Conference Presentations by Susi Poli
INORMS 2023
This panel discussion sheds light on RMAs as an emerging professional group in today’s HE workfor... more This panel discussion sheds light on RMAs as an emerging professional group in today’s HE workforce by focusing on how they interpret their role, careers, academic credentials, and core competencies. It will go beyond the European strategy framework and try to make global observations. Through four illustrative cases, it will stress the commonalities and uniqueness of today’s RMA profession.
Moving from the knowledge of this professional group, in my presentation I consider RMAs and educational support managers jointly. The comparison between these two groups, as those working at the frontline of the domains of education and research, will highlight similarities and differences as 'extended' or 'restricted' types of professionals while stressing some key points, which include the call for daring to design joint training opportunities for the times to come.
Society for Research into Higher Education 2022 (symposium), 2022
This presentation sheds light on educational support staff - as those supporting teaching and lea... more This presentation sheds light on educational support staff - as those supporting teaching and learning, students and academics - moving from this group as one of the first investigated in a multi-campus Italian university (Unibo). Through 15 semi-structured interviews, scheduled between 2021 and 2022 to inform a training programme for staff in education, we explore their community, identity, and also their network of relations with peers and academics.
This group of professionals in today’s universities has not been extensively investigated so far so it has been less visible than other professional groups; still, the group has recently increased its visibility through the European strategy for universities, now calling on universities to prioritise education, research, innovation, serving society and economy.
Later on in the presentation, this professional group has been compared with research managers working at the same university, with interviews conducted between 2014 and 2018 on the same set of topics.
In conclusion, educational managers feel to belong to a plethora of communities; they have their say not only on their identity and the complexity of today’s education but also on the relationships with academics, which has never been enough explored in research, and this latter topic may even become most of what they wish to discuss further in coming months.
On the one hand, the visibility for these educational managers has slowly become a burning issue not only at Unibo but in the broader university community, for example within the UNA Europa Alliance (and specifically, in one of its WGs on Staff development and on Building and Professionalising the UNA community of HE Professionals-HEPs). On the other hand, the visibility of research managers has grown steadily in recent years; proof of this visibility can be found in more research done on this professional group, in two Horizon Europe projects granted and just kicked off, in the work of professional associations worldwide, and also in books, including a new global book on RMA expected in late 2023 by Emerald (The Emerald Handbook of Research Management and Administration Around the World).
SARIMA Annual Conference, 2022
What is professionalism in today’s profession in RMA? And why should it matter to RMAs to know mo... more What is professionalism in today’s profession in RMA? And why should it matter to RMAs to know more about professionalism and, moving from here, about the theory behind the profession? Overall, what benefits could you gain from reading the theory, and engaging with it, in your daily job?
These simple questions are the drivers of this video/contribution and here are what my points/replies are on these questions.
In this presentation, professionalism has been explored through the lenses of Eraut, Barnett and Whitchurch; later, these three lenses come to be explained in light of the existing research on RMA - the tables help visualise the literature under specific headings - before moving on to convey practical advice on how to connect in the profession and bring your contribution in the field.
EARMA Conference, 2022
How is going to be professionalism for RMAs in a post-pandemic era? Which skills are expected to... more How is going to be professionalism for RMAs in a post-pandemic era? Which skills are expected to be in demand? Following these questions, this presentation aims to define what professionalism for today’s RMAs is – consisting of qualifications, associations, and professional frameworks, among others – but, above all, what we could expect this professionalism to be – with its set of skills and expectations - in a post-pandemic future.
For the reasons set above, research managers (RMAs) could be expected to reshuffle their skills and re-invent themselves, not only to cope with an era where even professional knowledge has a limited lifespan, which was already something to expect, according to Barnett (2008); but also to create a new idea of professionalism and up-to-date skills for the times lying ahead.
The presentation is meant to be theoretical, with an empirical part describing cases of skills we could expect to acquire or need. It moves from the search of a definition of RMA to explain the move from administration to management; from here, what skills we can expect to seek in the current age and in an early future. Thus, a variety of sources on skills in HE and other sectors have been considered and compared; and it comes up that the core skills in a post-pandemic age are primarily the soft ones.
Overall, the core message for RMAs is to 'go wider' and focus beyond the field of practice of RMA, so on related fields of HE more broadly and HEM. But also to look at other professional groups and associations since their perspective could strengthen their understanding of themselves, their community, and their profession in today's HE.
SRAI’s Virtual International Convention for Research Administrators (VICRA), 2022
Why should we do research into the profession? What is professionalism in today's research manage... more Why should we do research into the profession? What is professionalism in today's research management and administration? How can we envisage professionalism for RMAs in a post-pandemic age? How can research into RMA help the build-up of professionalism in our daily job?
Following these questions, this presentation aims to move from a definition of professionalism for today’s RMAs - consisting of qualifications, associations, professional frameworks, skills - to the explanation of actions that can be useful for the development of a professional portfolio in a pandemic and post-pandemic age.
Coupled with the points above, we look at how research into RMA can lead to short and long-term benefits. So we look at some selected papers found in the academic literature to make connections with everyday tasks and show what to search for in these papers that can be highly beneficial in the practice of RMA.
A final list of actions may help the reader find their own ways of engaging with issues surrounding the profession and even to build up a fresh view of it from a different perspective.
Society for Research into Higher Education - SRHE Annual Conference 2021 , Dec 9, 2021
Higher Education is under attack following a period of transformation and identity crisis; staff ... more Higher Education is under attack following a period of transformation and identity crisis; staff in the sector is not exempt from this crucial juncture which, following Barnett, involves re-setting a discourse as modern professionals in an age of super complexity where even knowledge has a limited lifespan.
Research managers are one of the groups making the professional workforce in this sector and the one under the lens here. This group consists of a good number of hybrid professionals, but they also those professionals who have been building their body of academic and professional literature up constantly.
This paper aims, therefore, to provide an overview of their associations, professional development frameworks and qualifications to show what it has been done to boost these professionals. Their level of overall professionalism appears to be high and widespread, but there is much more lying beyond that. For example, they reflect on the practice, share their reflections in papers and groups of peers, and they carry out research into the practice to be the ones who know and share their knowledge.
To show their level of professionalism, we move from the overview provided by a national report mapping all the professional associations and qualifications globally; before focussing on an example developed in South Africa that clearly shows how much in-depth their understanding of themselves and their competencies have gone.
The paper suggests that associations move toward higher, updated levels of professionalism for their members; and that they do that even by carrying out their research into the practice to cope with the even more complex scenarios to come.
NARMA Conference , 2020
This presentation was delivered as a workshop at the NARMA conference in Stavanger (Norway) in Fe... more This presentation was delivered as a workshop at the NARMA conference in Stavanger (Norway) in Feb 2020. Its aim is to shed light on some of the main concepts in use to describe today's RMAs and discussing them in the light of three studies using these concepts for the exploration of varied communities of RMAs. Only the main concepts have been showcased in this short presentation with the intention of triggering interest and building updated, more relevant pieces of research on these as well as on still unexpressed skills for tomorrow's RMAs.
Plotina Final Conference , 2020
This presentation aims to highlight the key findings of my doctoral thesis (2014-2018) investigat... more This presentation aims to highlight the key findings of my doctoral thesis (2014-2018) investigating women's career paths in leadership in a pool of countries in Europe, in its first part; and, in a second one, to ‘mix and match’ or to compare and contrast these findings in light of an updated literature, feminist lenses resulting in a follow-up, ongoing research on women’s leadership in higher education.
The key research question leading the study have been: Do women feel to be fully entitled as leaders? Do they still feel the others in this sector?
Methods include thematic coding analysis; while the key results shed light on the structure of the HE sector still over-challenging women through a variety of obstacles more likely to take the shape of misogyny and sexism; the level of structure is therefore likely to overcome that of agency, even whether this can vary depending on country; the shining role for women's leadership played by and within their family, even in regard to support assured by their daughters as allies; the importance of academic credibility, but also of age, women as friends more than as foes, and much more.
EARMA Conference , 2019
This presentation sets out to investigate the concept of ‘servant leader’ applied to three Italia... more This presentation sets out to investigate the concept of ‘servant leader’ applied to three Italian universities. This investigation is done from a twofold perspective, from managers and from the researchers these managers support.
The concept of ‘servant leader’, drawn from Parolini (2004) and Krauser's works (2003), is about serving and leading altogether and how to do that in today’s global and multicultural research.
This definition comes from a US context so that the further challenge is to apply it to an Italian research support landscape, as we have done in three different types of universities: Camerino, Torino Politecnico and Bologna.
The fieldwork was carried out in the three universities to hear the voices from RMAs and researchers on ‘how to be good servant leaders’ in today’s research.
Results show how the attitude of servant leadership can help illuminate further spaces of understanding between the two groups of those supporting and those supported while building trust among professional-academic communities.
EARMA Conference , 2019
A presentation delivered at the EARMA conference 2019 together with Paula Wennberg (Lulea Institu... more A presentation delivered at the EARMA conference 2019 together with Paula Wennberg (Lulea Institute of Technology) on gender and innovation to discuss the meanings that we want to give to this wording and combination of purposes.
The aim is therefore to be proactive and move from the explanation of what we have done so far to the exploration of a proposed set of actions to pursue together and collaboratevely.
INORMS Conference , 2018
Once again, the choice in this study is to focus on RMAs as the main group of investigation, sinc... more Once again, the choice in this study is to focus on RMAs as the main group of investigation, since they hold, among all university managers, those blended characteristics which appear to be transnational and widespread in today’s institutions. Thus, our analysis aims to show that this group of professionals summarises a bulk of these characteristics originally attributed to so-called blended professionals in Whitchurch’s early works.
However, we are aware that there are many other groups potentially embedding characteristics of these blended profiles out there. For instance, we have come across the study which describes ‘Researcher Developers: An emerging third-space profession?’ carried out by Freeman and Price focussing on ‘researcher developers’ to design and deliver suitable programmes to develop generic and transferable skills.
In conclusion, we list the questions still open to be debated for today’s RMAs as blended professionals; later on, we go back to Whitchurch's early work (2008) once time again to inquire whether we should dig into the concept of third space as “an emergent territory between academic and professional domains, which is colonised primarily by less bounded forms of professional” further and construct our formal third space to be questioned and possibly understood.
WHEN Women's Higher Education Network Annual Conference 2018
Who am I? A scientist? A researcher? A teacher? A professional? A technician?
Based on researc... more Who am I? A scientist? A researcher? A teacher? A professional? A technician?
Based on research, and with ample opportunity for discussion and exploration, get to grips with the complexity of identities in higher education and explore links to career pathways.
Feeling as 'the other' even twice: as an individual in Professional Services and as a woman working in the Higher Education sector. This and much more to be explored in this workshop at WHEN, the first network gathering all women in HE.
EARMA Conference Malta 2017
The aim of this session is to present the results of a three-fold case study that was performed i... more The aim of this session is to present the results of a three-fold case study that was performed in Italy (University of Bologna), the United Kingdom (London School of Economics) and The Netherlands (University of Tilburg).
The case study was taken up to be able to look at how the role of 'Blended Professionals' (BPs) is conceptualised in practice, following the work of Celia Whitchurch who was one of the first to introduce this concept.
There are many definitions of what a BP can be and even so many manifestations of them, however, in the context of this case study we have chosen to define BPs as those persons in academia that 1) have received a PhD but have decided to leave the academic profession and have taken up a job in administration or support staff; 2) are engaged in a professional PhD track, expressing the wish to combine both academic and professional work and expertise and/or 3) can be described as 'hybrid researchers', moving between the realms of academic knowledge, on the one hand, and non-academic knowledge, on the other hand. Contextual circumstances and developments in higher education policy, such as the decrease of academic positions combined with an increase in the number of people acquiring a PhD, the increase in the demand of generating societal impact in scientific research and the call upon universities to collaborate with non-academic partners, lead to a steady rise of BPs in nowadays academia. BPs form a group of highly skilled professionals in nowadays academia, but seem nonetheless to have their 'identity' challenged, as they don't fit easily into either an academic or administrative/professional role but they are more likely to be in between the two depending on the job.
The threefold case study consisted of face-to-face semi-structured interviews with a total of 15 respondents. Research questions were related to 1) identity and perception of belonging to either the academic realm or the professional/administrative one, or both; 2) issues of freedom and control; 3) the perception of the unique and indispensable contribution that BPs make to their Higher Education Institutes.
With the session, we aim at not only presenting the results of the case study but also to discuss the outcomes with the audience. Discussion helps us to assess whether the case study findings resonate with the EARMA members (many of them BPs as well) and provides the opportunity to bring the research further in terms of new research questions and new theoretical insights.
SRHE Society for Research into Higher Education Annual Conference , 2016
This study aims at investigating the concept of the Blended Professional (BP) in academia within ... more This study aims at investigating the concept of the Blended Professional (BP) in academia within today's HE institutions. BPs occupy a so-called ‘third space’ in universities, placed between academics on the one hand and administrative or organizational staff on the other (Whitchurch, 2008). Often, BPs combine a scientific grade (PhD or similar) with extra-academic experience, thus bringing in a unique profile and unique skills. Recent developments in research policies have sparked the evolution of BPs, as universities are more and more called upon to move beyond academic activities exclusively. We present the results of a triple case study investigating the indispensable role BPs play in today’s universities, exploring the situation in three universities/HEIs (Italy, UK, the Netherlands). Specific attention is paid to the following research questions investigating issues of identity; of perceived freedom and control; of peer group formation; and finally of reflection on reflection in action. In the session therefore we aim to discuss the first set of these research results and also to explore how we can take the study further.
This poster addresses the concept of blended professionals defining those who 'cross internal/ext... more This poster addresses the concept of blended professionals defining those who 'cross internal/external institutional boundaries and contribute to the development of new forms of third space between professional and academic domains' [1], and takes a snapshot of two case-studies: the LSE (UK) and Tilburg University (Netherlands).
This poster has been presented at the conference 2015 of the Society for Research into Higher Edu... more This poster has been presented at the conference 2015 of the Society for Research into Higher Education (Newer Researcher conference). It aims to show how my thesis is structured and then to go straight to some preliminary findings arising from the data analysis. The core of the poster gives an overview of what I have come up with as main findings, so attitudes and typologies of women in leadership as well as career dynamics.
Feedback and comments from the panel of reviewers and some attendees during the poster session have been fruitful and fascinating, so keep working on these.
This presentation draws on a quantitative study carried out in 2012: it deals with three patterns... more This presentation draws on a quantitative study carried out in 2012: it deals with three patterns of career (so three career paths for research managers and administrators shaped following Whitchurch’s definition of blended professionals) and with the set of skills that are more likely to arise from a particular career path.
To carry out this study, we designed a questionnaire and tested it on a small sample of research managers and administrators (RMAs) as members of the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators and its Professional Development Working Group.
Among findings, a set of compulsory skills for RMAs has been developed; these skills can be put in relation to each of the three different career paths (RMAs who developed their skills only within the higher education sector or the research management function; those coming from other sectors and joining research management later in career; and also those from academia, so PhD holders or professors before), but they can also be analysed alone and not specifically in relation to a prior career path.
Among these skills we have further considered: cultural capital, cross-cultural understanding and communication, social capital and how much relationships matter, networking with peers and with academics, dealing with difficult conversations or conflicts, leadership but also further types of soft skills.
This study investigates the multi-cultural dimension of today’s’ research management which staff ... more This study investigates the multi-cultural dimension of today’s’ research management which staff experience whenever they interact with others, for instance in managing proposals or grants, but also within their professional associations. The aim here is to shed light on how much multi-cultural and diversified is the landscape in European research management, where interaction is more likely to occur among heterogeneous institutions and players: therefore this may be regarded as the place where misunderstanding or even conflicts may more frequently occur.
To carry out this study, I have relied on the cross-cultural theory and, through predetermined themes, engaged a group of senior managers as members of a European professional association; a set of interviews have been conducted in order to raise their reflection on what cross-cultural capability means (and also their experiences of it) and how it impacts on today’s’ research and its management.
Among findings: cultural diversity is pictured as a strength, which not only stands for the awareness of the different communities in Higher Education (e.g. academics, administrators), the set of technical languages, but also the variety of backgrounds or career paths (e.g. from academia or other sectors, from academia to research management). In addition, diversity that arises from intercultural awareness should help in shedding light on the different HE sectors crossing each other, their main features (e.g. regulations), including the reasons underlying customs and even stereotypes (e.g. reliability or punctuality). Lastly, diversity in today’s research management should deal with English, regarded as the dominant but also the problematic language, with forms of colonialism (or loss of opportunities) that may play in favor of some players and let others with no voice.
This poster is only one of three presented at EARMA 2015 annual conference (AC) in Leiden; all th... more This poster is only one of three presented at EARMA 2015 annual conference (AC) in Leiden; all three draw on the workshop run at the EARMA AC 2014 in Tallinn.
Presentations do not often have a follow-up phase, even though they have raised a lot of interest, so they may go forgotten and who starts dealing with the same topic does not take previous issues/findings into account. In Tallinn we presented and discussed the following points:
- The extent to which gender inequality in leadership posts in higher education is widespread across Europe and what women think about it
- How to promote a gendered and inclusive dimension in research and administration
- Different approaches, tools and methods to integrate a gender equality perspective in research projects
- Examples of change processes in academia and industry.
After the presentation in Tallinn, we have collected feedback and kept talking about the topic; the aim has been to keep the discussion open and stimulate further and fresh thinking. Thus, this presentation at EARMA AC in Leiden aims to be either a follow-up which summarises what we have further done on the topic since July 2014.
The three posters together shed light on gender issues in Higher Education, research and in its management.
The study aims to shed light on women’s under-representation at the most senior roles in the mana... more The study aims to shed light on women’s under-representation at the most senior roles in the management of Higher Education institutions; this through the experiences of women who currently hold one of these roles in a university in Europe.
My purpose is the understanding of barriers and enablers, but also of strategies that these successful women have adopted in their career; the main aim is to see what lesson may be learnt and possibly shared with other women in order to make others succeed in a senior role.
Reflections for this conference will see this study under a feminist lens and then explore the link between research questions, theoretical perspective, methodology, and research methods.
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Conference Presentations by Susi Poli
Moving from the knowledge of this professional group, in my presentation I consider RMAs and educational support managers jointly. The comparison between these two groups, as those working at the frontline of the domains of education and research, will highlight similarities and differences as 'extended' or 'restricted' types of professionals while stressing some key points, which include the call for daring to design joint training opportunities for the times to come.
This group of professionals in today’s universities has not been extensively investigated so far so it has been less visible than other professional groups; still, the group has recently increased its visibility through the European strategy for universities, now calling on universities to prioritise education, research, innovation, serving society and economy.
Later on in the presentation, this professional group has been compared with research managers working at the same university, with interviews conducted between 2014 and 2018 on the same set of topics.
In conclusion, educational managers feel to belong to a plethora of communities; they have their say not only on their identity and the complexity of today’s education but also on the relationships with academics, which has never been enough explored in research, and this latter topic may even become most of what they wish to discuss further in coming months.
On the one hand, the visibility for these educational managers has slowly become a burning issue not only at Unibo but in the broader university community, for example within the UNA Europa Alliance (and specifically, in one of its WGs on Staff development and on Building and Professionalising the UNA community of HE Professionals-HEPs). On the other hand, the visibility of research managers has grown steadily in recent years; proof of this visibility can be found in more research done on this professional group, in two Horizon Europe projects granted and just kicked off, in the work of professional associations worldwide, and also in books, including a new global book on RMA expected in late 2023 by Emerald (The Emerald Handbook of Research Management and Administration Around the World).
These simple questions are the drivers of this video/contribution and here are what my points/replies are on these questions.
In this presentation, professionalism has been explored through the lenses of Eraut, Barnett and Whitchurch; later, these three lenses come to be explained in light of the existing research on RMA - the tables help visualise the literature under specific headings - before moving on to convey practical advice on how to connect in the profession and bring your contribution in the field.
For the reasons set above, research managers (RMAs) could be expected to reshuffle their skills and re-invent themselves, not only to cope with an era where even professional knowledge has a limited lifespan, which was already something to expect, according to Barnett (2008); but also to create a new idea of professionalism and up-to-date skills for the times lying ahead.
The presentation is meant to be theoretical, with an empirical part describing cases of skills we could expect to acquire or need. It moves from the search of a definition of RMA to explain the move from administration to management; from here, what skills we can expect to seek in the current age and in an early future. Thus, a variety of sources on skills in HE and other sectors have been considered and compared; and it comes up that the core skills in a post-pandemic age are primarily the soft ones.
Overall, the core message for RMAs is to 'go wider' and focus beyond the field of practice of RMA, so on related fields of HE more broadly and HEM. But also to look at other professional groups and associations since their perspective could strengthen their understanding of themselves, their community, and their profession in today's HE.
Following these questions, this presentation aims to move from a definition of professionalism for today’s RMAs - consisting of qualifications, associations, professional frameworks, skills - to the explanation of actions that can be useful for the development of a professional portfolio in a pandemic and post-pandemic age.
Coupled with the points above, we look at how research into RMA can lead to short and long-term benefits. So we look at some selected papers found in the academic literature to make connections with everyday tasks and show what to search for in these papers that can be highly beneficial in the practice of RMA.
A final list of actions may help the reader find their own ways of engaging with issues surrounding the profession and even to build up a fresh view of it from a different perspective.
Research managers are one of the groups making the professional workforce in this sector and the one under the lens here. This group consists of a good number of hybrid professionals, but they also those professionals who have been building their body of academic and professional literature up constantly.
This paper aims, therefore, to provide an overview of their associations, professional development frameworks and qualifications to show what it has been done to boost these professionals. Their level of overall professionalism appears to be high and widespread, but there is much more lying beyond that. For example, they reflect on the practice, share their reflections in papers and groups of peers, and they carry out research into the practice to be the ones who know and share their knowledge.
To show their level of professionalism, we move from the overview provided by a national report mapping all the professional associations and qualifications globally; before focussing on an example developed in South Africa that clearly shows how much in-depth their understanding of themselves and their competencies have gone.
The paper suggests that associations move toward higher, updated levels of professionalism for their members; and that they do that even by carrying out their research into the practice to cope with the even more complex scenarios to come.
The key research question leading the study have been: Do women feel to be fully entitled as leaders? Do they still feel the others in this sector?
Methods include thematic coding analysis; while the key results shed light on the structure of the HE sector still over-challenging women through a variety of obstacles more likely to take the shape of misogyny and sexism; the level of structure is therefore likely to overcome that of agency, even whether this can vary depending on country; the shining role for women's leadership played by and within their family, even in regard to support assured by their daughters as allies; the importance of academic credibility, but also of age, women as friends more than as foes, and much more.
The concept of ‘servant leader’, drawn from Parolini (2004) and Krauser's works (2003), is about serving and leading altogether and how to do that in today’s global and multicultural research.
This definition comes from a US context so that the further challenge is to apply it to an Italian research support landscape, as we have done in three different types of universities: Camerino, Torino Politecnico and Bologna.
The fieldwork was carried out in the three universities to hear the voices from RMAs and researchers on ‘how to be good servant leaders’ in today’s research.
Results show how the attitude of servant leadership can help illuminate further spaces of understanding between the two groups of those supporting and those supported while building trust among professional-academic communities.
The aim is therefore to be proactive and move from the explanation of what we have done so far to the exploration of a proposed set of actions to pursue together and collaboratevely.
However, we are aware that there are many other groups potentially embedding characteristics of these blended profiles out there. For instance, we have come across the study which describes ‘Researcher Developers: An emerging third-space profession?’ carried out by Freeman and Price focussing on ‘researcher developers’ to design and deliver suitable programmes to develop generic and transferable skills.
In conclusion, we list the questions still open to be debated for today’s RMAs as blended professionals; later on, we go back to Whitchurch's early work (2008) once time again to inquire whether we should dig into the concept of third space as “an emergent territory between academic and professional domains, which is colonised primarily by less bounded forms of professional” further and construct our formal third space to be questioned and possibly understood.
Based on research, and with ample opportunity for discussion and exploration, get to grips with the complexity of identities in higher education and explore links to career pathways.
Feeling as 'the other' even twice: as an individual in Professional Services and as a woman working in the Higher Education sector. This and much more to be explored in this workshop at WHEN, the first network gathering all women in HE.
The case study was taken up to be able to look at how the role of 'Blended Professionals' (BPs) is conceptualised in practice, following the work of Celia Whitchurch who was one of the first to introduce this concept.
There are many definitions of what a BP can be and even so many manifestations of them, however, in the context of this case study we have chosen to define BPs as those persons in academia that 1) have received a PhD but have decided to leave the academic profession and have taken up a job in administration or support staff; 2) are engaged in a professional PhD track, expressing the wish to combine both academic and professional work and expertise and/or 3) can be described as 'hybrid researchers', moving between the realms of academic knowledge, on the one hand, and non-academic knowledge, on the other hand. Contextual circumstances and developments in higher education policy, such as the decrease of academic positions combined with an increase in the number of people acquiring a PhD, the increase in the demand of generating societal impact in scientific research and the call upon universities to collaborate with non-academic partners, lead to a steady rise of BPs in nowadays academia. BPs form a group of highly skilled professionals in nowadays academia, but seem nonetheless to have their 'identity' challenged, as they don't fit easily into either an academic or administrative/professional role but they are more likely to be in between the two depending on the job.
The threefold case study consisted of face-to-face semi-structured interviews with a total of 15 respondents. Research questions were related to 1) identity and perception of belonging to either the academic realm or the professional/administrative one, or both; 2) issues of freedom and control; 3) the perception of the unique and indispensable contribution that BPs make to their Higher Education Institutes.
With the session, we aim at not only presenting the results of the case study but also to discuss the outcomes with the audience. Discussion helps us to assess whether the case study findings resonate with the EARMA members (many of them BPs as well) and provides the opportunity to bring the research further in terms of new research questions and new theoretical insights.
Feedback and comments from the panel of reviewers and some attendees during the poster session have been fruitful and fascinating, so keep working on these.
To carry out this study, we designed a questionnaire and tested it on a small sample of research managers and administrators (RMAs) as members of the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators and its Professional Development Working Group.
Among findings, a set of compulsory skills for RMAs has been developed; these skills can be put in relation to each of the three different career paths (RMAs who developed their skills only within the higher education sector or the research management function; those coming from other sectors and joining research management later in career; and also those from academia, so PhD holders or professors before), but they can also be analysed alone and not specifically in relation to a prior career path.
Among these skills we have further considered: cultural capital, cross-cultural understanding and communication, social capital and how much relationships matter, networking with peers and with academics, dealing with difficult conversations or conflicts, leadership but also further types of soft skills.
To carry out this study, I have relied on the cross-cultural theory and, through predetermined themes, engaged a group of senior managers as members of a European professional association; a set of interviews have been conducted in order to raise their reflection on what cross-cultural capability means (and also their experiences of it) and how it impacts on today’s’ research and its management.
Among findings: cultural diversity is pictured as a strength, which not only stands for the awareness of the different communities in Higher Education (e.g. academics, administrators), the set of technical languages, but also the variety of backgrounds or career paths (e.g. from academia or other sectors, from academia to research management). In addition, diversity that arises from intercultural awareness should help in shedding light on the different HE sectors crossing each other, their main features (e.g. regulations), including the reasons underlying customs and even stereotypes (e.g. reliability or punctuality). Lastly, diversity in today’s research management should deal with English, regarded as the dominant but also the problematic language, with forms of colonialism (or loss of opportunities) that may play in favor of some players and let others with no voice.
Presentations do not often have a follow-up phase, even though they have raised a lot of interest, so they may go forgotten and who starts dealing with the same topic does not take previous issues/findings into account. In Tallinn we presented and discussed the following points:
- The extent to which gender inequality in leadership posts in higher education is widespread across Europe and what women think about it
- How to promote a gendered and inclusive dimension in research and administration
- Different approaches, tools and methods to integrate a gender equality perspective in research projects
- Examples of change processes in academia and industry.
After the presentation in Tallinn, we have collected feedback and kept talking about the topic; the aim has been to keep the discussion open and stimulate further and fresh thinking. Thus, this presentation at EARMA AC in Leiden aims to be either a follow-up which summarises what we have further done on the topic since July 2014.
The three posters together shed light on gender issues in Higher Education, research and in its management.
My purpose is the understanding of barriers and enablers, but also of strategies that these successful women have adopted in their career; the main aim is to see what lesson may be learnt and possibly shared with other women in order to make others succeed in a senior role.
Reflections for this conference will see this study under a feminist lens and then explore the link between research questions, theoretical perspective, methodology, and research methods.