument. I was too put off by the presenter's pantomine-villain act. This probably makes me a fickle-minded researcher who still needs to learn how to suppress my emotions. After all, despite his pathological tendency towards evil, Dick Dasterdly was also innovator-in-chief. And the MRC don't give out grants for being nice.

*I may have been a little creative with the name here.

Out of focus

Posted by Jean Adams

On more than one occasion I have been told that I’m not focused enough.

My annual appraisal almost always includes comments like: “You’re interested in too many things”; “there’s no coherence to your CV”; “it’s not clear exactly what you’re an expert in”; and the most damning of all: “I can’t tell what the one thing is that Jean Adams would be the only person to talk to about”.

Expectant blur, by Martin White

Well, since you asked, the one thing that people consistently want to ask me is how to convert postcodes into Index of Multiple Deprivation scores. I can’t possibly be the only person in the world worth talking to about this, but it seems I’m the only person in the building I work in. Or maybe just the floor. I like geeking around with IMD scores as much as anyone, but really, that is not the one thing I want to be known for.

I don’t always do what I’m told. But I do try to listen to what I’m told – especially when I’m being given career advice by my elders and betters. So I have spent quite a while pondering on the issue of focus and how much of a problem my lack of focus might be.

Just for the record, I don’t think I’m massively unfocused – there are maybe three or four different things that I am totally excited by (right now): food advertising, inequalities in health caused by public health interventions (p65), and the role of time perspective in driving health behaviours. So that’s only three. They’re all about public health, so not totally disparate. I’m just not the sort of person who spends years only thinking about one aspect of one problem in one population group.

Which is not to diss my colleagues who have spent many years doing just that. I suspect there are many problems that do need concerted, uninterrupted thought and dedication. I’m just not the right person for that sort of work. In fact, I think such focus would induce severe boredom in me pretty quickly. Even with my totally unfocussed three things, I do sometimes get pretty bored reading the same sort of studies again and again: most food advertising is for bad-for-you food, we don’t need any more confirmation.

I think there might also be genuine academic benefits from at least some people in the team having a slightly wider perspective. I might not know absolutely everything about anything, but I do know quite a bit about a bunch of different things – enough to not be taken as a charlatan by the people who know everything. This means that I can engage with quite a lot of different people and it helps widen my perspective even more. Which in turn, helps me see problems from a variety of different angles, bring fresh solutions, and build links between – you guessed it – apparently disparate issues. This is the stuff that multi-disciplinarity is made of.

Which leaves me wondering why my lack of focus bothers other people so much.