Early-stage in the implementation of the Roberts recommendations The institutional context in which I work is that of a UK Russell group

university, with a highly rated research output (2014 Research Excellence Framework). The 2002 Roberts report (as described in chapter 2) intended to address issues related to the training and development of the scientific

24 _{The Russell group is a membership organisation of 24 HEIs established in 2006. It aims “to} help ensure that our universities have
the optimum conditions in which
to flourish and continue to make social, economic and cultural impacts through their world-leading research and

workforce at both doctoral and postdoctoral levels. However, the majority of institutions, including mine, focused initially on the delivery of activities targeted at PGR students (Hodge et al., 2010). The Careers Service in my institution was one of the early stakeholders in the implementation of the Roberts

recommendations, mediated by the Research Councils through the provision of new funding (which became known as the Roberts monies). As early as 2003, a Roberts-funded careers adviser post had been created to provide specific support to PGR students. This support was later extended to research staff and a second post was also created (McCarthy & Simm, 2006). For nearly 10 years, the career advisers supporting research staff and PhD students were seconded via Roberts funding.

In the early years of the Roberts implementation, the Graduate Research Office was responsible for the delivery of this agenda and was offering a number of training activities for PhD students; however, these did not involve research staff. The 2005 RCUK report mentions that 23 different transferable skills and career management practices within the institution had been uploaded to a web-database, managed by UKGRAD25 (3rd highest entry from 66 institutions who had entered Roberts-related practices in this database). These practices, uploaded by RIS and displayed externally through this database, served to externalise compliance with Roberts recommendations. However, at the time, these practices held limited symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 55; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 119); indeed, there was a lack of awareness and visibility of these activities across the institution.

In the 2005 RCUK report on career development and transferable skills, mention is made that 62% of the £20 million Roberts monies received each year by institutions across the UK was focused on PGR activities. While 70- 80% of research organisations had developed extensive transferable skills training provision for PhD students by 2009, still only 30-35% had structured and tailored programmes for research staff (Hodge et al., 2010).

This initial focus on PGR was understandable since many policy developments had already taken place prior to the SET for Success report (Roberts, 2002), in

reshaping PhD training and incorporating the provision of transferable skills training with the setting up of quality assurance and standards through the QAA26. For example, in 2001, the Research Councils had developed a Joint Skills Statement27 (JSS) that articulated the skills all doctoral research students “would be expected to develop during their research training” and stated:

The Research Councils would also want to re-emphasise their belief that training in research skills and techniques is the key element in the

development of a research student […]. The development of wider employment-related skills should not detract from that core objective28_. (RCUK, 2001)

We can identify in this statement that, prior to the Roberts report, the emphasis on broad “employment-related skills” was understated within the JSS; these were not seen as integrated within the core practice of doing research but perceived as something on the margin, a parallel stream of ancillary activities. Following the Roberts report, there was a slight shift in the symbolic capital afforded to notions around generic and employability skills when funders’ expectations changed. The RCUK started to insist that academic departments should develop much more structured PhD training with the inclusion of

substantial generic and employability skills elements as core, compulsory components in programmes. The funders held power over the field of research by setting application criteria that demanded the inclusion of transferable skills training, in order to successfully access funding for PhD studentships.

This led one of the science departments in my faculty to create the position of postgraduate training coordinator, into which I was recruited in September 2006. At the time, the department had just gained funding from the BBSRC29 for PhD studentships. The department, once made aware of the availability of internal funding (Roberts funding was being advertised to departments30_{), had}

26 _{The QAA is the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, http://www.qaa.ac.uk} 27 _{http://www.uel.ac.uk/wwwmedia/schools/graduate/documents/RCUK-Joint-Skills-Statement-} 2001.pdf

28 _{I have underlined the text to emphasise the key element in the quotation.} 29 _{The BBSRC is the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.}

30 _{The Roberts funding allocated by RCUK to institutions on the basis of the number of PhD} studentships and research staff funded via the Research Councils had been allocated centrally as a block grant without institutions needing to bid for it. The funds were advertised to

applied to create a post to help develop some of the activities under the banner of transferable skills. My job description framed my role in just two sentences:

- A crucial component is the provision of a high-quality training programme designed to develop and enhance the generic and transferable skills of our post-graduates.

- Develop materials for practical and theoretical workshops to support the development of transferable skills for post-graduates as required by external sponsors.

It is puzzling that the department made visible in the job advert itself that the impetus of such development was a requirement, or I would go as far as to say a demand, made by the funders. The vagueness in articulating the transferable skills agenda within this job description indicates that it did not belong to

intrinsic beliefs that such things were needed, but felt more like an inconvenient requirement placed upon departments and academics. The power held by the funders over academic departments and the field of doctoral research was also visible in a report written by my head of department, when we re-applied to access Roberts funding for the continuation of my position for 2007-8:

to provide a more rigorous and professional generic skills programme to address the aspirations raised in the postgraduate body by the Roberts report […] The maintenance of our programme of skills development is a key driver for the continuation of the high level of our postgraduate award from BBSRC. [internal document]

Having to reshape the training of PhD students and demonstrate to the funder that it was not just about research training but incorporated broader skills and career elements had become a necessary compliance to access funding for PhD studentships, but was not an academic driver nor resulted from a radical change in academics’ perception on how young researchers should be trained and developed.

I was given a huge amount of autonomy by the heads of departments, under which I consequently worked to develop activities that I felt mattered, to

interpret the notion of transferable skills and to develop a programme as I saw fit. It could be argued that this autonomy was a by-product of a superficial engagement with the developing external policies and an illustration of a mode of procedural compliance by academics with external requirements (Bryman et

al., 1994). I was to be the instrumental tool to respond to these external

demands. I became an interpreter of these policies; a local actor in the framing of researcher development, while the academics remained distant.

Institutions varied greatly in how they structured the implementation of the Roberts recommendations (Hodge et al., 2010). While some institutions created large graduate schools, coordinating Roberts delivery for all researchers, other organisations had teams within Human Resources departments or skills

coordinators within departments or faculties. In my case, I worked in relative isolation within one department with limited interactions with administrators from the Graduate School or Research & Innovation Services. I mostly interacted with academics and PhD students within my department, with the exception of collaborations with the Careers Service. In my own institution, the Human Resource department did not apply for internal Roberts funds and did not get involved in shaping and delivering the Roberts agenda. While their remit was not PGR, HR might still have been expected to get involved in leading the implementation of the Roberts recommendations associated with contract researchers, as part of staff professional development, but they did not. In discussions with HR colleagues, it transpired that, when the Roberts funding became available, the HR Staff Development Unit was experiencing some restructuring with specialist staff being dispatched across different professional service units. Although a new HR team was put in place, with responsibility for staff development, this did not encompass researcher development, which was perceived as a research issue and, as such, the responsibility of RIS. Internal politics between professional services departments may also have played a role and meant that HR did not to get involved. Some positions had been created centrally in RIS to coordinate Roberts activities across the institution. Potential programmes for research staff were being discussed and pilot

programmes run (e.g. research leader programme) then stopped; mappings of researchers’ careers proposed and changed, but by 2006, no clear programme or institutional strategy had emerged.

Ways of accessing Roberts funding was not always made clear in the institution. The lack of clarity about what this funding aimed to achieve was problematic and an illustration of the uncertainty in defining what the Roberts

agenda was really about. Academics, administrators and departments

developed their own and individual interpretations of what constituted Roberts activities. At the time, the institution did not make public who held funded projects and for what activities.

It is surprising that support for postdoctoral researchers took much longer to get off the ground in the institution, particularly since Sir Gareth Roberts himself had worked closely with members of the institution on a report that focused on research staff: “Supporting research staff: making a difference” (Campbell et al., 2003). Commentators on this early period seem to admit that not much change appeared to have taken place in UK institutions and that changes were mostly “cosmetic.” (Kent, 2005, p. 6).

The struggle in the institutional construction of the Roberts agenda is visible through the problem of situating this agenda in the structure of the institution, the melting pot of delivery approaches, the lack of institutional ownership and strategy of the agenda. This impended the onset of a system of professional development for postdoctoral researchers. Institutional actors faced great challenges in understanding what the agenda was about, which purpose it served, who was responsible for it and which strategies it entailed. I suggest that this was not just the result of institutional structural diversity, but is indicative of the limited capital held by the agenda within the field of

postdoctoral research and is compounded by the lack of drivers at the time.