This paper explores the ways in which postdoctoral life scientists engage in supervision work in academic institutions in Austria. Reward systems and career conditions in academic institutions in most European and other OECD countries have changed significantly during the last two decades. While an increasing focus is put on evaluating research performances, little reward is attached to excellent performances in mentoring and advising students. Postdoctoral scientists mostly inhabit fragile institutional positions and experience harsh competition, as the number of available senior (...) positions is small compared to that of young scientists striving for an academic career. To prevail in this competition, publications and mobility are key. Educational work is rarely rewarded. Nevertheless, postdocs play a key role in educating PhD students, as overburdened senior scientists often pass on practical supervision duties to their postdoctoral fellows. This paper shows how under these conditions, postdocs reframe the students they supervise as potential resources for co-authored publications. What might look like a mutually beneficial solution at a first glance, in practice implies the subordination of the values of education to the logic of production, which marginalizes spaces primarily devoted to education. The author argues that conflicts like this are indicative of broader changes in the cultural norms of science and academic citizenship, rendering community-oriented tasks such as education work less attractive to academic scientists. Since education and supervision work are central cornerstones of any functioning higher education and research system, this could have negative repercussions for the long-term development of academic institutions. (shrink)

This article explores local variations in scientific practice through the lens of scientists’ international mobility. Its aim is twofold: to explore how the notion of epistemic living spaces may be mobilised as a tool for systematically exploring differences in scientific practice across locations, and to contribute to literature on scientific mobility. Using material from an interview study with scientists with experience of international mobility, and epistemic living spaces as an analytical frame, the paper describes a set of aspects of life (...) in science that interviewees described as being different in different places. These axes of variation were: embodied routines of research; resource levels and salaries; daily or longer-term rhythms of scientific life ; ‘efficiency’ and how work time is used; degree of hierarchy; the nature of social interactions between colleagues; the purposes of research; the social and interpersonal organisation of knowledge production; and the scale or ambition of research. In presenting an exploratory overview of these variations, the article points the way for future comparative investigation of epistemic cultures through studies of international mobility. (shrink)

This article draws upon concepts developed in recent empirical and theoretical work on high skilled and academic mobility and migration including accidental mobility, forced mobility and negotiated mobility. These concepts inform a situated, qualitative study of mobility among international postdoctoral researchers in life sciences and engineering fields who were employed at US and UK universities in 2008 and 2009. Informed by epistemological methods in the Foucauldian tradition of discourse and governmentality, the study explores how policy discourse and technologies empower and (...) limit scientists and engineers in negotiating employment arrangements across national boundaries. (shrink)

The relationship between the international mobility of academic researchers and social capital is complex. On the one hand, the literature suggests that social capital facilitates the international mobility of academics which, in turn, promotes the accumulation of international social capital, enhances research productivity, and advances careers. On the other hand, international mobility can isolate researchers from the national social capital in their origin countries. In this paper, I present the results of 42 interviews in Canada and Germany to examine how (...) academics in both countries have experienced the connection between international mobility and social capital. In addition to revealing the complexity of this connection, the results show that social capital facilitates international mobility and that mobility sometimes creates social capital. However, mobility can also lead to the loss of national social capital that negatively affects early-career researchers in particular. (shrink)

La multiplication des contrats à durée déterminée constitue une caractéristique importante des marchés académiques contemporains. Ce phénomène de précarisation, observable dans plusieurs contextes disciplinaires et nationaux, se manifeste notamment par l’augmentation marquée, depuis les années 1990, du nombre d’emplois postdoctoraux, proportionnellement au nombre de postes stabilisés. Parallèlement, les chercheur⋅e⋅s en début de carrière sont largement confronté⋅e⋅s à des discours institutionnels faisant la promotion des mobilités académiques et des collaborations internationales. L’abondance des discours autour de la mobilité des jeunes chercheur⋅e⋅s tend (...) cependant à masquer la pérennité des modèles de carrières nationaux, très variables d’un pays à l’autre du fait de l’histoire particulière des espaces concernés. À partir des données quantitatives et qualitatives sur les expériences de début de carrière académique en Suisse, notre article vise à pointer comment l’impératif de mobilité internationale – particulièrement fort dans le contexte helvétique contemporain – s’hybride avec le modèle de carrière en vigueur depuis le début du xxe siècle. L’analyse croisée des déterminants structurels des débuts de carrières académiques et des récits des « postdocs » permet de comprendre les différentes manières « d’être » postdoctorant⋅e⋅s et les potentielles (dés)illusions qui les accompagnent, tout en pointant le caractère socialement situé de ces expériences – notamment en termes de genre. Elle offre également un éclairage plus général sur les tensions qui structurent l’espace académique suisse à l’heure de son internationalisation. (shrink)