Functions and Consequences of Unemployment in Researchers' Careers

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The aim of the project is to explore the impact of researcher unemployment on the continuation of academic careers. The project identifies the specific 'fit' of unemployment with field-specific research practices, the ways in which research activities are continued during unemployment, and the resulting effects on the continuation of careers. These links between conditions, processes and effects of phases of unemployment in academic careers have not yet been investigated. They lie in a no man’s land between labor market research, which is only marginally interested in variation between occupations and neglects the specifics of research both conceptually and empirically, and research on academic careers, which is sensitive to specifics of research but neglects unemployment. Responding to this gap, our project identifies the conditions and mechanisms that enable a successful continuation of an academic career despite phases of unemployment. The empirical strategy of the project is a mixed-method approach that combines comparative cases studies with a quantitative analysis on which we co-operate with the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies. The core of the project is a series of case studies of researcher unemployment, which are based on semi-structured interviews with researchers who are currently unemployed or experienced phases of unemployment in the past. These case studies establish the links between field-specific research practices, the way in which researchers deal with phases of unemployment, and the effects of unemployment on further careers. In addition, the analysis of standardized data on phases of unemployment in academic careers will establish the extent of phases of unemployment in careers in different scientific fields and links between frequency, times of occurrence and duration of unemployment, on the one hand, and the further progression of careers, on the other hand.