Developing as a post-PhD researcher: agency and feedback in construction of grant funding success (El desarrollo del investigador posdoctoral: agencia y feedback en la preparación de propuestas de financiación exitosas)

Abstract

Grant funding is critical to building a sustained research career. Yet in this climate of academic performativity little is known about how individual academics make their contribution to knowledge fundable. This in-depth longitudinal case study explores an approach evolved by an experienced Canadian scientist whose work is recognized for both scholarly and societal impact. We demonstrate how, over ten years, his agentive participation in academic interactions has contributed to continual development of his research and its funding through: his seeking and engaging with feedback; network-wide view of feedback sources; and drawing on feedback to inform his writing and research thinking. The article suggests a developmental view of the process in which, over time, researchers conceive, expand and draw on their feedback networks. Locating funding success within the social dimensions of knowledge and researcher development, the study sheds light on the role of agency and experiential learning in enabling contributions to frontline knowledge. Results suggest a novel, encompassing way for post-PhD researchers to build towards sustained grant funding. RESUMENLa financiación procedente de subvenciones es clave para poder desarrollar una carrera investigadora. Sin embargo, en el clima actual de alta exigencia de resultados académicos, se conoce muy poco sobre cómo consiguen los académicos, a nivel individual, que se financie su contribución al conocimiento global. Mediante un detallado estudio de caso longitudinal se explora un enfoque desarrollado por un experto científico canadiense cuyo trabajo goza de reconocimiento tanto por su erudición como por su impacto social. En este estudio demostraremos cómo, durante un periodo de diez años, su participación activa ARTICLE HISTORY

An Autoethnography of “Making It” in Academia: Writing an ECR “Journey” of Facebook, Assemblage, Affect, and the Outdoors

“…There exists a busy academic literature on "the" (seemingly singular) ECR experience(s), within which discussion has recently focused on ECRs' publishing trajectories (Habibie and Burgess 2021), funding success (Yousoubova and McAlpine 2022), career pro-/re-activity (Forbrig and Kuper 2021), support types and amounts (McAlpine, Pyhältö, and Castelló 2018), child-having (Hughes 2021), and agency (McAlpine and Amundsen 2018). There is also a lively genre of advice blogs, such as the US-based The Professor Is In (2022) and Get a Life, PhD (2022), and the Australia-based The Research Whisperer (2022).…”