These articles were published in the second edition of the AYA magazine, in which we zoomed in on the young academic. Who are the people behind science policy? What drives them, what obstacles do they experience and what support do they need to achieve success and well-being in their careers? Rather than merely looking at academic achievements, we should be mindful of various paths to academic success and personal backgrounds, motivations and needs, to enable conditions for young academics to flourish. Such needs for support vary. Examples include conversations with peers on work-life balance and setting boundaries, having a mentor for career development advice, or having access to courses – for example on how to network.
I dream of a university where it is more than a place just to teach, just to research, just to meet, or just to deal with work politics, but an academic home where everything and everyone are entangled and vibrantly connected to each other to create fulfilment.
One of the beautiful aspects of academia is that it is a place where we can strive for the impossible. In the #mythicalsuperhero campaign, we visualised the academic superhero to ask ourselves: are they a healthy incentive or not?
Interdisciplinarity is currently a major hype in academia. But what is it, what is it good for and how do we put interdisciplinarity into practice? Because of the lack of information available, we decided to develop a guide on interdisciplinarity.
During a conversation on work-life balance in academia, we realised that we both had different outlooks on the topic. We wondered what the effects were of being the first person in a family to pursue an academic career on a person’s mindset and success within academia.