Mentoring Circle²: co-producing solutions in research culture and careers
Session convened by the ALBA Network and the BNA Scholars Programme
Are you a student or early career researcher encountering or working through a challenge in your career at the moment? Or perhaps you're a more senior scientist with experience and insight that might be able to contribute to resolving such a challenge? If so, then this is the special session for you!
A new collaboration between the ALBA Network and the BNA Scholars Programme, this special session invites you to join your choice of several ‘mentoring circles’ to co-develop solutions to the issues that affect us all in careers, research culture, and EDI in neuroscience. Groups will be guided by leading researchers and mentors from across industry and academia, and will discuss resolutions to common real-life barriers identified by the BNA’s very own Scholars including:
- How to shift between academia and another sector (e.g. industry, publication, medical writing)
- Managing the twin commitments of an academic job and family / caring responsibilities
- How to approach creating your own opportunities, networking, and reaching out to people
- How to maintain a good work-life balance
- How to deal with the job insecurity/short-term contracts that you're faced with at the beginning of an academic career
- How to manage the pressure to publish and the fact that science seems to value positive results more than careful and good science
- How to wrestle with the assumed need to move around a lot (often even to different countries) during your early career, if you can't or don't want to be constantly moving
- How to reduce unconscious bias in the workplace
When it comes to working through a problem, many brains are better than one! So come along, choose your discussion topic, and be part of the solution.