Mid-career researchers (MCRs) often quietly shoulder significant competing obligations. Research and development versus academic citizenship. Holding together complex collaborative teams without consistent and structured support. Managing the first steps into greater leadership responsibilities. Amongst many others.
The failure of higher education institutions and professional associations to extend the same resources to those in early-career in turn leads to MCRs experiencing decreased job satisfaction, negatively impacted career advancement, and hindered training uptake. The minimal support that does exist can have poor uptake due to time constraints, shrinking or disappearing informal mentorship spaces, and unclear career progression pathways.
These difficulties are increasingly recognised, with mid-career becoming understood as a critical point that requires tailored guidance while researchers navigate their increasingly numerous and multiple roles and responsibilities.
Recognising the importance of MCR development to enhancing research culture, Queen Mary’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) continues to increase support and resource for conversations about mid-career. Following last year’s single-school pilot, we were given the opportunity to create a faculty-wide project for open dialogue and mutual support.
Thriving Beyond First Promotion Two: HSS Mid-Career Researcher Mentoring offered MCRs a two-day faculty-wide development opportunity centred on mentoring and coaching during their transition to leadership. Day one focussed on navigating mid-career, and day two was devoted to the leadership transition.
We wanted to design a space that moved beyond a narrow focus on KPIs, promotion criteria, and how to get ahead in academia. Instead, we wanted to create a place for genuine reflection that fully recognised lived experience.
Thriving beyond first promotion (two)
We have built a programme that offers participants a structured space to reflect on their own career trajectory through play and creativity.
Together our team planned the workshops to offer structured reflection, career planning, and community building focusing on academic identity, navigating promotions frameworks, leadership development, cultivating a thriving research culture, and work-life balance.
We asked participants in one session, ‘Defining Future Me and My Mid-Career’, to use coloured pens, papers, and post-its to reflect on their personal motivations, skills, and role models. One MCR built a boat to visualise her academic journey, complete with patches to its hull where setbacks occurred.
Another drew a river, representing her career as an expansive river leading to the sea, formed of many separate brooks whose sources originate in early-career. She reflected on how nice it was to remember these initial streams as multiple and meandering inspirational ideas, often forgotten while her career current focuses on more singular objectives as the river flows towards the late-career sea.
In another session participants split into two teams to help them think through different leadership styles and the different roles played by different team members. Teams competed with one another to build the tallest free-standing tower out of only A4 printer paper and masking tape — while not being able to communicate by speaking or writing.
In one break activity, participants split into pairs around the room and stood facing one another. They then took turns carefully studying one another’s shoes, coming up with a list of as many descriptive attributes (e.g., they are covered in a striped pattern) as possible towards a goal of twenty; in doing so engaging their senses, alleviating cognitive fatigue, and restoring concentration.
These more playful gaps supported mind/body focus during or before more serious topics like narrativising career achievements as part of a promotion application.
Play’s importance in mid-career mentoring and coaching
By privileging lived experience over quantitative output measures, participants were able to explore their academic identities and leadership aspirations on their own terms. Our playful methods enabled alternative forms of self-expression and challenged dominant narratives about success.
One participant reflected on how meeting peers from across HSS deconstructed his conception about what he should have accomplished by this point in his career. He thought he would be the oldest participant by far and was surprised to learn that:
“…there are a lot of other folks out there closer to my own age than I’d imagined…[which] was helpful to know.
This highlights the value of shared space to build networks across institutional silos. Second, play created room for open, reflective dialogue that moved beyond metrics and performance indicators. One MCR shared that they were:
“… glad it was an open and honest conversation that didn’t talk about…strategy [or] key performance indicators.
Our findings resonate with growing calls across the sector to take seriously the role of play, creativity, and relational practice in academic development. Research suggests that building a playful learning community is integral in supporting higher education working environments.
As the sector strives to embed researcher development and leadership frameworks more deeply within institutional life, higher education institutions must also consider how informal physical spaces, appropriate support structures, and play enable academics across career stages to thrive.
Following playful leadership activities undertaken by the Playful Learning Association, researchers have further made the case for playful leadership as a leadership style that is open to change, overcomes risk aversion, and foregrounds a bravery that endorses new approaches. These values align with the kind of academic cultures urgently needed in the face of increasing bureaucratic and performance pressures.
We thank Professor Rosie Campbell and Professor (Hon) Amy Bonsall for their substantial contributions as development consultants and co-facilitators during the programme’s design and delivery