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

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

A36-dependent actin filament nucleation promotes release of vaccinia virus

Cell-to-cell transmission of vaccinia virus can be mediated by enveloped virions that remain attached to the outer surface of the cell or those released into the medium. During egress, the outer membrane of the double-enveloped virus fuses with the plasma membrane leaving extracellular virus attached to the cell surface via viral envelope proteins. Here we report that F-actin nucleation by the viral protein A36 promotes the disengagement of virus attachment and release of enveloped virus. Cells infected with the A36YdF virus, which has mutations at two critical tyrosine residues abrogating localised actin nucleation, displayed a 10-fold reduction in virus release. We examined A36YdF infected cells by transmission electron microscopy and observed that during release, virus appeared trapped in small invaginations at the plasma membrane. To further characterise the mechanism by which actin nucleation drives the dissociation of enveloped virus from the cell surface, we examined recombinant viruses by super-resolution microscopy. Fluorescently-tagged A36 was visualised at sub-viral resolution to image cell-virus attachment in mutant and parental backgrounds. We confirmed that A36YdF extracellular virus remained closely associated to the plasma membrane in small membrane pits. Virus-induced actin nucleation reduced the extent of association, thereby promoting the untethering of virus from the cell surface. Virus release can be enhanced via a point mutation in the luminal region of B5 (P189S), another virus envelope protein. We found that the B5P189S mutation led to reduced contact between extracellular virus and the host membrane during release, even in the absence of virus-induced actin nucleation. Our results posit that during release virus is tightly tethered to the host cell through interactions mediated by viral envelope proteins. Untethering of virus into the surrounding extracellular space requires these interactions be relieved, either through the force of actin nucleation or by mutations in luminal proteins that weaken these interactions. © 2013 Horsington et al

The Effect of New Zealand Kanuka, Manuka and Clover Honeys on Bacterial Growth Dynamics and Cellular Morphology Varies According to the Species

Treatment of chronic wounds is becoming increasingly difficult due to antibiotic resistance. Complex natural products with antimicrobial activity, such as honey, are now under the spotlight as alternative treatments to antibiotics. Several studies have shown honey to have broad-spectrum antibacterial activity at concentrations present in honey dressings, and resistance to honey has not been attainable in the laboratory. However not all honeys are the same and few studies have used honey that is well defined both in geographic and chemical terms. Here we have used a range of concentrations of clover honey and a suite of manuka and kanuka honeys from known geographical locations, and for which the floral source and concentration of methylglyoxal and hydrogen peroxide potential were defined, to determine their effect on growth and cellular morphology of four bacteria: Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. While the general trend in effectiveness of growth inhibition was manuka>manuka-kanuka blend>kanuka>clover, the honeys had varying and diverse effects on the growth and cellular morphology of each bacterium, and each organism had a unique response profile to these honeys. P. aeruginosa showed a markedly different pattern of growth inhibition to the other three organisms when treated with sub-inhibitory concentrations of honey, being equally sensitive to all honeys, including clover, and the least sensitive to honey overall. While hydrogen peroxide potential contributed to the antibacterial activity of the manuka and kanuka honeys, it was never essential for complete growth inhibition. Cell morphology analysis also showed a varied and diverse set of responses to the honeys that included cell length changes, cell lysis, and alterations to DNA appearance. These changes are likely to reflect the different regulatory circuits of the organisms that are activated by the stress of honey treatment. © 2013 Lu et al

MIR137 is an androgen regulated repressor of an extended network of transcriptional coregulators

Androgens and the androgen receptor (AR) play crucial roles in male development and the pathogenesis and progression of prostate cancer (PCa). The AR functions as a ligand dependent transcription factor which recruits multiple enzymatically distinct epigenetic coregulators to facilitate transcriptional regulation in response to androgens. Over-expression of AR coregulators is implicated in cancer. We have shown that over-expression of KDM1A, an AR coregulator, contributes to PCa recurrence by promoting VEGFA expression. However the mechanism(s) whereby AR coregulators are increased in PCa remain poorly understood. In this study we show that the microRNA hsa-miR-137 (miR137) tumor suppressor regulates expression of an extended network of transcriptional coregulators including KDM1A/LSD1/AOF1, KDM2A/JHDM1A/FBXL11, KDM4A/JMJD2A, KDM5B JARID1B/PLU1, KDM7A/JHDM1D/PHF8, MED1/TRAP220/DRIP205 and NCoA2/SRC2/TIF2. We show that expression of miR137 is increased by androgen in LnCaP androgen PCa responsive cells and that the miR137 locus is epigenetically silenced in androgen LnCaP:C4-2 and PC3 independent PCa cells. In addition, we found that restoration of miR137 expression down-regulates expression of VEGFA, an AR target gene, which suggests a role of miR137 loss also in cancer angiogenesis. Finally we show functional inhibition of mIR137 function enhanced androgen induction of PSA/KLK3 expression. Our data indicate that miR137 functions as an androgen regulated suppressor of androgen signaling by modulating expression of an extended network of transcriptional coregulators. Therefore, we propose that epigenetic silencing of miR137 is an important event in promoting androgen signaling during prostate carcinogenesis and progression