Radical Thinking, Creative Solutions: Career issues in UK academic research

The problems faced by the UK's academic research community (such as insufficient rewards, lack of career structure and poor people management) have been well documented. To help guide future policies and practices of funding bodies and higher education institutions, the Wellcome Trust hosted a one-off conference designed to encourage people to discuss and develop innovative solutions for the difficulties faced by UK academic researchers.

The conference, 'Radical Thinking, Creative Solutions: Career issues in UK academic research', was held in July 2001 and gave delegates from academia, funding agencies, government and industry a unique opportunity to step away from their usual stances and think of radical ways to improve contemporary research life. A report capturing the outputs of the conference is now available.

Commenting on the conference, Patricia Chisholm, Career Development Programme Manager at the Wellcome Trust, said: "By taking people away from their usual environment, we created an opportunity for them to indulge in creative thinking. We are extremely pleased with the outcome of this event and it has given us a number of novel ideas which we will explore with other interested parties in the near future. Improving academic research careers is a collective responsibility, and we hope we have added some value and contributed to the broader national debate on this issue."

Download the report, 'Radical Thinking, Creative Solutions: Career Issues in UK Academic Research' [PDF 1.9MB].