Capturing contracts: informal activity among contract researchers

Contract researchers constitute an expanding occupational group in UK higher education and contribute significantly to national research output. Despite recent concern and debates over their marginal status and inferior conditions of employment, little is known about the actual complexities of contract researchers’ working lives. Drawing upon qualitative interviews, an attempt is made to remedy this lacuna, by portraying certain kinds of occupational knowledge and practices utilised by social science contract researchers. The paper focuses on the understandings and strategies which are developed and refined as researchers attempt to sustain employment in a highly insecure realm. What is portrayed is not the technical expertise required for this kind of research, but rather the knowledge, acumen and action which are more informal, tacit and indeterminate. This paper examines the cognitive and interactional processes which need to be developed and combined with technical expertise, if employment is to be maintained in such a competitive and insecure field

Working at a marginal ‘career’: the case of UK social science contract researchers

Contract researchers constitute a significant occupational group within the UK higher education system, and the products of their labour are crucial to the research profile of the institutions in which they work and to the sector as a whole. Given the ‘marginality’ of the contract researcher role, with its attendant insecurities and inferior employment conditions in comparison with ‘permanent’ faculty, it is perhaps not surprising that relatively few individuals manage to sustain any continuity of employment resembling a career path. The fact that some researchers do succeed in achieving this is therefore worthy of investigation. This paper examines and charts some of the ways in which contract researchers manage their everyday work routines and construct a presentation of self in order to maximise opportunities for ‘staying in the game’