A new network at University College London hopes to lobby the government to raise awareness of the struggles of ¡°well-educated, broke¡± early career researchers.

The group of junior academics, working in UCL¡¯s Populations and Lifelong Health Domain, want to highlight the issues faced by researchers on fixed-term contracts and give those early in their careers a voice within university management.

They argue that PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and research associates are an ¡°absolutely essential part of science¡± but are one of the most ¡°vulnerable groups¡± in terms of job security.

Data presented at the first meeting of the group suggested that one institute in the domain had 124 non-clinical postdoctoral researchers, but just 13 lecturing positions that they could progress to, reflecting the competition that junior researchers face.

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Ed Fottrell, chair of the network¡¯s committee and a lecturer at the UCL Institute for Global Health, said that these statistics, from UCL¡¯s Institute of Child Health, were ¡°depressing¡±.

Dr Fottrell said it was important that early career researchers confronted the problems brought about by fixed-term contracts, lack of support and career expectations. He said that almost all early career researchers dwell on the things that they need to do to climb the ¡°steep stairs of success¡±.

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He added that junior research staff face difficulties because they ¡°are well educated, broke, because they spent all their money being educated [and] doing science at an age when they are trying to start families and buy houses¡±.

Dr Fottrell continued: ¡°The network is going to tackle these ideas collectively rather than each of us lying awake at night individually¡­We want to be realistic and see all the problems but we want to sprinkle some optimism and support.¡±

He added that many of these problems are not due to university policies and that the network had ¡°ambitious¡± aims to raise awareness of them with government.

The network, which was launched on 3 September, hopes to inspire and support people. With a small amount of funding from UCL it will run events and provide advice, mentoring and networking opportunities, as well as offering insight about careers outside of academia.

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holly.else@tesglobal.com