Have your say: understanding precarity

Working in collaboration with the Society, a new research project, States of precarity, aims to understand peoples' experiences of precarious working arrangements within geography in the UK higher education sector. These arrangements include, but are not limited to, short-, fixed- and part-time contracts, the requirement to move and/or be mobile, and long probation periods.

The project, led by a team of geographers from UK universities, seeks to capture a broad range of experiences and perspectives – from PhD students to professors to those who have left academia – to better understand the immediate and long-term effects of precarity on UK geography staff, provide a snapshot of the implications of precarity on the discipline, and inform the development of best practice guidelines for UK geography departments.

The first stage of the research involves a qualitative survey, open to all geographers currently or previously employed by and/or undertaking doctoral study in a UK university. The second stage will follow up on the survey results with a series of focus groups.

If you work in UK academic geography, or have done in the past, the project team want to hear from you. Positive or negative, your experiences matter in understanding states of precarity and in working towards improvements in practice. The survey should take 15-20 mins to complete and is open until 24 October.

The project team includes Rachael Squire (Royal Holloway, University of London), Anna Jackman (University of Reading), Peter Forman (Northumbria University), Johanne Bruun (University of Birmingham), Harriet Hawkins (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Rachel Colls (Durham University). To find out more about the project and the team, visit the project’s website.

If you have any questions, you can get in touch with the research team at statesofprecarity@gmail.com or by contacting rhed@rgs.org.

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