Making It As a Contract Researcher: A Pragmatic Look at Precarious Work

‘Making It’ as a Contract Researcher examines the contemporary experience of research employment in universities from the perspective of a significant yet often invisible group: temporary or contract researchers, who make up a substantial, and ever-growing, proportion of the academic research workforce. A critical, pragmatic and international account of the contemporary research career, this book explores the question of what it means to ‘make it’ as a contract researcher in academia, and how individuals and organisations in higher education might seek to do things differently.

Providing the reader with practical and realistic strategies for improving the experience of being a contract researcher and achieving and sustaining an academic research career, this book guides the reader on a range of topics, including:

• Charging fairly for your work
• Building a publication track record
• Finding the next contract
• Sustaining your network
• Feeling like you belong
• Moving beyond contract research.

Using a combination of current research, interviews and reflective writing, the book is written specifically for and by contract researchers in academia, offering unique and extremely valuable advice for all new and current contract researchers, including PhD students, early career researchers, and any party interested in pursuing a research career in academia.

The ‘Insider Guides to Success in Academia’ offers support and practical advice to doctoral students and early-career researchers. Covering the topics that really matter, but which often get overlooked, this indispensable series provides practical and realistic guidance to address many of the needs and challenges of trying to operate, and remain, in academia.

These neat pocket guides fill specific and significant gaps in current literature. Each book offers insider perspectives on the often implicit rules of the game – the things you need to know but usually aren’t told by institutional postgraduate support, researcher development units, or supervisors – and will address a practical topic that is key to career progression. They are essential reading for doctoral students, early-career researchers, supervisors, mentors, or anyone looking to launch or maintain their career in academia.

Nerida Spina is a senior lecturer at Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

Jess Harris is an associate professor at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

Simon Bailey is a research associate at the University of Kent, UK.

Mhorag Goff is a research associate at the University of Manchester, UK.