Collective Action Against Research-Related Employment Precarity
Learnings from an institutional project and an emerging national movement
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v13i3.2241Keywords:
fixed-term contracts, employment precarity, collective action, EDI, professional development, research cultureAbstract
This Critical Reflection details the individual, institutional and national impacts of employment precarity in research-related roles, summarising findings from the University of Nottingham’s Revisiting Employment Contracts: Helping Under-represented Researchers Develop, Lead and Excel (REC HURDLE) project. Current sector-wide evidence and practices are summarised, and recommendations are made for changes to organisational processes and research culture to lessen both the extent and severity of employment precarity in UK higher education. Ongoing work to this aim through the national Research Precarity Working Group is detailed. The emotional and practical considerations of effecting change in this area, within a national research ecosystem under financial strain, are considered.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Ash Collins
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY), which permits use and redistribution of the work provided that the original author and source are credited, a link to the license is included, and an indication of changes which were made. Third-party users may not apply legal terms or technological measures to the published article which legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
If accepted for publication authors’ work will be made open access and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license unless previously agreed with Exchanges’ Editor-in-Chief prior to submission.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. (see: The Effect of Open Access)
