Induction practices

Induction rituals could provide symbolic entry into the ‘profession’ of being a postdoctoral researcher, with a clear articulation of moving to a different locus within the field of research, from the sub-field of doctoral research to that of the sub-field of postdoctoral research. In practice, induction rituals for postdoctoral researchers vary greatly across departments, research groups and individual PIs. When a Postdoc starts in a new position, coming from outside the

university or from another department, the first point of entry into the institution is by meeting the PI who has recruited him/her. The first spaces encountered may be the PI’s office, the Postdoc/ PhD student offices, as well as the lab and the allocated work space, such as the bench for experimental scientists. PIs or research group members may give researchers a departmental tour showing them the various research spaces and resources (e.g. centrifuges room, radioactivity room or fly room), and possibly the tearoom (although I had one Postdoc tell me that it took him two years to realise that there was a common room in his department, and that he had never met some of the Postdocs on a different floor). Postdocs may meet the departmental manager, who will be their contact for all administrative matters.

Notably, the induction process is focused on practical issues (e.g. access card, health and safety documents, out-of-hours and fire training). The PI will

introduce researchers to colleagues within the research group and researchers sharing laboratory space. The PI will start discussing the project and may share the grant application the Postdoc is paid from. However, researchers almost never get formally introduced to the whole department, the head of department, and to all of the academics and researchers within the department. While it can happen, it remains ad hoc. Occasionally, a department may send department- wide emails, when new researchers take a position, but this is an unusual practice. Postdoctoral researchers tend to remain positioned within the confines of the research group, and are not institutionally positioned as departmental staff members, even if contractually they are. Induction rituals matter as they convey, or not, access to various forms of capital and are part of constructing early positioning within the postdoctoral field.

While institutional and departmental procedures can change over the years, researchers have expressed on-going frustrations with induction practices [data from CROS surveys and secondary data from institutional focus groups during 2013 Athena Swan reviews]. The site of such discontentment has been the reliance on PIs’ engagement in their role as manager to deliver an induction ritual. Interestingly, when groups of researchers have worked with their departments to improve induction practices, it has remained focused on the practical, administrative aspects (e.g. induction pack, departmental induction officer). Completely omitted from any induction rituals, is the consideration of inducting individuals into the field of postdoctoral research, into their new role within the culture of the department and the institution.

To compensate for such a deficit, in March 2011, I established as part of the researcher development programme, a dedicated induction day for Postdocs. During the session, postdoctoral researchers are informed about the

institutional structures and support staff, have an opportunity to meet other researchers further ahead in their careers, and are provided with time and space to consider the rules of the game (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 99) about being a researcher. Interestingly, while all new researchers are invited to participate and PIs are reminded about these induction sessions, not all new researchers join the induction day. The reluctance to participate in these

formalised induction sessions, of Postdocs or due to the limited encouragement of PIs, could be understood as resulting from a disposition where researchers and PIs consider that the apprenticeship takes place by being in the lab, doing the research, modelling practices on PIs, perhaps what we may call an osmosis habitus, and not talking about it through an induction session.

In considering their role when starting a postdoctoral contract, some Postdocs may use their job description as framing their positioning in the field. Field structures contribute to the un-noticed field positioning of postdoctoral

researchers by institutional agents; this can be observed through the framing of researchers’ job descriptions. For example, their role towards learning and teaching activities appears to have very limited scope in the framing of the job

description. In a review of 28 job descriptions for postdoctoral research

positions in the Faculty of Science, 60% included 1-2 duties related to learning and teaching (L&T) activities (14% included 2 duties, 46% included 1 duty), and 40% included none, out of an average of 12 duties per job description.

Considering the vast array of teaching responsibilities known to be informally assigned to postdoctoral researchers for the functioning of research groups (e.g. PhD and undergraduate project supervision), it is puzzling that such contributions are not inscribed in more formal and detailed fashion within job descriptions. This leads to great confusion and tension for Postdocs, as the capital value associated to their involvement in learning and teaching activities seems uncertain and variable. Researchers can be funded from a great

diversity of sources41, and the expectations of funders regarding engagement in learning and teaching activities will vary. However, these expectations tend to be communicated to researchers by PIs (who may be unaware themselves about the expectations of the funders regarding the non-research activities of Postdocs funded via particular sources).

In some circumstances, PIs may want to have different rules of engagement regarding non-research activities, leaving researchers confused about their position, role and place (Reay, 2004a). In this case, the views of some PIs, with regard to L&T activities, may be skewed towards perceiving a limited value of the academic capital of L&T activities, and may discourage researchers from engaging in such activities, although they may still expect Postdocs to

supervise younger colleagues in the laboratory. No mechanism currently exists for monitoring the extent and diversity of the L&T involvements of postdoctoral researchers at faculty-level. While PhD students’ involvement is known, as PhD researchers are paid for teaching involvements, Postdocs are not paid anything in addition to their usual salary for teaching. This means that there is no

structural process for knowing what actually takes place. This gives the impression of flexibility, where opportunities may be given and taken without forcing Postdocs to be involved if they do not wish to be. Postdocs

41 _{Within my faculty, the research funding for the employment of 65% of research staff}

(between 2010-2016) came primarily from 6 funders41: European Research Councils/ European Commission, Leverhulme, Wellcome trust, Royal Society and Research Councils (MRC, NERC, STFC, EPSRC and BBSRC). The data obtained from RIS included 69 unlabelled funders out of 370 research funding awards in addition to another 34 funding sources.

involvements remains under the radar, neither accounted for, nor acknowledged or recognised. PIs appear much more reluctant to see

postdoctoral researchers engage in a diversity of teaching and other scholarly activities beyond research, than they are for their PhD students.

In limiting the scope of induction practices within departments to a purely

functional level, instead of a process of socialisation to a new field, a limit to the potential capital accumulation of some researchers could be construed. This is particularly salient in the context of the internationalisation of research, as the field of postdoctoral research may be differently structured across countries. In my view, this induction day aims to spell out some of the unwritten rules of the game about transiting through the field of postdoctoral research, articulating the complexities of different types of capital, valued or less so, enabling

researchers to consider how they are positioned within the field of research and how they may acquire different types of capital in order to better position

themselves. The lack of participation of some researchers to these induction sessions (which I have described earlier as resulting from an osmosis habitus) is often attributed by researchers and academics to a lack of time and

busyness. In contrast, I would like to posit this lack of engagement as a process of misrecognition, where entry into the new field is not acknowledged and the new rules are not spelt out. The Bourdieusian understanding of misrecognition relates to:

everyday and dynamic social process where one thing (say, a situation, process, or action) is not recognised for what it is… the thing is attributed to another realm of meaning, and, in the process, interests, inequities or other effects may be maintained whilst they remain concealed. (James, 2015, p. 100)

Not formally acknowledging that entry into postdoctoral research is entry into a new field allows the maintaining of strong structures of academic reproduction, as those with sufficient capital at entry will already have a feel for transition in this social space, and so “symbolic capital flows to symbolic capital. The

scientific field gives credit to those who already have it” (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 56), while for others it may take much longer and impede effective transition.