Holding on to your values as motivation booster
With Dr Briony Birdi
It was her experience supporting researchers, when she worked in a university library in Oxford as a graduate, that got her the first taste for the research process. With a Master in Librarianship, she initially embarked on a career in the book trade, before starting a research contract in Birmingham. The richness of her professional experiences as a practitioner, contributed greatly to getting her first lectureship. Briony entered academic life having already gained a substantial experience as a researcher. The PhD came after, when she was already working as an academic. Undertaking her PhD whilst lecturing and becoming a mum have meant making hard choices and keeping resilient.
About Briony
Briony is a senior lecturer in the Information School at The University of Sheffield.
A commitment to doing research that contributes to giving voice to an area of public life often brushed aside, has fuelled her research motivation. Adapting her professional goals and work patterns to her family reality have been part of her academic resilience.
Get in touch with Briony via her university webpage
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking about:
How you may adapt your academic working patterns to suit different stages of your personal life
That part-time working does not mean stopping you from daring to apply for leadership roles
Taking a leadership role in your institution contributes to a rich academic life
How harsh criticism can fuel your motivation to do the research that you believe matters
Some reflections and questions to ponder based on my discussion with Briony
Choosing a research area that you feel matters
You can clearly hear how paying attention to her values is at the core of the approach that Briony has had in making decisions about what mattered to her to explore in her research. She felt compelled to work in an area that she perceived as important and needing a voice. For her, that space was research at the intersection of public library, social justice and minority reading. The pull to work in this area was not driven by the funding landscape, quite the opposite. It was the observation of the lack of funding in the field and the dismissive attitude of a well-meaning senior academic colleague that fuelled her fire in choosing this area as her research niche. Her motivation to dedicate her research to this area was about seeing the potential to bring change in a domain of public life mostly ignored.
Briony has had to adapt her professional goals along her path. At this stage, her perception of success as an academic, is about getting people, particularly people from practice, get in touch with her for her advice and contributions. This feels incredibly rewarding to her.
o How are your own values contributing to the choices you are making in your research career?
o Living your research life on your own terms is about not losing sight of your values. Do you check whether your values are met when you need to make decisions in your research career?
o What is currently missing in your research life, when it comes to doing work that you feel really matter? What are the alternative routes to getting your values met as part of your portfolio of professional activities?
Finding your allies
By building opportunities to develop interdisciplinary projects with multiple external collaborators, from non-academic environments, Briony will have learnt a great deal in communicating to different audiences. These multiple collaborative exchanges have been excellent spaces to receive constructive feedback on ideas from diverse groups of people.
Her experience of receiving a passing comment from a supposed mentor telling her that her research topic was dead in the water has been a turning point in her research life. This could have been the end of the research she wanted to do. This could have derailed her stride.
Following receiving this comment that shook her to her core, she needed to pause and reflect on what this mentor had said. She took to writing a blog article to process her thinking about the comment of her colleague. Through writing this article, she was able to reaffirm her commitment to the research that mattered to her. The positive comments that she received from others following the publication of this blog post was key in asserting her that her choice of research area mattered to others too. This experience was significant in realising her own commitment, resilience and confidence in her own research choices. From her experience, we can take that choosing the right allies and who we asked feedback from matters a great deal.
o Who do you ask when you need some tough love with your research ideas?
o Who are the individuals that you truly trust to have your back and at the same time are able to provide the constructive feedback that you need?
o Who are you better avoiding when it comes to feedback so that you can maintain your confidence whilst receiving the necessary critical eye on your work?
How daring have you been?
When I asked this question to Briony she initially responded by saying “I haven’t…” then pause and restarted “perhaps, I have…”. She then went on to say that she had:
- Asserted herself
- Defended her position
- Brought themes in research applications that really mattered to her
- Become more comfortable asking challenging questions in meetings instead of leaving them without asking
At this stage in her career, Briony is reluctant to describe herself as a research leader as she feels that whilst she has had significant leadership roles in the institution, she still feels she is on a learning journey when it comes to building larger research programmes. We rarely recognise how much we have progressed in our learning and career, and do not recognise the maturity we have acquired in our life and professional context. It is often in the context of interviews, coaching sessions, or small group discussions in workshops that people raise their awareness of what they have actually achieved, the courage they have had and the resilience they are continuously building.
Taking the role of co-director for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) for the Faculty of Social Sciences, as a junior academic was certainly a very daring step that Briony took to build her leadership within the institution. The role had never existed before, and there was no established governance. Bringing the voice of EDI issues into the conversation at faculty executive board has felt a rewarding role, which Briony feel proud of. Working with colleagues to change EDI practices in a huge faculty with 13 departments is no small feat. Briony feels that progress has been made and that EDI is now a real part of the conversation and has moved beyond a tick box exercise.
Her approach to being a supportive research leader is to support junior colleagues, to listen and not judge and to provide constructive feedback. She is also very thoughtful in implementing EDI practices in her own academic life. For example, she describes first checking out who is on a panel when she is asked to contribute, to make sure that panel organisers ensure that Black and Ethnic minorities (BAME) academics have also been considered. She is committed to not take the place of a potential BAME speaker. This is an important step in living EDI commitments. Many people will have good intentions in supporting BAME early career academics, but if an opportunity is offered to them, especially for early career researchers/ academics, holding accountable organisers is not something many have the courage to do.
o What actions have you taken yourself to be supportive of academic colleagues from Black and Ethnic minorities ?
o Can you challenge yourself to never leave a meeting without asking the hard question that no one dares asking?
o Are you aware of the potential leadership roles available to you in your department?
Words of wisdom to her young self:
· Have more confidence- many of us continue to need this mantra throughout our professional life!
· Have a thing that you are known for
· Be prepared to experience other things
· Don’t say yes to everything, just to be a good citizen
· Don’t assume that others know better than you
· Look outside your research area/ your institution for varied collaborators.
“great collaborators can be found in surprising places”
