Challenging career models in higher education: the influence of internal career scripts and the rise of the “concertina” career

The paper develops the metaphorical concept of the “concertina” career to describe ways in which academic staff, across a diversifying workforce, modulate their interactions with institutional career frameworks, which tend to be unilinear and to be characterised by detailed progression criteria and milestones. In doing this, they are guided by Internal career scripts, providing an additional dimension to the dichotomy of boundaried and boundaryless careers found in the literature. Drawing on a longitudinal study between 2017 and 2020, of forty-nine mid-career academic staff across eight UK universities, consideration is given to individuals’ spatial movements, for instance, between academic activities, and professional and personal commitments; and the manipulation of timescales to accelerate or decelerate career progress in relation to opportunities and constraints. The study shows ways in which the spatial parameters of a career are being stretched in order to accommodate new forms of academic work supplementing disciplinary activity, such as online learning, employability initiatives and public engagement, as well as work-life considerations. In addition, individuals are adapting timescales to accommodate professional activities such as health practice or community outreach, as well as personal commitments such as caring responsibilities. Thus, in the concertina career, individuals expand and contract activity, as well as extending and compressing timescales. As a result, it is concluded that institutional career models do not entirely reflect the reality of career-making by individuals, which is likely to involve detours (therefore a spatial dimension) and a disruption of assumed timelines (therefore a temporal dimension)

The future higher education workforce in locally and globally engaged HEIs

The purpose of this four-year research project is to investigate the implications of the diversification of the academic workforce in the UK and to indicate how higher education institutions might plan strategically for their future staffing needs, and how sector bodies could support this. Through the study, we aim to develop a deeper understanding of the roles and career trajectories of staff in UK higher education who are involved in academic work. This focuses on those with conventional (i.e. teaching and research) roles and more recent forms of academic contract (e.g. teaching and scholarship). However, it also includes those performing academic roles (for example, in learning support, online learning, widening participation and recruitment) who do not have academic contracts. This concept paper aims to situate this research in the relevant literature, outlines some of the conceptual frameworks we are employing, describes the research design that flows from these and indicates some of the project outputs and planned outcomes. A companion review of recent literature (2013-16) is included as an appendix

The future higher education workforce in locally and globally engaged higher education institutions: a review of literature on the topic of 'the academic workforce'

Working Paper 43, authored by Dr Giulio Marini, Professor William Locke and Dr Celia Whitchurch, reviews the literature on the academic workforce, undertaking an in-depth review of journals dedicated to higher education studies, and other academic journals where contributions to the field occur. It is published two years after the start of CGHE research project 3.2, The future higher education workforce in locally and globally engaged HEIs. More than 200 publications were identified, including journal articles and monographs between 2013 and 2017, searching by keywords such as “career”, “gender + academia”, “labour market”, “division of labour”, “working conditions”, “mobility”, “casualization”, “mentorship”, etc. (all ‘& “higher education”’ where the journal was not dedicated to the field). The aim of the literature review is to highlight trends in the international literature, covering theoretical approaches, policy perspectives and empirical work. The analysis also considers the traditional disciplines relevant to the topic of the academic workforce, including economics, management, sociology, social psychology and public administration. The authors were interested in understanding which perspectives, approaches and methods are most used by researchers in the field, and which less so, and to detect possible gaps to be filled, emerging trends that have not yet been fully explained, and new perspectives on familiar issues. The main findings of the review can be expressed as two interrelated aspects of academic work and careers informing the interpretation of the primary data collected for the project so far. These are the personal agency of the individuals who work in academia (the individual career aspect), and the organisation of work and careers within academia (the organisational aspect). For the first aspect, it appears that, currently, the British higher education system is a collection of heterogeneous employers within which individuals may find different opportunities, not only in terms of career pathways or tracks (e.g. linked to traditional teaching-plus-research, teaching-only and research-only), but also in terms of varying degrees of flexibility and autonomy. For the second, organisational aspect, the literature review reveals that ‘human resource management’, a term that is contested in a higher education environment, is seen as having a stronger profile than hitherto. However, it also suggests that managing people in higher education is more complex than organisational policies and procedures alone might imply, and that the picture is, therefore, more nuanced, Overall, the review suggests that despite an apparent division of labour between teaching and research activity, evidenced by, for instance, teaching-only and research-only roles in some institutions, in practice the interpretation of policy at middle management level has helped to modulate these trends

A delicate balance: optimising individual aspirations and institutional missions in higher education

This working paper offers an analysis of the interviews undertaken as the first stage of CGHE Project 3.2, with senior managers and academic staff, in eight universities. It explores the approaches taken by both groups in addressing institutional and individual aspirations, the relationships between individuals and their institutions, and ways in which both are likely to be realised in practice via local managers such as heads of department and programme or project leaders. Three approaches to roles and careers are identified, described as Mainstream, Portfolio and Niche, demonstrating how these may be adopted by individuals at different times and in different circumstances. An overview is then taken of the delicate balance that exists between institutional policy, its local interpretation and day-to-day practice, as well as ways in which bottom up initiatives may in turn influence policy making

Beyond administration and management: reconstructing the identities of professional staff in UK higher education

This paper describes an empirical study associated with earlier reviews of the changing roles and identities of contemporary professional staff in UK higher education (Whitchurch, 2004; 2006a; 2006b). The study draws on the narratives of twenty-four individuals to illustrate that identity movements cannot be captured solely in terms of a shift from ?administration? to ?management?, or of a collective process of professionalisation. Contemporary ideas about the fluidity of identity (Delanty, 2008; Taylor, 2008) are used to theorise the empirical data, and to develop a conceptual framework that describes emerging identities by means of three categories of bounded, cross-boundary, and unbounded professionals. This framework demonstrates that professional staff are not only interpreting their given roles more actively, but that they are also moving laterally across functional and institutional boundaries to create new professional spaces, knowledges, relationships and legitimacies. It is suggested, therefore, that the roles and identities of professional staff are more complex and dynamic than organisation charts or job descriptions might suggest

Extracellular DNA release from the genome-reduced pathogen Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae is essential for biofilm formation on abiotic surfaces

© 2018 The Author(s). Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae is an economically devastating, globally disseminated pathogen that can maintain a chronic infectious state within its host, swine. Here, we depict the events underpinning M. hyopneumoniae biofilm formation on an abiotic surface and demonstrate for the first time, biofilms forming on porcine epithelial cell monolayers and in the lungs of pigs, experimentally infected with M. hyopneumoniae. Nuclease treatment prevents biofilms forming on glass but not on porcine epithelial cells indicating that extracellular DNA (eDNA), which localises at the base of biofilms, is critical in the formation of these structures on abiotic surfaces. Subpopulations of M. hyopneumoniae cells, denoted by their ability to take up the dye TOTO-1 and release eDNA, were identified. A visually distinct sub-population of pleomorphic cells, that we refer to here as large cell variants (LCVs), rapidly transition from phase dark to translucent "ghost" cells. The translucent cells accumulate the membrane-impermeable dye TOTO-1, forming readily discernible membrane breaches immediately prior to lysis and the possible release of eDNA and other intracellular content (public goods) into the extracellular environment. Our novel observations expand knowledge of the lifestyles adopted by this wall-less, genome-reduced pathogen and provide further insights to its survival within farm environments and swine

Segmentation and tracking individual pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria in dense populations of motile cells

The dynamics of individual bacteria underlies the manifestation of complex multicellular behaviours such as biofilm development and colony expansion. High resolution movies of expanding bacterial colonies reveal intriguing patterns of cell motions. A quantitative understanding of the observed behaviour in relation to the bacteria's own motile apparatus and to hydrodynamic forces requires that bacteria be identified and tracked over time. This represents a demanding undertaking as their size is close to the diffraction limit; they are very close to each other; and a typical image may contain over a thousand cells. Here, we describe the approach that we have developed to segment individual bacteria and track them in high resolution phase contrast microscopy movies. We report that over 99% of non-overlapping bacteria could be segmented correctly using mathematical morphology, and we present preliminary results that exploit this new capability. © 2009 IEEE

Expanding the parameters of academia

This paper draws on qualitative data gathered from two studies funded by the UK Leadership Foundation for Higher Education to examine the expansion of academic identities in higher education. It builds on Whitchurch’s earlier work, which focused primarily on professional staff, to suggest that the emergence of broadly based projects such as widening participation, learning support and community partnership is also impacting on academic identities. Thus, academic as well as professional staff are increasingly likely to work in multi-professional teams across a variety of constituencies, as well as with external partners, and the binary distinction between ‘academic’ and ‘non-academic’ roles and activities is no longer clear-cut. Moreover, there is evidence from the studies of an intentionality about deviations from mainstream academic career routes among respondents who could have gone either way. Consideration is therefore given to factors that influence individuals to work in more project-oriented areas, as well as to variables that affect ways in which these roles and identities develop. Finally, three models of academically oriented project activity are identified, and the implications of an expansion of academic identities are reviewed

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is capable of natural transformation in biofilms

Abstract Natural transformation is a mechanism that enables competent bacteria to acquire naked, exogenous DNA from the environment. It is a key process that facilitates the dissemination of antibiotic resistance and virulence determinants throughout bacterial populations. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic Gram-negative pathogen that produces large quantities of extracellular DNA (eDNA) that is required for biofilm formation. P. aeruginosa has a remarkable level of genome plasticity and diversity that suggests a high degree of horizontal gene transfer and recombination but is thought to be incapable of natural transformation. Here we show that P. aeruginosa possesses homologs of all proteins known to be involved in natural transformation in other bacterial species. We found that P. aeruginosa in biofilms is competent for natural transformation of both genomic and plasmid DNA. Furthermore, we demonstrate that type IV pili (T4P) facilitate but are not absolutely essential for natural transformation in P. aeruginosa