In Search of a Community: Navigating the Academic Spaces of Belonging as a Postdoctoral Fellow

Abstract

Postdoctoral fellowships are an important career phase for early career researchers. This part of one's career is often characterised by stress, loneliness and anxiety about the future. Moreover, postdoctoral fellowships are, by definition, individualistic and career oriented. We ask: how do postdoctoral fellowships provide the means for an academic sense of belonging – if they do? In this chapter, we explore this complex question by introducing two personal narratives of navigating the spaces of belonging (and not belonging) during postdoctoral fellowships. First, the first author (Juuso) explores his experiences as a fellow in two postdoctoral programmes. Next, the second author (Robyn) provides a supervisor's reflection. We analyse these narratives with the theoretical lens of a sense of belonging, understood as an affective, physical, social and political phenomenon. Our narratives shed light on how belonging is built within postdoctoral fellowships' often cold and lonely structures. We particularly discuss the spaces of non-belonging that might simultaneously empower and disempower postdoctoral fellows (as well as their supervisors).

Citation

Nieminen, J.H. and Ruttenberg-Rozen, R. (2024), "In Search of a Community: Navigating the Academic Spaces of Belonging as a Postdoctoral Fellow", Aarnikoivu, M. and Le, A.T. (Ed.) Building Communities in Academia (Surviving and Thriving in Academia), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 43-58. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83797-500-620241004