Early- and mid-career transitions to research leadership in Africa

Abstract

This article examines the early-and mid-career transition to research leadership in Africa. Much of the available African literature on research leadership indicate several challenges related to poor conceptualisations of career transitions and gaps in the availability of research training. Qualitative data were collected using individual interviews (n=24) and focus groups (n=27) to identify key transition points of early career researchers (ECRs) and mid-career researchers (MCRs) in selected African countries. The qualitative data was complemented with quantitative survey questionnaires (n=250) and a triangulation approach was adopted to analyse the results. The findings were themed into different categories describing the common career paths, stages and challenges of research leaders. The latter part of the findings present a discussion on development approaches to attract and retain researchers in African universities. By focusing on the African continent, this study contributes to the current body of literature on research leadership in the Global South.

Enabling research capacity strengthening within a consortium context: a qualitative study

“…Equally, the findings suggest that a well-led, well-structured consortium may still confer significant RCS opportunities even if funding is less than desirable: facilitating interactions between diverse groupings, role-modelling effective, engaging scientific leadership and providing quality postgraduate supervision, all stood out as RCS enablers that could be delivered at relatively minimal cost. Two recent studies, both also grounded within DELTAS Africa, similarly concluded that meaningful interactions (inclusive of those between junior and senior researchers and in the context of supervision) were essential to research and research leadership development 23 24. As with our study, Burgess and Chataway,23 further reported that DELTAS fellows regularly shared their experiences and/or resources gained through DELTAS Africa membership with institutional colleagues or visiting researchers from more resource poor groups.…”

Remodelling research agendas

“…Although this infrastructure appears to be directly applicable ‘only’ to the middle and low-middle income countries, it has been and is being largely adopted by the global north (for example, A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS diameter and Compact Muon Solenoid experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider). Despite the differences in status, universities in both industrialized and developing countries often encounter inefficient coordination and restricted access to essential equipment and infrastructure 3 , 4 . The recent model implemented by the EUTOPIA European University , an alliance of 10 universities, presents an interesting example that demonstrates how coming together can be a means of mitigating inherent challenges within individual institutions regardless of their status and location.…”

Building leaders for the UN Ocean Science Decade: a guide to supporting early career women researchers within academic marine research institutions

“…as exemplified by the Future Seas Project; Nash et al, 2021) and leadership skills (including planning and management). Previous work has highlighted the value of experiential learning for women ECRs (Brasier et al, 2020) and the need for talent management to develop research leaders (Mtwisha et al, 2021). This can also benefit superiors.…”

“…The ECR stage is marked by a significant loss of women researchers (Holzinger et al, 2018;Gibson et al, 2020) particularly at the postdoctoral phase, when ECRs are applying for faculty positions or often when they realize that the demands on their time do not allow for a work-life balance (Shaw and Stanton, 2012). Attracting, retaining, developing, and promoting future women leaders is a priority that marine institutions and scientific communities cannot ignore (Mtwisha et al, 2021), especially if they wish to address gender inequality, bring in new perspectives and skills (Sobey et al, 2013;Nicholas et al, 2019;Brasier et al, 2020), increase research quality and diversity (Pannell et al, 2019;Kelly et al, 2021), deliver excellence in teaching and address ocean sustainability challenges (Keynejad et al, 2021).…”

“…Yet, support for attracting, retaining, and promoting women ECRs is often lacking. The experiences and wellbeing of women ECRs can provide insights into the wider culture of academia (Mtwisha et al, 2021) and research suggests numerous reasons for concern (Hein et al, 2018;Van Noorden, 2018;Pardo et al, 2020). Women ECRs experience gendered challenges, which place them at a significant disadvantage to male colleagues (Latu et al, 2013;Shen, 2013;Kern et al, 2015;Kalaitzi et al, 2017;Kong et al, 2020).…”