On boundaries

The history department within which I work has just instituted a system of research mentoring groups. These informal groups of people with loosely (sometimes very loosely) connected research interests are designed to offer support and share best practice. Why, then, did I came out of our group meeting feeling overwhelmed, depressed and seriously contemplating a career in publishing?

My job, although I am on a teaching only contract, involves research and more significantly, publishing that research, teaching and administration (I also still freelance as dictated by my finances). The order I have listed those areas in is a reflection of their importance, but not the amount of time I spend on them. In an ideal world, we would all be doing research led teaching and publishing superb articles each year in the leading referred journals. Administration would be kept to a minimum; our students would all be motivated and engaged and there would be time to debate with colleagues the latest developments in our field. Excellence in teaching would be as rewarded as excellence in research, as would be ability to make a significant contribution to the department in terms of being a good citizen. We do not, however, live in an ideal world and sometimes it seems that the way to get a permanent job lies in disinterest and selfishness as well as the obvious ability to play a game to unwritten rules.

Ok, I may be stereotyping somewhat, but as with most stereotypes there is a grain of truth in there somewhere. From my own experience, the importance of the monograph was stressed so much by various senior people that writing it became a hoop to jump through. At the same time, I was being urged to publish in the leading scholarly journals along with my peers: publish or be damned to an eternity of part-time temporary contracts. Also, one must be a ‘good citizen’, liked and respected by one’s colleagues. There is no phrase more damning than to describe someone as ‘not collegiate’. If these were the only rules, then an academic career would be much easier to navigate, but the problem is that balancing these demands is like negotiating the a path through quicksand: one small slip and you are sinking rapidly. A list of ‘top scholarly journals’ raises more questions than it answers, not least of which is what are the leading scholarly journals? How many different lists of leading scholarly journals exist? How do you maintain excellence in teaching and research without neglecting your students? By ensuring all your admin tasks that impinge on other people are uptodate and so on, how do you avoid being landed with more admin because you are perceived as competent?

The upshot of the research mentoring meeting was that one of the most brilliant people in the department thought that s/he was not successful; I became conscious of just how little I have done in comparison to my brilliant peers; and the third member of the meeting just looked increasingly bewildered. Now added to the list of tasks is now politics and America (getting published in and known in). None of this is news to anyone. Anyone entering the profession knows (and if they don’t, why don’t they?) that international profiles, publications, conferences and so on are the key, but I am acutely conscious of the fact that in being a good teacher and a good citizen, having organised a research seminar series and having published a monograph, I have failed to publish in leading scholarly journals, organise a major international conference in the past three years, given a key note lecture somewhere, pulled in a humongous research grant and set up a series of big collaborative projects.

The things I have done, although important parts of my job, will not allow me to keep this job, so instead of feeling affirmed and helped by the mentoring process, I just felt inadequate. The one thing that comforts me in all of this, is that I am not alone. There are hundreds of people like me just within medieval studies and many more within history as a whole, many of whom are doing interesting and exciting research, but like me, rather slowly (or more positively, as quickly as we can). All we can do, in the words of a V&A t-shirt is ‘Keep calm and carry on’!