In this blog summary of a recent University of Bath BRID Working Paper, Asha Amirali from the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) shares conclusions from a study of postdoctoral researcher experience at the University of Bath. Co-authored by herself and James Copestake, the paper reflects on how to support development studies research activities and careers. It reaffirms the case for helping promising early career researchers to build upon and move beyond their doctoral work, the value of research autonomy at this stage, and balancing research autonomy with membership of relevant specialist clusters and networks.

Now is not a good time to be an early career researcher in development studies. Quite apart from the on-going ontological flux in the field, we have a labour market problem on our hands: the number of PhDs seeking university employment far outstrips the number of jobs available, and it is the marketisation of higher education over the last twenty years that is largely to blame. Practising academic birth control and limiting doctoral intake is not the most feasible nor the most desirable solution because of the very real problem that development studies – already defined and debated by an elite intellectual community – would become even more exclusive. Limiting PhDs also assumes that we have too many PhDs – a question worth debating – rather than a major shortfall in public funding for universities and an absence of doctoral training programs fostering skill transfer.

Prompted by two simultaneous concerns – the crisis of employability and inclusion in the field and how best to ensure mutual benefit to postdocs and development studies institutions – we conducted an evaluation of a two year postdoctoral fellowship program at the University of Bath’s Centre for Development Studies (CDS). The purpose was to see how a) these fellowships had enabled researchers to develop their career chances and b) generate feedback on how future postdoctoral fellowships might be better managed by CDS. Our interest subsequently grew in the wider relevance of our experience for development studies as an academic field, both in the UK and more widely. We also recognized the potential value of sharing findings more widely, including with students still completing their doctorate or contemplating the idea of doing one.

The CDS postdoctoral program is a rare opportunity to pursue independent postdoctoral research in an increasingly project-dominated field. Since 2012, it has offered six successive postdocs – including myself – two years of paid research time with a small (0.1 FTE) administrative requirement. We spoke to the CDS directors, a small number of senior development studies colleagues around the UK, and each of the postdocs for this exercise. Four former postdocs have taken up tenured and non-tenured positions in UK development studies, one took up a senior position in an Indian consultancy firm before his tragic death in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic, and I am still in post at CDS.

Reflecting on the experiences gathered led us to the following conclusions:

Fellowships enabling independent research are unambiguously valuable for recipients – ‘gold dust’ as a postdoc described it. Most postdoctoral posts are currently explicitly linked to specific research projects, and this can help to ensure that early career researchers receive adequate intellectual mentorship and are not intellectually isolated. But it is important also to ensure that postdoctoral opportunities do not overly limit the autonomy of early career researchers.

Research autonomy is perhaps particularly useful in development studies because development studies addresses problems that are multifaceted, lack clearly defined system boundaries, and are subject to rapid change. In contrast to more established and stable academic fields therefore, there are particularly strong gains – to intellectual flexibility, interdisciplinarity, and originality for example – to be had from relatively unstructured research positions. All postdocs greatly appreciated the freedom and used it to consolidate and/or expand their doctoral work, develop new research directions, expand their networks, and recover from and integrate what was often an intense doctoral experience.

Research fit matters, both for postdocs and the institution. Postdocs’ network development was quite variable and shaped by the degree of overlap between on-going work at CDS and their research interests. Greater overlap generally led to closer and more collaborative connections within CDS and Bath. The strength of guidance and support each postdoc secured within CDS also varied according to their research interests; those with complementary and closely-aligned research interests found themselves generally better supported.

For CDS too, strong overlaps led to more collaborations while injecting energy into already-existing research clusters. Although selection criteria for the fellowship were extensively debated before recruitment, with the benefit of hindsight we conclude that the program worked best when recruiting highly promising individuals whose interests closely aligned with established areas of CDS expertise. This approach does however risk crowding out less widely funded and thus ‘minority’ research themes and approaches (an issue that we did not have scope to take up in this study but that is obviously important).

Administrative tasks are not always bad. They may be nobody’s favorite, but administrative tasks that foster relevant skills are in fact often useful for career development, e.g.: co-managing and editing working papers series’, helping organize workshops and seminars, participation in academic committees, and so on. Postdocs in our study were glad to have had these experiences – along with small bits of teaching – as part of the 0.1 FTE requirement and were of the opinion it bolstered their capability within academic environments. However, there is a clear danger of over-burdening early career researchers with excessive and unhelpful administrative support work, and researchers, their managers, and senior staff must ensure that the balance does not tip in this direction.

Decisions to prioritise applying for funding versus publishing need careful consideration at postdoctoral stage. All postdocs faced the dilemma of what to prioritise. Grant writing is often a riskier proposition compared to bolstering academic job prospects through publication, but the research and career gains of winning grants are strong. Each postdoc found a different balance and it is impossible to say what works best, except that taking stock of priorities at regular intervals and discussing them with peers and mentors – in person whenever possible – is vital.

Postdoctoral opportunities such as this one are not always pathways to success. The fact remains that there are large and growing numbers of PhDs chasing a small number of jobs. The reflective/reflexive exercise that we undertook led us to think that there is need for further research into postdoctoral career pathways and the balance between funding of doctoral and postdoctoral positions. If the number of available development studies posts is lagging far behind the number of PhDs wishing to join as university-based scholars, then perhaps we need to radically rethink the nature of early career research training. This is linked to discussion over the balance between traditional and academic career-oriented PhD programmes, other forms of doctoral provision including professional doctorates, and non-doctorate based research, training and collaboration between universities and development organisations including placements and knowledge transfer partnerships. Additionally, the possibility and implications of shifting some financial support from doctoral to postdoctoral positions needs consideration.

Ours was a small effort to generate insight into the experience of the CDS postdoctoral program and cannot as such speak to the many complex problems of development studies. As we write, ‘thinking about development studies often resembles the task of peeling off multiple layers of a large onion. In this case layers include:

Conversations abound on many but not all of these, and the lens of postdoctoral experience and the question of who gets to join the development studies intellectual community brings them all into focus. We hope to initiate discussion on how these issues shape the social network of development studies and thus the field itself, having drawn attention to the precarity of doctoral and postdoctoral pathways and reiterated the case for funded autonomous postdoctoral research.

This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Development Studies Association as a whole.