50 Things to Think About as an Early Career Researcher: Paving Your Way to Success

by Margaret J. Robertson, Donna Starks, Gaelle Horsley

Overview

This book for Early Career Researchers (ECRs) provides vital insights for jump-starting your research career and guidance on how you can find your own ways of knowing, being, doing, and communicating to progress your career.

Charting a course through the first years of a research career, while retaining control of your life and your authenticity is more challenging than it has ever been. This book argues that there are multiple ways of being an ECR, and that research pathways are uniquely individual. It shows how to prepare yourself for your research journey and contains useful hints about preparing manuscripts, writing research grants, developing supervision skills, and forging a successful research career. Offering solutions to common challenges, it provides insights into preparing CVs, preparing for interviews and other opportunities for you and your career.

Providing practical advice based on extensive experience, this book is essential reading for those completing, or who have recently completed, PhDs, as well as those in the early stages of their career in higher education.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781040411537
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/15/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	178

About the Author

Margaret J. Robertson is an Honorary Academic at La Trobe University School of Education. Her research focus is team supervision and agency development within this context. Her recent research considers the importance of agency through education, life and career choices and the importance of role models.

Donna Starks is an Honorary Researcher in the School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics at The University of Auckland. Her research focuses on how we manifest ourselves through our ways of knowing, being and communicating to the world around us.

Gaelle Horsley is a Master of Social Work, though originally qualified to teach art and English, in the UK. She has recently retired from sessional tutoring in Counselling at Victoria University, and now teaches beginner and advanced watercolours at Hunt Club Arts Centre (Brimbank Council).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Preparing for the ECR journey ahead

3. Building your research career

4. Collaborations

5. Your research: Publication

6. Progressing your research with (or without) funding

7. You as a supervisor

8. Difficulties

9. Next steps

Afterword: Using AI in research