Changing Academic Life

Janet Read is a Professor in Child Computer Interaction at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. Janet’s path to academia was via maths teaching, and then falling into a PhD after she had a family. Our discussions are wide ranging and throughout she is incredibly thoughtful, reflective and proactive in how she goes about unentangling processes and challenges, always striving to understand and develop, not just herself but also those around her. Because this ends up being a long conversation, the high level topics are below, along with more detailed notes, and has two parts - see below.We have a problem right through the whole system, understanding what the academic does.So the complete academic probably collapses on a Friday evening with a glass of wine. And gets up on a Saturday and starts doing work again.Daughter (9yr old) said “Mum when you are working at home, the children don’t know if you are being a mum or not.”.Deep work is the valuable work for academics... A really hard thing for academics is finding that deep work space.[Management ideal] It’s the encouragement, understanding individual needs, motivate, say well done. Wouldn’t it be nice to get “a well done”!In the first part, up to about the hour, she explores her own journey learning how to do research, how to supervise students, and how to support good learning experiences. She has some really interesting things to say about today’s university process-driven culture and argues that we need to do much better at understanding students and how to better support the learning experience, not equating attendance with learning.In the second part, she talks about being a complete academic, that one of the challenges is that no-one really knows what an academic actually does. She talks about how she deals with the demands on her time, the potential costs of being too efficient, being proactive and looking after your own needs, creating a collaborative group culture, wishing for encouraging and supportive leadership and saying ‘well done’.  PART 1:02:40 Path via teaching to a PhD, and into academia18:50 Learning to supervise PhD students32:45 Getting to understand processes, value of reflective writing39:08 University culture, process management, monitoring attendance, supporting the student learning processPART 2:1:01:09: The complete academic1:06:05: Understanding what the academic does, being efficient1:14:20 Speaking up, looking after yourself, managing time1:22:45 People management & leadershipWith more detailed notes, she talks about (times approximate) …PART 1: Path via teaching to PhD and Academia:02:40 Janet talks about her unusual path to a research/academic career via a maths degree and high school teaching, wanting to have children and working part-time, having to change schools to do this, resigning in response to an unreasonable unfair workload demand compared to male colleagues, moving to a local college as an IT lecturer, and landing in university by pure chance to cover classes when someone went off for an operation, so never had an interview for her current job!09:10 Moving on to do a PhD part-time while working, with four kids, cats. Well supported but no-one on university team did research. Advised to go out and meet people, get work published. First experience at Sunderland HCI conference, heard Leon Watts ask a good question and thought ‘I want to be that guy’. He was gentle, constructive, and clearly coming with deep knowledge. Dead cool!13:25 Got PhD. And got the bug (not the book :-)). Got into child-computer interaction at the right time when it was accelerating. Wrote a book with Panos [Markopoulos] while doing PhD. Quite a lot of luck but also some of it active on her part going out travelling and doing things.14:36 Every single time she asked for money for travel she got it because no-one else was asking for it. So had opportunities. Sad thing now about how PhD work is funded in the UK as doesn’t typically come with travel funding so doesn’t support the process of delivering a really useful researcher at the end of. So was lucky, met some great people, made friends with everybody.15:40 Lots of networking, mainly with men, over beers; much less good at networking with women. Went to a couple of women meetings and they felt a bit like moan fests and didn’t want to be somewhere with just women but lot of women in academia felt they could only go in women spaces. Networks better with women who don’t have a gendered position.16:34 And British HCI Community was really good to her. Joined committee, went to conferences. But the changing academic situation means that regional things like this become less important and people don’t publish there so much and then the community I lost which is a shame. When she first started, BHCI was well regarded. Now they go to one conference a year and send students to regional conferences but they don’t get to meet senior people.Learning to supervise PhD students:18:50 Now been trying to run PhD schools at their university to invite PhD students from the UK as networking for the students. PhD system in the UK is broken. Can’t get PhD students from EPSRC grant money and push for doctoral training centres (DTC) so puts all students in one place, turns out cloned set of PhD students, any uni that doesn’t have a DTC becomes second rated. What you want is a student working with a supervisor who is passionate to get that work done. Ultimate success story. If you have a supervisor with 10 students they’re not getting s good experience from that. Once read you can’t supervise more than 6 students at the one time ideally. At times she has had 14! Crazy. Currently has four. Would like to have 3 full-timers and a couple of part-timers. Currently 1 full-time, 1 part-time, 2 overseas, and named on a couple of others.21:40 Learning to supervise students? Back when she did her PhD, had a dedicated supervisor. At time her PhD finished he quit and department had just Janet left to take on supervisions as she had a PhD and was research active. So she took on being director of studies of three other PhD students he was supervising, felt a rookie. Happy to take them on. At the uni, was supposed to put people on teams so they could get some experience. But didn’t want to get people put on teams if they couldn’t do the work. A tension there. Wrote an essay on this: ‘Supervise to fit or fit to supervise?’. Also read papers on supervision, and so not going to be beaten down on decision not to put people on just for their ‘tick’ box.24:43 So went out and found three friends, experienced professors in the UK, to help out on these supervisions. They did this for free. Great. They were all different and she learnt from them. One was like a butterfly thinker. Absolutely brilliant at the beginning of a PhD, though less brilliant these days. Would work with a part-time PhD more than a full-time. Others were better at sitting back and letting the student say what they wanted to do and gently pushing them back to where they thought they should go. Some more hands off, some more hands on. Students all different too so might be different for different students. Learn as you go along. Supervision changes.26:40 Core lessons around supervision? Maybe a bit of a dinosaur but still maintain that you should be supervised by someone who is an active researcher, who is publishing, and who knows the community you are publishing in. Should be no supervision under that line. Need to know methods, how they publish, what others are doing. But prevalent in universities. Many years ago made a ‘Doing a PhD with me’ booklet, saying here’s what you can expect. When she was first supervised didn’t know what her supervision team brought, how she worked with the, publishing protocols, their limitations. Will tell them what her experience and style is. Lays it out. They also have to express what they think they’re getting. It’s kind of like a contract, as a trigger for a conversation. Where you start from important. Was asked to reflect by Head of Department on PhD success, what made some more successful than others, what they were doing as a team, about supervision process. Had a big conversation about that. One of the key things was also understanding what skills the student brought.30:50 Got to do a Doctoral Consortium when she did her PhD. And they asked them to line in order of how far into PhD. Struck her though that years into a PhD is not a good measure. Was about understanding your maturity. So how do you figure out how far you are in PhD? And how to know you are finished? Has another booklet on ‘How do I know I’m ready to be examined for a PhD’. Has a checklist. And has a cosy model around progress. Written up somewhere. About assessing how much you know, how famous you are, how significant your work is, against learning outcomes for a PhD.Getting to understand processes, reflective writing practice:32:45 Influence of teaching background? Early days could teach without a lot of paperwork, but now unis are doing this too. Quite analytical because a mathematician at heart. So likes to understand processes. Knows they’re noise but likes to try to tidy them up. Detangling problems, step-by-step as you do in teaching maths. So says build a website, being published, meeting your community, identifying your heroes. And from this had a charm bracelet, could win charms. Has used this in Doctoral Consortium. What students want there are your pearls, your wisdom, the nuggets. So used the charm bracelet in a BHCI consortium to try to help them understand the low/high points, that it is a journey, understanding that others have done it. So has a gun for the night when you felt like shooting yourself, a rope when you have untangled a really complex problem. Used as props to help people understand the process. If only there were props for academic writing. All academics should have charm bracelet. When started PhD had a fight to get topic agreed at the uni. Wrote an essay about being in the tunnel and not coming out (reflecting a Thomas the Tank Engine story).37:45 Reflective writing? Comes and goes. One of aims is to build a blog page. But then thinks has to write something. Had done the 750 words/day challenge, spent a week reflecting on teaching with students (teaching in Hanoi). Good to express. Sometimes have to rant but not to the wrong people.University culture, process management, monitoring attendance, understanding the student learning process: 39:08 Don’t work in the greatest university in the world, ok, a modern university so has modern uni behaviours, like no confidence in itself or its academics, doesn’t trust the academics, everything has to be double checked, quality audited. Creeping to old ones too. But in that space has great colleagues, who will stop her when she gets to the ‘quit’ moments. Have honest conversations. Gets grumpy about justice issues, wants things to be adequately explainable. Gets angry about things in the background, shady dealing. Believes we should be entirely transparent, justify what we do. A lot in many universities is decided by a little gaggle of men in the corridor, sometimes women. A lot of decision making without reasonable or adequate awareness of other people and not being involved in the decisions.41:30 Interesting thing about women, not just women, a family thing going on. Putting in for an Athena Swan thing. About realizing people with any caring responsibilities – sometimes less likely to get involved in these peripheral things but this is where things happen. Even promotions, promoting people they feel are safe. Would be interesting to turn it upside down and let the professors run the place. Would have happier staff, people feeling that someone actually understood what they wanted to do, a set of processes. The amount of process management has probably doubled in the last four years. Gone crazy. And the responsibility devolved down to staff from above a tragedy, nobody has thought about the quality of teaching or student experience. Equate student experience with attendance and grades. Who cares if they are attending if they are engaged with the learning process in any way that suits them. Instead have an attendance rule. Had a rule they had to sign in to classes. She would say ‘sign in and leave’ if it was clear they didn’t want to be there. Can’t do that anymore. Have to swipe in with electric cards. All pretend activities that make someone in uni think the students are engaged. What happens when your managers don’t understand education and the modern student. The modern student is not the student the academics were when they were at uni. She used to go to only 4 classes a week herself, got to the end of the year, crammed, got through. Top 5% can get away with this. Wrong approach, how can we give our students good experiences they can learn from.47:05 Talks of own kids going through uni. Eye opener to see the other side of the learning process - given powerpoints, Moodle, then exam at the end of the year. How do you find what you want to revise when they are all on Moodle. Can’t search. She now chooses to stack her ppt slides so one set of slides at the end so they can search on it. Other thing is student email. No student reads email. But we talk to them via email. So we completely misunderstand them. Doesn’t know the answer. Communication is a challenge. The answer is not to not understand the student.49:20 Deadlines at midnight Sunday. Then they get sick Sunday afternoon but can’t contact the tutor. Deadlines should be on a weekday. Only come to that knowledge by observing, saw this with her own daughter who got a migraine at the weekend and couldn’t email the tutor. Universities typically lag behind the school system. Predictive scoring, personalized learning trajectory. Can criticize. Uni just starting, trying to show student at risk. These work in schools where you have a relationship with your teacher but doesn’t map to the uni environment.53:14 Brought in originally to deal with Tier 4 students on visa who have to be in attendance – government made it the university problem, they have a legal requirement to mark attendance. Now mark everyone to not discriminate. Stephen Fry, one of the smartest guys on the planet, he never attended at Cambridge. Think in the future unis will start to credit learning from somewhere else, dual role in giving out knowledge. An interesting way to think of unis. Has read history of unis. First unis in Germany. Prof would announce a lecture on topic. People came to listen. People access their education because they are curious. Now end up with a curriculum. John Ruskin, great philosopher’s story. Once with a curriculum, hard to get credits. Versus making your own curriculum.57:30 Quality – remember being shown a graph of number of first class degrees awarded by competitors. They were lower. Drive about not giving out enough firsts. Policy changes. Now give out more firsts. In the UK, 70 was a first. Now closer to 80. Classification of degrees an interesting space. A tool for governments. Same with PhDs. Can be a broad difference but considered enough. Also does external examining of courses. I do believe you have to be a complete academic. And will say about standards and say “you are overmarking”. PART 2: The complete academic:1:01:09 What makes a complete academic? Teaching, research, administration, outreach. Have to teach some of the time. Have to do research. Good friend Scott MacKenzie says research isn’t research until it is published. Some outreach. Just finished doing 5 weeks in a school. STEM important. Innovation strand because if only writing papers, not making a difference. By making or changing something. Likes the impact agenda of the REF. The REF in the UK (research excellence framework) a lot wrong with it, have to capture publications that are ranked, just gone through a big review, the Stern Review. Downside of ranking that uni equates whether a publication is ref-able so if you want to go to the British Computer Society can’t go because it isn’t counted (though REF doesn’t say this).  National conferences low in the ratings. Impact agenda – have to tell a story. Likes that. Hard but it says your research does more than just an academic paper. People can play the game too.1:04:26 Has to write two impact cases in next two days. In her group, all say together, brainstormed, came down to four, now wanting to invest in these. But need money. Great work with children in India, Mumbai, in Africa. Put in for money to do this but didn’t get it. If in a big institution have lots of people behind her. Also discusses lead in time that no-one notices.Understanding what the academic does, being efficient:1:06:05 We do have a problem right through the whole system understanding what the academic does. So the complete academic probably collapses on a Friday evening with a glass of wine. And get up on a Saturday and start doing work. Has spent a lot of time reading time management books. Has conversations in her group, most have young families, she now has young grandchildren. Sometimes just want to have coffee with a daughter. Nice to be able to do those things. Has four children, when two youngest were little, older ones noticed, 9yr old said “Mum when you are working at home, the children don’t know if you are being a mum or not.”. Says to group don’t work at home when you are being a parent. Look after the kids or work from home. Productivity Ninja book – says there are different types of work you can do. Can decide to delete your inbox as low effort job. And another great book called Deep Work. Talks about how people do deep work. Deep work is the valuable work for academics, completely engrossed. Really hard thing for academics is finding that deep work space because there’s so much noise and clutter. Can be in the building for 8 hours and come home and not think she has done anything.1:10:05 Has all these sheets at home, when children were young and doing her own PhD. Printed out on A4 paper. Would count in and count out the hours.  Counting in if had overworked. Had a nice female head of dept, once said, ‘Janet if you can do 100% of the job in 80% of the time because you are super-efficient, then don’t feel you have to fill the other 20%.”. She is efficient can do full time job in 3 days. If you are good at...

Kylie Ball is a Professor in the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Faculty of Health at Deakin University in Australia. She is also Head of early- and mid-career researcher (EMCR) development and publishes a very impactful blog targeted to EMCRs called The Happy Academic. We have a wide-ranging discussion about the EMCR support initiatives she has put in place, including workshops, mentoring programs and virtual resources, as well as the blog which she talks about as a form of virtual mentorship that can have a wider reach. We explore her own strategies for physical and mental wellbeing and how to form good habits. Themes throughout are around how much there is that we can actually take control of and make choices about, and we get a good sense of how to create a kinder and more supportive culture within our faculties."Leadership can happen at every level. …Every researcher is leading something.""We forget that we’re in a career where there is so much choice and flexibility. Seeing busyness as within our choice and there are things we can do about that really helps to give that sense of control.""I’m a big advocate that we can all find opportunities to be kind and it’s never a wasted act."She talks about (times approximate) …1:50 Kylie discusses how she got into research, instead of being a clinical psychologist that she had thought she would end up doing, and still has drive to help people04:20 Discusses research area around helping people have better health behaviours, translating research and having broad impact, and how long this can take06:50 Examples of where her research has had impact; how the relationship was built; and the long time frame to impact08:35 Recognises this as a privileged situation. More difficult for newer people coming in on short term contracts. And recognizes she might be able to help.09:10 Her own experience of short term contract, moving interstate for a one year contract; fortunately a permanent position did arise; but not the case now. Mentors many people and sees many people concerned about the future, and raising the same sorts of problems.10:10 Her role as head of early and mid-career researcher development. Keen to defines this inclusively, roughly as academic level A-C (entry level, associate, to lecturer, to senior lecturer). Wanted to know what the challenges were so spoke individually to all ECRs in the institute – 54 – and 15-16 senior people. One of the best things she could have done. Some based on another campus. Well set up between campuses for virtual meetings.13:30 So met and got a good sense of needs, coming up repeatedly: how do I establish myself as an independent researcher; how do I get my first grant; how do I achieve work life balance. Universal issues in this field. Gave a good sense of what people were struggling with. Then set up a range of initiatives to address this. Included: workshops mentoring matches; other professional development; also virtual resources like the blog.14:35 Workshops: looking at most pressing needs first, grants and fellowships, so first workshop with internal people to present eg strategy, lead times, planning, how to find sources, the process, compliance, internal funding scheme (great for pilot data, experience, confidence). Can see the trajectory of research funding from this first step. Most of workshops fully subscribed, tried to limit to around 17:25. Reasons for good buy-in? Culture very much around encouraging students and ECRs to get along to everything offered, can get something out of everything, fostering a vibrant research culture; also that this is what they had asked for.18:30 Other workshops around how to be a strategic researcher. Great to have internal expertise but also good to bring in external experts for fresh ideas, also level of perceived credibility of external. About saying no to things strategically, time management, writing. Another workshop around leadership – broad and difficult to do in a one-day workshop but as exposure to some of the challenges of leadership in academia and tendencies that impede us becoming the best leaders we can. Type of leadership? Leadership can happen at every level. Everyone is leading something. Qualities of a good leader in an academic context? Learning to take the step back from being the drive in everything and putting others forward and supporting them. A challenge of mid-career stage. Being willing to hand over the reins to others. Not trained in that.22:20 One of the other workshops from last year addressed that issue – mentoring for mentors. Idea is lots of use mentor others but have not had any formal training in that. Sometimes junior people come with issues and say struggling herself. But don’t have to have all the answers, can say “this is what I may do in this situation; have you thought about these different options”. Useful for getting some confidence around this.23:46 Mentoring scheme – not a formal scheme as people didn’t want to commit to this but asked early career people if they wanted a mentor. Sometimes their supervisor might provide some of this but sometimes there is a risk that discussions with supervisor can be very operational. So have tried to match people up with someone more arms-length from within the institute. Have also facilitated external mentor when people asked for this. Set up general guidelines around this. Eg meet 3-4 times per year, mentee brings the agenda and drives meeting, and provides a few resources such as types of questions to get best out of mentor. Almost all now have at least one senior mentor. The ones who have chosen not to feel they are well supported already. Left loosely structured (no fixed time limit). Uni does have a structured program with contracts, outputs etc but a deterrent for some people. Depends on the situation. Just flagged that either mentor or mentee felt relationship not working well … sometimes relationship naturally progresses. It’s very natural for mentoring relationships to have a set period of time. Also think people can benefit from having a number of mentors.28:25 Digital resources – three main aspects. Lots of senior staff had given presentations, lots of resources existing but sitting on people’s computer drives so wanted a repository to store these that are relevant to early career issues eg powerpoint presentations, resource sheets, templates, grant and funding related resources eg successful grants. Collated in a dedicated place. Used? Refers lots of people to them. Workshop resources also stored there too.30:45 Been running 18 months now. Did an informal evaluation after 1 year. Had conducted a survey before starting, as baseline, asking people what they thought about support available to them and also about generic things like job satisfaction, morale, perceived academic competence, work-related distress, work life balance. A year after assessed again and found good results. Satisfaction with program very high. Perceived competence, academic capacity, morale increased and decrease in workplace distress. Subjective feedback that favourably received. Part of the happy academic. Can’t underestimate their impact on harder outcomes like retention rates, productivity and KPIs like publishing.33:20 Connectedness from workshop. When asked about the needs, social element identified as critical, being connected to other ECRs, having a support network. So try things like put an hour at the end of the workshop for social get together. Also set up regular ‘shut up and write’ sessions. Part is to progress writing but part is the social situation and people talking to others they might not talk to. Do SUAW about every month. Limit to 12 people and they sign up. Part is pragmatic re room available but generally found haven’t had people wanting to come and can’t, also find people can’t attend at last minute, but people who have gone along have found benefits. Shared office with one other person.36:10 Describes institutes and school structure at Deakin. How is wellbeing being promoted in policy? In Kylie’s role. Also fortunate in having a head of school who is committed to these issues of wellbeing so a number of initiatives. Eg: Have had a consultant come in to work with people one on one, a mindfulness expert run mindfulness workshops regularly (quite popular, running it again this year), also have a team that are focused on creating fun events throughout the year eg easter bbq, celebrations for events through the year. Keeping a focus on fun.38:40 Role of KPIs in stress/reduction? Senior staff tried to convey a culture of delivering excellent teaching, research, yes there are KPIs and need to be agreed on in performance evaluation discussions, but the message is yes targets but they shouldn’t be the end driver so don’t e.g. have a strong focus on checking citations. Citations are out of our control. You can control submitting X papers per year but you can’t control how many citations you get. So while KPIs are there and they’re important, and we need aspirational goals for these things, we also try to balance that with a view to aiming for excellence in what we do and that’s not always easily captured in some of these metrics. Flexibility in performance reviews that all staff won’t be doing all things at all times … so might be some flexibility in workload allocation. Hate the word balance.. becomes another stress for people, “do I have balance?”. Going to be times we feel one particular part of our role takes over, so long as you can see that it’s a short term thing so in grant season (gives writing grants example). So long as you can see it is not forever and you have some strategies in place to cope with that. About perspective, insight, reflection, choice. Choice is critical. We forget that we’re in a career where there is so much choice and flexibility. Seeing busyness as within our choice and that there are things we can do about that really helps to give that sense of control.43:56 Often our own worst enemies in this field. People have to be a little bit obsessive, perfectionistic to persist with the things we do but think stepping back and reminding ourselves that we do have more choice than we probably realise and rather than doing everything automatically, saying yes to everything automatically, … try to encourage ECR people to build in white space, thinking and planning time to step back. Can’t see it when you are on the treadmill.45:05 Own strategies? Three main things: 1. Down time with family. Has 10 yr old daughter. Likes to switch off completely and spend time with her. Challenging to switch off. Mobile phones, blurring. Tries to get away eg to beach. Symbolic in a sense to get out of your normal environment, into nature.  Amazing how restorative that can be. 2. Exercise. A mad advocate that exercise can cure almost anything, and help with almost anything, a life line, Mental health strategy. For physical health. Time out. Tries running three times a week. Doesn’t need equipment. Can do anywhere. Doesn’t’ cost anything. Feels a million times better after 6-8 kms, mind much clearer. Feel much better. Evidence for that enormous. The ironic thing is that when you get busy it is often the first thing to go but it can be the best thing to help you think more clearly. Has tried to be consistent since high school. Doesn’t write it in the diary but has a regular time set up. Know from behavioural research, the value of regular habit.48:50 Other non-negotiables? Not really. Being a single parent, more stressful trying to block non-negotiable things, being more flexible works for her. One thing is Friday night is non-work night. Switches everything off. Came up a few years back when was on brink of burn out and working with a coach who asked what was the one thing she could do. Friday night ‘switch off’ was it. Small changes but they do add up.50:20 Third thing she swears by is meditation. A time to step back, reflect, and put down things carrying all day. Aim is to do it every day for 10 mins. Doesn’t happen every day. Training mental skills of attention and focus, skills we are at risk of losing because of social media, emails, interruptions, meditation a buffer against that short attention span. Lots we can be doing to improve our own mental/physical wellbeing but the challenge is lots of us know thus but how do we put it into place.52:15 Tips as behavior change expert? Write it down, book it into your calendar, make it an appointment. The other is about trying to make some of these automatic. Setting up your environment so you need less conscious effort to do it, to make it a habit, things that cue us towards some of these behaviours. The other is social support, who hold you accountable.54:00 The Happy Academic blog – started when she took on role as head of early and mid career research and development. Was hearing the same kinds of challenges again and again, not just in own institution but people internationally. Can’t reach all these people one on one, gets lots of requests for mentoring but can’t do it all. Thought a blog might be a good virtual way to help lots of people. Virtual mentorship. Feedback suggests it is achieving that aim. One of the most satisfying things she did last year. Always wanted a career where she was helping people. And loves writing. So this ticks a lot of boxes. Now takes a couple of hours to write a post, also jots down ideas in prep. Questions that people ask are a source of ideas. Schedule – tries to post once/month.  58:25 Blog post on kindness – sparked by a PhD student who finished and wrote a lovely card, saying “thanks for all your support and in particular thank you for your kindness, a quality which I feel is often missing in academia”. That resonated. Also consistent with stories over the years. Academia can be such a cut-throat and ruthless environment. And dealing with critique, rejection, awards, promotion. Hear all the time how thick-skinned you need to be to survive in this field. So wanted to highlight that this doesn’t have to be the norm and there are small things we can do that might a spot of joy in someone’s day, a question about how your day is going, can I get you a cup of coffee. I’m a big advocate that we can all find opportunities to be kind and it’s never a wasted act. Came across some great resources on kindness.1:01:25 Another of virtual resources is sending an email out highlighting some of the successes. Aim is that we don’t often celebrate these enough. Other thing that it can be good to share more is the rejection and failures side and how we have dealt with these. A hard thing to share. Another post on rejection showed some brave people who posted about their failures. Need to be careful, don’t want to focus on what doesn’t work, but recognizing we’ve all had rejections and your not alone and how we have dealt with it.1:03:45 Last post around saying now – key messages that resonated? Post got a lot of responses. People seemed to like was thinking about saying no is thinking about saying yes. Saying no to one thing means you are being strategic about saying yes to the other things that are already on your plate or are more important. You can’t do it all. Doesn’t mean you are not a good person.1:05: 40 Criteria for what to say yes to re mentorship – isn’t taking on more people now. Currently stretched, and referring people to the virtual mentorship through the blog. Advice from a coach previously was to consider yourself a free referral service, so she tries to find another link or mentor.1:07:58 EndRelated Links:Kylie Ball - http://www.deakin.edu.au/about-deakin/people/kylie-ballHappy Academic Blog – https://happyacademic.wordpress.comIndago Academy - Inspiring Research Excellence. Kylie's newly launched  development consultancy business- https://www.indagoacademy.comBlog post: “Let’s make kindness the next academic disruption” - https://happyacademic.wordpress.com/2017/12/06/lets-make-kindness-the-next-academic-disruption/#more-877  Blog post: “the foolproof approach to saying no” - https://happyacademic.wordpress.com/2018/02/15/the-foolproof-approach-to-saying-no/ 

Carman Neustaedter is an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada and is also Director of the Connections Lab (cLab) research group. He talks about the importance for him of taking time to reconnect with his identity and values, and building in regular time for reflection, both on the bigger issues of where he is going and also on day to day work like writing challenges. He also discusses feeling overwhelmed and deciding to track his work time over a whole year, which led to surprising findings about how he actually spent his time and how he worked fewer hours than he thought he did. He also touches on issues around handling reviewer critique, managing his email inbox and how he structures time and prioritises family. A thread through a couple of stories is also the importance of being able to take on the perspective of others, whether these are the critical reviewers or colleagues.“It’s really hard to figure out who you are because you’re often so focused…, you don’t stop to step back and say who am I and what is my path. But it’s so valuable to do.”“It’s easy to slip into the habit of doing work at all sorts of hours. … It’s about choice and recognizing ahead of time what my priority is and making sure that priority is my family in the evening and at the weekend.”“When I’m working, I’m really on and working really hard but then I purposely stop and say you know what it’s family time now, they deserve my time.”“It’s really valuable for all walks of life just to empathise and understand others.”He talks about (times approximate) …2:09 Start2:39 Current position, PhD from Calgary, experience working in Kodak Research Labs for three years before moving back to academia; how he got to the industry position as a post doc; finding it routine, and the decision to come back to academia and loving it.5:02 Trigger for coming into academia – working with students, the agency and flexibility. Considered thinking to come back. Lucky to land something back in Canada, close to family. Obvious move back. Now in academia 8 years.6:19 Experience of shifting back into academia – a struggle, paid far less, working way harder, so many things coming at him, hard to transition back into. Having the break allowed him to understand the situation a lot more, more reflection on own lifestyle and work-life balance. At Kodak, emails stopped coming in at 5pm on Fri and not much at weekend and as an academic getting emails from students at all hours. Had to adjust to it.8:04 Other challenges in trying to set up as a new prof – establishing his identity and setting up a research group, what to focus on and how to present it to the world; critical to have a web page early; trying to establish identity and use that as framing for everything else he was trying to do. Finding the focus tricky but the job hunt helped as had to figure out ‘who are you, what’s your vision for the next few years’. “It’s an especially challenging task… it’s really hard to figure out who you are because you’re often so focused with your head down on your work, you don’t stop to step back and say who am I and what is my path. But it’s so valuable to do.”9:54 How to do that practically? “It’s time. I can work on another paper or spend a half day thinking about what my identity is and how I want to project myself… it’s important to reassess that identity.” Example of using a hike or run on sabbatical last year to do this figuring out. Answer was realizing he had actually accomplished a lot and pretty proud of it and to continue on the same track, with tweaks. “Being happy with what I accomplished was really key.”; talking of being, purpose; “About what’s important and that thread weaves through the work we do, what we choose to do for [service, teaching, research] and weaves through how we balance work and family life and the personal endeavours we want.12:09 Values as a researcher – being real, true to yourself and what you do. Talks about example of writing papers in a certain way, telling people what you did and why and not being afraid of the scrutiny. A tough profession when we have so many people critiquing us but it’s ok to show you and what you’re doing and stand up for it.13:29 Handling the critiques – a long process but now tries to empathise with the reviewer and think about where they are coming from. Trying to connect with the reviewer, sees it as a conversation, understanding their perspective. More often than not getting critiqued rather than praised about the work we do. Probably not a lot of professions that get critiqued that much.15:59 Other ways for helping handle this? Likes to go running, several times a week early morning, time to get out there and gives chance for reflection on what I’m doing, think up new ideas, and reconnect with myself”.16:54 Other routines? Particular about when he works, tries hard not to work on evenings or weekends. Family and evening routines makes it easier to achieve. Weekends are family time with wife and kids. “When I’m working I’m really on and working really hard but then I purposely stop and say you know what it’s family time now, they deserve my time and so I’ll spend it with them.” Not like that before he had family. Notices he works more when he is away at conferences. “It’s easy to slip into the habit of doing work at all sorts of hours.”  “It’s about choice and recognizing ahead of time what my priority is and making sure that priority is my family in the evening and at the weekend.”18:59 Hard when requests for stuff keep coming in.  Gives example of email on weekend with a request. Has a habit of inbox at zero 80% of the time. So if something comes in at the weekend it bothers him. Needs to handle it by getting it out of his inbox and onto a to-do then he can leave it for Monday. But if it sits in email he will think about it. Didn’t always do this but helps to keep his weekend to himself. Other email strategies – touching email only once;21:49 Talks about tracking his work for a year. 2014, approaching tenure time, felt he was working tons of hours, feeling overwhelmed. Decided to figure out where he spent his time. Used a spreadsheet and recorded in 15 min time blocks. Tracked tasks, time of day, weekend. Tracked for a year. What time of day, who it was spent on, and how the numbers came out.23:19 How tracking for a year was a pain but why he kept doing and the slivers of insight he got on the way.26:00 Results surprising. Thought he did way more service and teaching than research but not the case. Research time was actually 67% over the year. Teaching was only 15% and only 18% was service. “So it was way different than what I thought. I was spending most of the doing the research stuff I really loved and not a lot time doing the teaching things that I thought was taking up a lot of my time.” On average worked about 39 hours a week. Felt over 50 hours. “It felt like I was completely overwhelmed and working all the time.” Didn’t realise how many hours he was actually working.26:50 Flexible way of handling his day, on campus between 4-8 hours, will work from home when he can. Works early morning time. Helps kids. Finish up in the afternoon. Email in the evening. Some days only 4 hours. Flexibility of the job to let him do this lifestyle structure. Balances out with 10 hr day.28:22 What contributes to it feeling so much more? Asked himself some tough questions about why feeling overwhelmed, exhausted. Maybe a lot of it comes down to choice.  So many demands on attention can be overwhelming, A lot of contact points. So many things coming at him overwhelming. The sense of responsibility and loving helping people. Feeling obligated and wanting to help.  Lack of getting to what he wants to do, don’t feel he has as much as choice as he wants to. Teaching feels a little more like work, less control over it. Loves teaching, reinvigorates but freedom of choice issue.32:09 How does it feel now with requests? Looking through time makes it easy to recognize this is happening and use it to leverage different choices, and also figuring out when he works best and how to adjust his schedule. Talks about how he structures his work now. Also gives example of writing the discussion section that he finds hard, and timing it before a run or a break (drive into work) so he can then think back on what he just wrote and see if new insights come up.  Works well except for keeping notes. Wouldn’t have tracked that as work time. 34:54 “Work is on my brain a lot of the time. It’s hard to get it off my brain.” Think best ideas come when he is not working. Never know what you are going to see that is going to spawn a great idea. Fluid work and locations makes it even muddier. Even though ideas flow in non-work time, easy enough to separate them and not linger. Gets a note down and then get back to the personal stuff.38:19 Not managed so well … when family visiting, guests, etc. But also forces you to engage with family and friends more.39:09 Criteria for making choices, saying no? “Doing what I know I love to do”. Gives example of telepresence chair service role. “It’s stuff I love doing so it’s not really like work.”40:34 Sabbatical experience. Three months recognized missed his normal job and couldn’t do research full on. Needed the breaks. Realised how much he valued them when gone. Feeling of guilt for not working. Tension of should and wants. Wanting to get away from the job but then realizing he really loved it. His choice to re-engage with some teaching and service while on sabbatical. Still mental turmoil, would he wish he stepped back more. But felt good at the end of the year. Accomplished more than planned. Happy with what he did because he was making choices, saying no and also saying yes to things he really loved.44:54 “It was a turning point, and I realized moving forward - get back that choice. Really think about what I want to do and don’t be afraid to do that.”45:29 Seeing career moving forward. Knows research direction, more admin work in department coming up, understanding internal politics. Talks about getting to know people more now and seeing where they are coming from. Tries hard to understand people from their perspective. Easiest way of getting policies through is understanding people’s perspectives and incorporating them. Talks a lot with people, prep work, understanding people. Came out of empathy training some years ago (in context of running a study) but “it’s really valuable for all walks of life just to empathise and understand others.”. Created less butting heads, faster to get on same page, accomplish more. But takes time/work.50:51 Gives other examples of other situations where empathy helps, from family/kids to co-author/grad student and teasing out what is going on. Involves a lot of listening. Aim to get the best work, mutual goals.52:59 Tries to foster a lab culture, about being dependent on each other, helping each other. Learnt from advisor Saul Greenberg. Shared responsibility in helping people out, a team, a family.54:49 Final thoughts – “I think so much of our time is spent with our heads down and trying to get things done. I still really struggle with lifting my head up and getting that broader perspective. But I really think scheduling in even a little bit of time every once in a while to get that perspective back is super important.”. Advice from Joanna McGrenere – schedule time on sabbatical for personal reflection. Applicable beyond sabbatical. Schedule that time block eg for a run, walk, or silent drive. Making it a point of your regular routine is so incredibly invaluable. Recognise you are doing good stuff and how to keep that path going forward and how to have time for yourself.57:35 My reflections on harmonious passion.59:55 EndRelated LinksSaul Greenberg podcast – on supervising, building a lab, creating good work life balance  Sheelagh Carpendale - http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~sheelagh/wiki/pmwiki.phpJoanna McGrenere - http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~joanna/Jolanta Burke podcast – on burnout, harmonious passion, positive workplaces & helping othersSome articles on passion, obsessive passion and harmonious passion:Vallerand et al, 2003, Les Passions de l’Aˆ me: On Obsessive and Harmonious Passion, J Personality and Social Psychology, 2003, 85:4, 756-767Kaufmann, Why Your Passion for Work Could Ruin Your Career, Harvard Business Review, Aug. 2011Kaufman, Increase Your Passion for Work Without Becoming Obsessed, Harvard Business Review, Sept. 2011

James Wilsdon is a Professor of Research Policy in the Department of Politics and Director of Impact and Engagement for the Faculty of Social Sciences, and Associate Director in the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures at the University of Sheffield in the UK. He has been involved in many policy and think tank initiatives. Of particular interest here, he chaired an independent review of the role of metrics in the management of the UK’s research system, publishing a final report in 2015 called The Metric Tide. More recently he has chaired an expert panel on Next Generation Metrics for the European Commission. In this conversation we talk about his experiences working in both policy think tanks and in academia, about the increasing focus on research impact for academics and how the UK has created some culture change in this direction. He also discusses issues around metric-based systems of assessments for academics and calls on us not to indulge processes of evaluation that we know empirically are bad science.“Impact is a team sport.”“A new breed of brokers and boundary spanners … placing a premium on a skillset that is not the traditional academic skillset.”“Metrics are a technology and there is nothing intrinsically good or evil in them, it’s all about how they are used.”“It is incumbent on us not to indulge processes of evaluation that we know empirically are bad science.”He talks about (times approximate) …01:40 Introduction of background as professor of research policy, politics of science and research and director of research impact for faculty of social sciences; and working outside of academia as director of science policy for the Royal Society03:40 Moving from an academic context, working out of academia in policy jobs, and keeping a foot in academia through PhD and collaborations, and then coming back into the academic system proper; not being strategic about PhD and future plans when at the think tank; bridging brokering skills becoming more valued as academia more concerned with impact06:55 Moving from think tank to university – pluses and minuses of both; pace and speed of think tank, shorter cycles, but can be too swayed by pressures of speaking to think tank audiences; in university time for longer deeper research when you get the funding; just different; think tank more proximate to power and potential to impact policy debates, in university setting harder to earn that seat at the table; impact.10:30 About having impact as an academic? His role is facilitating academics having impact, part networks, part credibility; for faculty supporting academics at different career stages to strengthen their approach; also in the UK, the Research Excellence Framework (REF) that has 20% of its weighting on impact and needing to think about impact case studies now for next REF cycle; an industry of box ticking around the REF just as much as anywhere else; argues reason to do impact is not the REF but to have real impact, as starting point, so starting with the substance14:30 Describing REF – institutional assessment done at disciplinary or departmental level, university makes subject-based submissions to a particular panel eg politics that assesses research outputs over 6-7year period of all the politics departments in the country in their area and scores accordingly; 65% on research outputs, primary unit is journal article, 15% about research environment, 20% on impact, here through narrative case studies. Not all academics expected to have an impact case study, usually 1 out of 10. Real money attached to it, as research funding allocated to universities on basis of scores, strategic research funding very valuable to institutions.17:42 At what costs? Huge debate. Considerable amount of effort. Have just gone through a government review of the exercise, led by Lord Stern. Conclusion was exercise was working effectively and valuable because a trusted accepted mechanism on both sides and provides the accountability for allocation of substantial money. On uni side, while cumbersome and takes a lot of work, a self-governed process. A lot of the debate rests on what’s it purpose is it good value for money; if purpose just to allocate that grant could do it with a lighter touch or purely metric basis. Reason for Metric Tide review.20:24 REF as it has evolved, now been through successive cycles since the mid 80s and it (REF) has now taken on range of purposes: allocation of funds; accountability mechanism; benchmarking function; driving culture behaviour change through the uni system, affecting wholesale change. In Thatcher times, focus on improving productivity of unis and still has pronounced effect eg UK has most productive research system in the word based on pounds in papers out. Now in part driven by the REF. Productivity a part of that. But in terms of behaviour change, introduction in 2014 of impact as a focus alongside outputs has had a massive cultural effect, positive effect in terms of creating an incentive structure/economy and enabling a more strategic and professional approach to impact, and supportive of a more diverse career paths in the system. China as alternative example, cash bonuses for publications, personal profit, but led to huge problems. In British system, had focus on outputs, now a focus on impacts and by and large a good thing.25:24 How it now impacts appraisal discussions with staff.  Now have research, teaching, impact. A good thing, good research will have impact. Accepts some areas of research where impacts much longer term e.g., particle physics. Value as part of portfolio of what they do, now system in place to support academics doing it (impact) and doing it better and rewarding them. Now have a body of case studies from the exercise by topic, institution, discipline – a great resource. Means we can be much more strategic of understanding of how impacts arise. Most impact case studies were based on some kind of multi or interdisciplinary research, and often collaborative. Impact is a team sport.29:20 Funding in UK to support that interdisciplinary emphasis? On the cusp of biggest shake up of funding system in the UK. Since mid 1960s a set of discipline-based research councils (see links below). All are about to be drawn under umbrella of a new mega funding agency, comes into being April 2018. Existing councils will still exist as committees under that body but goal now better support and enable cross disciplinary work. That’s the ambition. A big shift. Other things that have happened alongside that to further incentivise greater inter-disciplinarily are two big new strategic funding sources: global challenges research fund from aid budget, development money so research relevant to needs of developing worlds and in collaboration with partners in eligible countries, starting with their problems, and more global impact; and other is around industrial strategy, pump priming commercial realisation, not been as good at that e.g., as Germany to do the translational funding, more immediate commercial impact with industry partners.34:45 Also opening new career paths. He talks about this as a new breed of brokers and boundary spanners that the system now demands and placing a premium on a skillset that is not the traditional academic skillset. Has flow on effects for how we think about doctoral training, early career research. But how does a boundary spanner submit e.g., to the politics panel? An inbuilt tension in the system over time. If you push the system towards more interdisciplinary work should you come back and evaluate people in the politics department? A question for the REF in 2027. Now is the time to start thinking about this. If you push all the incentives in the system towards new ways of working design, how do we design the assessment system in 10 years time? Incentives drive behaviour so how do we have complementary incentives systems. Two schools of thought on the new mega structure, negative is its terrible monolithic and inhibit diversity in the system, positive is it allows us to be more strategic and more collective intelligence to arise. By and large he is focussed on the positive.38:00 What are the issues around metrics? The Metric Tide (report) was commissioned by the minister on role of metrics in management of university system. REF is by peer review over a year, it is labour intensive not metric driven. Looked at whole system for the REF. Committee had mix of great people, and did consultation, workshops, etc, a big process. Conclusion was that in the narrow context of the REF, more negatives in going hard to a metric-based systems than positives, in that yes you might remove some of the burden of the exercise but you shake off a lot of what was good about the REF. Current allows for a whole diversity of different outcomes, journal articles a part but can also put in books or arts-based outputs. Metrics tend only to cover journal articles. In politics area, about a quarter of the outputs were books and monographs but you don’t get metrics for those. Another reason is concern for diversity e.g., gendered nature of citation practices. Also re impact, currently recording through narrative case studies and can’t easily convert that to a metric. New metrics coming up e.g., social media measures but again could unleash perverse behavioural consequences like twitter bots if included in REF.42:55 Interpreted mission more broadly though and in the broader sense of how metrics are interpreted and used in the university context, they expressed a serious concern about rising pressure of quantification on academic culture and how to manage that sensibly. Argued for scope to govern and manage systems of measurement much more sensibly, intelligently, and humanely in terms of their effects. A lot of that is about being responsible in the way you design and use metrics. Metrics are a technology and there is nothing intrinsically good or evil in them, it’s all about how they are used. Came up with set of principles for how metrics should be used eg diversity of indicators. More awareness now than 2-3 years ago, not just their review but growing chorus of voice gathering in volume and intensity internationally eg San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment that came out 2012 or 13, pushing hard against emphasis on journal impact factors, the Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics which was closely aligned with what they were doing.Seeing in the UK more universities adopting policies and statements of good practice in terms of how they will use bibliometrics and altmetrics. Also having an impact on the REF in not going to bibliometrics.46:50 Impact on own CV and presenting academic persona? Would never use journal impact factors and h-indices to make decisions, would look very bad. Wouldn’t use it in a panel because he thinks there are better ways of dealing with filtering applicants. “I think to simply look and say they’ve published in Cell therefore they’re better than this person… is the worst kind of sloppy practice. And we know this is statistically illiterate…. A very hard-edged reason why this is bad practice. It is incumbent on us not to indulge processes of evaluation that we know empirically are bad science.” All sorts of subtle signifiers we use and academia is full of these. “All we can do if you’re on an interview panel or evaluating stuff at a departmental level is try to be very conscious of what you’re doing, being quite reflexive about it and do stamp explicit bad practices.” Hasn’t experienced resistance to this where he is. “It’s my friends who are the hard-core scientists and who have looked at this and realised what utter bullshit it is.”50:33 EndRelated LinksJames Wilsdon - https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/politics/people/academic/james-wilsdonUK research funding councils – Higher Education Funding Council - http://www.hefce.ac.ukResearch Excellence Framework (REF) - http://www.ref.ac.uk/2014/The Metric Tide report – https://responsiblemetrics.org/the-metric-tide/San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment - http://www.ascb.org/dora/Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics - http://www.leidenmanifesto.org

Luigina Ciolfi is a full Professor of Human Centred Computing at C3RI – The Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute  and member of the Communication and Computing Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University (UK). A common theme of the conversation is her passion for giving back. We talk about peer service organising a conference, and about her early career experiences as a junior faculty with responsibilities for a program, and what sorts of training and support were or could have been useful for her. In giving back now to junior faculty, she also talks about recent training experiences to take a coaching/mentoring approach and the value of this. We then talk about some of her recent research studying how nomadic workers and how work-life balance plays out for them and how there is no one strategy that suits everyone. She reflects on her own strategies here and also on the challenges of working in a different country to your families.BONUS full transcript available here“To keep the good work [of the research community] going it’s only fair that I contribute to it”“Junior faculty struggles are for both men and women.”“Mentoring is just supporting someone to make decisions.”“Balance is not something that everyone aspires to…There’s no strategy that fits everybody.”“Knowing yourself is part of being confident about your strategy and it takes time to know yourself as a professional, to know what you can achieve. It’s a learning curve.”In summary, she talks about (times approximate) …02:00 Discussing the experience of chairing the ECSCW conference and losing a good friend who was going to be the papers co-chair09:15 Talking about her Masters in Siena, Italy and moving to Limerick, Ireland for PhD15:22 Transitioning from student into a faculty position, role of mentors, experience of submitting proposals; early demanding lifestyle of teaching, research etc as an young faculty; early teaching experiences a lot work; wishing she had some shadowing opportunitiesExperiences around learning curve to be a teacher and program director; advice re handling problematic people; wish for training, e.g., mediation training, respectful training language; the meta skills of academia26:45 Most recent course on coaching techniques and mentoring skills; the people skills being important; discussion of most interesting skill/technique – ‘what will happen if’ scenarios to help decision making, helping them think but not giving direct input; how to answer to ‘what would you do’ questions from coaches/mentees32:00 Discusses research on work life balance, the research project that led to this, and the most recent work.  Everyone having different strategies and giving examples of these strategies. Blurring, balance and boundaries.40:50 Discusses differences with academics compared to other professions. Having a lot of freedom, less bound by constraints, having strong ambition and passion, but also a lot of similarities with other knowledge workers. One person’s story about a revelation moment listening to ‘Cats in the cradle’ song, recognising himself in the song, and the trigger to be quit his job and be a freelancer. Rather than giving instruments for balancing we could be giving instruments for re-arranging.47:40 Reflecting on working ‘more than is healthy’; partner support and weekends for more than work, though can be exceptions. Working less weekends and evenings now than used to as junior academic. Reflections on working more as a junior academic and why and what she might have done differently. Discusses strategies now eg stopping when she is tired, knowing yourself.53:55 Structuring own time. Not a morning person so leaves menial tasks until the morning. Being reflective about own patterns and practices. Tends to schedule meetings in the morning. Upsides and downsides of a mainly research position.55:05 Being active on social media and how she uses different social media tools. The support of others in the same situation. Use of scheduled posts. And the cats.59:10 Discussing other strategies, eg one day of a weekend completely work-free, role of partner, visiting mother, downside of not having any scheduled hobbies but doing other things. And not working in the evenings unless a good reason. Not ever having email notifications or social media notifications on phone.1:01:30 Final thoughts – having part of your family in different countries. Common, complicated. Making choice of staying in Europe even though heart might say going somewhere else, as a conscious choice to be closer to family. Feeling the tension of being far away from family. Common situation but not a common strategy. Distributed roots and always difficult to think of the very long term, just accepting you are at home in more than one place.1:06:49 EndRelated LinksLui’s home page - https://luiginaciolfi.net ; https://www.linkedin.com/in/luiginaciolfiECSCW2017 - https://ecscw2017.org.ukDave Martin - https://ecscw2017.org.uk/2017/02/21/announcing-the-david-b-martin-best-paper-award/Charlotte Lee - https://www.hcde.washington.edu/leeLiam Bannon - http://www.idc.ul.ie/people/liam-bannon/Daniela Petrelli - https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniela-petrelli-518b1658Fabiano Pinatti - http://www.wineme.uni-siegen.de/en/team/pinatti/‘Cats in the cradle’ lyrics - https://genius.com/Harry-chapin-cats-in-the-cradle-lyricsNomadic Work Life project - https://luiginaciolfi.net/projects/Managing Technology Around Work and Life project - https://techworkandlife.wordpress.com/Choosing an Academic Publication Venue: A Short Guide for Beginners - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CcqRitAeUEuTJRiGAtWSPFVDoJZh7JAz/view

Reflecting on the past year, the host shares insights from diverse academic guests. She discusses personal challenges and the importance of supportive colleagues. A focus on the value of kindness in the workplace arises, backed by research linking compassion to well-being. Practical tips for fostering kindness include simple acts and creating supportive networks. Cultural changes like reducing after-hours emails are proposed. Ultimately, the call to celebrate achievements advocates for quality over quantity in academic metrics.

Michael Muller is a researcher at IBM Research in Cambridge MA. We cover a lot in this conversation, Michael reflects on his long PhD process in cognitive science, long in part because of chronic diseases that he still deals with. He talks about the decision to move to industry and his experiences working in various industry positions since then, including interpreting participatory design methods for a North American industry context, finding out he wasn’t suited to management, and loving the work he is doing now. A theme across many of the stories is the tension arising from navigating organisational demands and his own deeply held values, and throughout you can hear his deep care for people.“Work in any organisation involves some kind compromise of principle at one time or another.”  “I’m a white American boy, got all this honour and privilege, let’s do something constructive with it.”“Mentoring very quickly becomes two ways.”“I like the work I’m doing, I love the people I’m working with. And it’s work I can hold my head up about. It’s work that I’m thinking is making good kinds of changes. That’s a good life.”“That’s the core spiritual practice… Take care of people… be in relationships in which we are exchanging affection and support.”He talks about (times approximate) …01:30 Introducing his cognitive psychology background and now working in a research organisation in industry (IBM), scored like academics, managed by objective and the processes in trying to get criteria for preferred publication venues changed; cushioning of researchers in the organisation07:30 Discussing reasons for his 9 year PhD – two chronic diseases, costs money, working part-time, and moving across parts of Psychology Dept at Rutgers09:15 Going to work in an industry organisation straight after, seeing academic psychologists not very happy, story of his role model Mark Altan (?) who was dedicated to teaching, received a teaching award which he was told was a ‘kiss of death’, told not going to get tenure, and went to work at Bell Labs. Michael lost his role model. A shearing between surface and deep values – “Didn’t fancy being in an academic environment in which each time I wanted to do something kind or considerate or useful for students I would be jeopardising myself”. Advisor told him “Michael you will have to learn to be a mediocre instructor like the rest of us” because he was being too dedicated to students. So he went into industry, thinking industry jobs were relatively stable compared to not getting tenure.13:55 After finishing degree with 4 hours to spare, finished winter at uni as a research assistant then took his first job at IBM in Charlotte NC but was not the place then as it is now. Within months, the choice was stark, he could stay at IBM or stay married – he chose love and found some way to get them out. Spouse depressed at isolation. Then went to Bellcore for 8 years.16:13 Sometime was in Seattle for a CHI conference, went to Participatory Design Conference nearby, first one in North America and “got religion”! A year later he began to think with two colleagues about how to adapt participatory design (PD) to the American context (though says Susanne Bodker still doesn’t think it was Scandinavian PD); became the existence proof this could work in industry. Industry attention span is brief so they shortened PD methods down to less than 60 mins and conducted a series of conversion experiments. Glory days. They were revelations to people. Showed it was fun, information rich. Local management in Bellcore got it. But then baby Bellcores started taking each other over.20:30 He was doing something pioneering in North American industry context, had thought they were following the Scandinavian model, but with modifications for industry attention span and culturally had to make changes, mostly by intuition, mostly got it right. Said ‘workplace democracy’ over and over again but sometimes got push back and this probably delayed their promotions.22:55 Eventually made the mistake of trying to get a promotion when at Microsoft and within 10 months Microsoft and manager explained what a bad mistake that was! He was given a performance improvement plan – could see it was designed to be non-survivable and the criteria for success were not well spelt out so he could be fired at any time without protections. Accepted that judgement and went away.24:30 Had moved from New Jersey because of spouse at the time found her spiritual life in nature, and a job came up in US West Advanced Technologies in Boulder Colorado – called Terry Roberts (manager) about it, moved there. A different kind of job, interviewing telephone operators to help them lose their job but was also able to show they were doing important knowledge work. CHI 1995 presentation explaining this (link). But he was deemed by management to have helped the wrong side.27:10 He talks of observing operators’ work in a bunch of places, their work being monitored by management, the tension of having sympathies with the workers but reporting to management. He reflects on having just listened to Mark Ackermann talk at ECSCW17 about the far right organising on the internet. He was helping management use technology to displace labour. Principles in a grey area. Lost sleep over it. “I’d say work in any organisation involves some kind compromise of principle at one time or another.” Making it an explicit topic of conversation.30:55 Eventually his work supported using technology to reduce operators so not a clean story. “A politically pure person would have walked away from that job.” Tells Arnie Lund’s story when he worked in a ‘doomed organisation’ and was made to lay people off then lay himself off -because they knew he would hate it and knew he would do it with care for the people. That was their gift to the employees. “So I tried to do things with care […] but at the same time I was hopelessly compromised. That’s the life in an organisation.” Thinks it also happens in academia. “If we work in organisations, organisations have their own logic and it’s a little bit more reptilian, cold blooded, than the logic that most of us bring to each other.”33:50 Continuing to work in industry contexts, for family reasons. Discusses options for moving to academia. Currently has an unpaid academic role at Wellesley College. Paying back white male privilege. If could find a way to increase work in academia without letting people down (the only social scientist now in his group) he would do it. Mentors students in internships.37:45 Doing mentoring, “I’m a white American boy, got all this honour and privilege, let’s do something constructive with it.”, can open doors, and ongoing relationship with students/mentees. Has roughly same job title as started with 1984 because he tried the ‘manager thing’ at Microsoft and it didn’t work. Managing not his skill set but can mentor, also has friends who are female, LGBTQ, native American, etc, and can understand he has had a blessed life so helping to open doors for others. An ongoing mentoring relationship but also responsibility of person to walk through the door. But opening the door an important first step.40:40 Discusses doctoral consortium and career development workshop mentoring experiences. “Our own failures are an important part of what we bring to those.” Some about careers. And it’s thinking together. “Mentoring very quickly becomes two ways.”. Gives example of Shion Guha. Reflects on internship mentoring and transitioning to peers/colleagues.45:55 What is keeping him excited at work? Asked by IBM to work on employee engagement. Doing engagement surveys, find out if there are issues, do an intervention in Jan, but can be too late in next Nov to find out if it worked. So trying to use data from IBM’s thriving social media ecosystems (Bernard Geyers, David Millen’s work) but first attempts didn’t work; now fixed and can get monthly reports. So can describe, predict and now into fixing it by gathering ideas to increase engagement. Making the experience of work a better experience, and helps the organisation. It’s fulfilling.52:56 Other part of job is to help IBM think about leadership position in AI and ethics. Collaboration with Vera Lia0, bringing qualitative methods. Returning to some participatory themes and design fictions and value sensitive design to explore.54:56 Navigating long working hours. “Our work could expand to cover every waking moment that we have and then cause us to have more waking moments. We all have to work out work family balance.” Talks about current partner and “supporting each other as they both over work” and her passion for justice, where both are “trying to make positive change in the world, make up for the good stuff we’ve got”. And the work content is extremely interesting. “I like the work I’m doing, I love the people I’m working with. And it’s work I can hold my head up about. It’s work that I’m thinking is making good kinds of changes. That’s a good life.”59:00 How he maintains his health and wellbeing? “I love people that’s a very healthy thing to do.” “That’s the core spiritual practice… Take care of people… It is to be in relationships in which we are exchanging affection and support.”1:01:03 EndRelated Links:Michael Muller - http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=us-michael_mullerWendy Kellogg - http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=us-wkelloggScott Robertson podcast - https://changingacademiclife.com/blog/2017/7/27/scott-robertsonSusanne Bødker - http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons/id(87d4fbb6-b38c-449e-b87d-59f693b7d6f0).htmlTerry Roberts - http://terroberts.home.mindspring.com/IntDesUAPortfolio/index.htmlMark Ackermann - https://www.si.umich.edu/people/mark-ackermanArnie Lund - https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnielundShion Guha – https://www.shionguha.netDavid Millen - http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=us-david_r_millenMatt Davis - http://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=us-davismatVera Liao - http://qveraliao.comWellesley College - http://cs.wellesley.edu/~oshaer/index.htmlCHI conference - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conference_on_Human_Factors_in_Computing_SystemsParticipatory Design Conference - https://pdc2018.org/about-pdc/Usability Professionals Association - https://uxpa.orgCHI95 paper: Telephone operators as knowledge workers: consultants who meet customer needs - https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=223904.223921Human Computer Interaction Consortium - https://hcic.org/hcic2018/index.phtmlValue Sensitive Design - http://www.vsdesign.org

In this engaging conversation, Jolanta Burke, a Positive Psychologist and Senior Lecturer at the University of East London, shares her journey from business management to academia. She dives deep into the topic of burnout, recounting her personal struggles and the shift towards harmonious passion. Jolanta emphasizes the importance of creating positive workplaces in academia and the role of supervisors in supporting overwhelmed students. She also highlights the need to effectively communicate research to the public, advocating for a balance between knowledge sharing and performance.

Evan Peck, an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Bucknell University, passionately advocates for liberal arts colleges as the ideal balance between teaching, research, and personal life. He discusses his journey through academia, emphasizing the importance of deliberate time management after fatherhood transformed his priorities. Evan highlights the enriching environment of liberal arts institutions, where student engagement takes precedence. He urges PhD students to consider these teaching-rich roles, breaking the mold of traditional academic career paths.

Scott Robertson, a Professor in Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, shares his inspiring journey through academia. Having faced tenure denial twice, he discusses the importance of perseverance, community, and mentorship in overcoming setbacks. Scott reflects on how his early career as a child actor enriched his understanding of human interaction and ties this to his research in Human-Computer Interaction. He also explores shifts in his academic focus toward civic engagement and the insights gained from failures, urging others to define themselves by their mission rather than their positions.