The Early Career Researcher Podcast

In our latest episode, Charlie and Rosie are joined by our friend and colleague Alex, and we revisit the thorny topic of edited volumes. Designed as collections of essays which all explore a particular theme or topic from differing perspectives and by multiple different writers, edited volumes can make s useful way to contribute to scholarship. Rosie, Alex and Charlie bring their own mix of academ...

In this episode, Charlie and Rosie are joined by our friend and colelague Kate, to dicuss the various types of leadership roles that can be part of an academic career. As a current Head of Department (and YES, she is also a medievalist scholar) Kate helps us to walk through 1) types of leadership roles that are available in UK and US academia, 2) the ways in which an Early Career Researcher can ga...

Welcome back to the pod! After a bit of a break, Charlie and Rosie are back with our new guest Ben, to talk about Visiting Fellowships. Together, we discuss: 1) what Visiting Fellowships are (spoiler: a period of time spent away from your home institution, travelling to a special place to conduct research with materials that you cannot access at home), 2) how the application process works, 3) what...

Charlie and Rosie return in our latet episode, where we are joined by our mutual friend, Rob, to talk about a not very exciting but very important job: making an index for your book. Anyone who has written their own book or anyone who has produced an edited volume, will be familiar with the dreaded INDEX. These days, authors and editors are usually responsible for producing their own index. This m...

In this episode, Charlie an Rosie are joined by our new guest Jo, who had a successful academic career before starting her own business as a freelance copyeditor. Anybody who wants to publish academic research will probably at some point find themselves working with a copyeditor. The copyeditor has traditionally been an essential toolkit in academic publishing – they are the person who takes your...

This week, Charlie and Rosie are joined by new friends Jo and Ben, as we discuss the HUGE and multifaceted topic of neurodivertiy in academia. Jo, Ben, and Charlie reflect on our experiences of late diagnosis, managing the impact of our spicy brains on our academic lives, working relationships, and our lives outside of work, and then we give some advice and definitions on where to get support if y...

Inspired by recent life events, Charlie and Rachael meet to discuss what it is like to leave a job (or a degree programme) in academia, and what ECRs should be thinking about when starting a new role. As we know well, leaving an academic post can be very stressful: it can involve a lot of uncertainty, self-doubt, and pressure. But there are also huge positives to starting in a new post, and we wan...

In this episode, we welcome back Rosie, and witness the long-awaited return of one of our founders, Olivia! Like many people who are coming to the end of their time as PhD researchers, Olivia is now exploring the ways in which she can start publishing her research. One of these potential avenues, is to turn some of her research into an article for an academic journal, and so we thought it would be...

In this episode, Charlie is joined by special guest and academic history coach Nicholas Morton, Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences at Nottingham Trent University (UK). Nic lends his insight into the process of dealing with criticism in academia. We discuss: 1) the places in which we often encounter criticism (including peer review of our publications, book reviews, and Q+A at con...

In this episode, Charlie is joined by our long-time friend of the show Laura, plus two new guests, Isla and Josh, as we talk about what it is like to attend your first large conference. Laura and Charlie have attended lots of large conferences together, but Josh and Isla were attending their first ever events as PhD researchers. We talked about 1) why you might want to attend large conferences; 2)...

Following on from last time, when we discussed teaching in schools as a post-academic career option, this week, Charlie and Stephanie meet to discuss teaching opportunities for early career researchers in universities (spoiler alert: Rachael never made it!) Stephanie (recently appointed as a BBC New Generation Thinker: hooray!) is studying to be elected as a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Acade...

In this episode, Charlie and Rosie are joined by a very special guest, Catherine, as we talk about career paths in school teaching. This is a career path that for some, leads on quite naturally from academia, and which allows some academics to fulfil some of their biggest career ambitions. But what does school teaching actually entail, what is it like, and what are the good (and bad) reasons for c...

In this episode, Charlie and Rosie are joined by our long-time friend of the show Ana, as we discuss one of the most nerve-wracking challenges in academia: how to do your best in academic job interviews. We discuss the likely format of interviews (online, in person, presentation elements, panel Q+A etc.), talk about some of the likely questions that are often asked of the candidates, and we recoun...

In this episode, Charlie and Rosie are joined by our friend and very special guest, Eleanor Barraclough, as we explore the roles that media work can play in academic and academic-adjacent career paths. Eleanor shares and reflects on her (extensive) experiences in working with radio, TV, and print media, and we explore topics such as: the challenges of getting into media work; the benefits and some...

In this episode, Charlie and Rosie (she's been promoted to an official co-host!) talk with Chris: a US-based academic who returned to University life after a successful career and with busy demands of family life. After an introduction from Chris about her journey and what she is up to now (working as an academic teacher and administrator in the US), Charlie and Rosie ask some key questions includ...

In this episode, Charlie and Rosie are joined by Elizabeth Boyle, author of the book, 'Fierce Appetites: Lessons from my Year of Untamed Thinking', which was published in 2022 and was nominated for multiple literary awards including the Irish Book Awards non-fiction book of the year in that year. Lizzie talks to us about the ways in which writing for non-academics has influenced her career (as an...

In this episode, Charlie and Rosie are joined by special guest Ben Jones, Lecturer at the University of East Anglia and long-term representative of the University and Colleges Union (UCU). We embark on a detailed discussion of the financial crisis that has been affecting academia in the UK over the past few years (and which has hit the humanities hard). We discuss: the causes of the crisis, curren...

In this episode, Charlie is joined by our regular contributor Rosie (Brepols publishers), and our special guest Caroline Palmer (Boydell & Brewer publishers). We discuss challenges and changes seen in academic Humanities publishing over the past 10 years, and give advice on what this means for ECRs, as you seek to disseminate your work among intended readers by liaising with publishers (and hopefu...

For our twentieth episode, Charlie and Rachael spend some time reflecting on a year of working on the ECR Podcast. We discuss our aims when we started, whether we think we've achieved them, what we've enjoyed most about podcasting on this topic, what we've found most difficult, and we talk about plans for what we would like to do next in our future episodes. We hope that this episode offers a fun...

In our latest episode, Charlie and Rachael are joined by Lucy, our resident expert in Public Engagement for the Humanities! We begin by talking about what PE actually is, what PE initiatives can look like and what sort of activities count as public engagement. We give some tips on how to get involved in Public Engagement, what kinds of activities make for successful and not so successful activitie...

In this episode, Charlie, Rachael and Steph convene to talk about writing academic book reviews. Whether you ave no idea what an academic book review is, or if you've thought about writing one but never had the chance, or if you've written several but without really being happy with the results, we have something for you! Join us as we discuss: 1) what academic book reviews are and why they exist,...

In this episode, Charlie is joined by Rosie and a new guest, Stephanie Brown, as we discuss the topic of Edited Volumes. After we start by outlining our varying levels of experience with the genre, we then spend time thinking about: 1) what these edited collections are for and why they exist; 2) how you might go about writing an individual chapter for an edited collection, and 3) how (and how not)...

In this episode, Charlie, Rachael, and Rosie (now official Friend Of The Show) discuss the process of anonymous peer review. We talk about 1) what anonymous peer review is for and how the process works (for monographs as well as journal articles and book-chapters), 2) how it can feel to receive peer review and what some of the challenges are for us as authors; and 3) how to GIVE peer review, for t...

In this episode, Charlie and Rachael are joined by Dr Laura Varnham of Oxford University, as we talk about Imposter Syndrome. We walk through what Imposter Syndrome is, how to spot it, and how we can develop short and long-term strategies for beating it back into the abyss that is belongs in! We recognise that all of us are affected in different ways and that there are no catch-all solutions for b...

In this special 'live' recording, Charlie, Rachael and Olivia were joined by our friends Laura and Rosie, as we engaged in a discussion on publishing academic work in the humanities. The episode was recorded 'live' at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in July (apologies for any issues with the recording quality!) The panel discuss issues such as how to publish your monograph, how to negoti...