Critical reflections of postgraduate researchers on a collaborative interdisciplinary research project

PURVIS, Ben, KEDING, Hannah, LEWIS, Ashley and NORTHALL, Phil (2023). Critical reflections of postgraduate researchers on a collaborative interdisciplinary research project. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10 (1).

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Abstract

By employing a retrospective collaborative autoethnographic approach, this work aims to better understand how an interdisciplinary context shaped the authors’ experiences of British academia during their Ph.D research. The authors bring together their individual observations and experiences to collectively interrogate and critically reflect on their position as postgraduate researchers (PGRs) on a collaborative interdisciplinary research project. These reflections are taken as a lens through which to interrogate the contemporary British university. Pre-existing tensions within the academy are characterised as ‘asymmetries’ along dimensions of risk, disciplinary hierarchy, and knowledge. It is argued that the authors’ experience of uncertainty and precarity as junior academics stems principally from pre-existing structures within British academia, rather than the interdisciplinary environment in which they were immersed. By emphasising the role of the successfully trained doctoral candidate as an outcome itself, it is argued that indicators of success can be reframed, shifting the power asymmetry to place greater value on PGRs within the neoliberal academy. Highlighting the ambiguity of their convergent and divergent personal experiences, the authors suggest there is a need for a greater focus on the contested role of the PGR within the contemporary university system.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	** From Springer Nature via Jisc Publications Router ** Licence for this article: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ** Acknowledgements: Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [Grant number 1643433]; and the Leverhulme Trust [Grant number RP 2013-SL-015]. For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising. **Journal IDs: eissn 2662-9992 **Article IDs: publisher-id: s41599-022-01494-w; manuscript: 1494 **History: collection 12-2023; online 06-01-2023; published 06-01-2023; registration 22-12-2022; accepted 21-12-2022; submitted 13-05-2022
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Article, /4014/160, /4014/4045, article
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01494-w
SWORD Depositor:	Colin Knott
Depositing User:	Colin Knott
Date Deposited:	11 Jan 2023 11:51
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2023 08:15
URI:	https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/31280

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