29- Dr Matthew Cheeseman- Dabbling for academic resistance and resilience

Matt talks about himself as someone who is “a Jack of all trades”. It’s true that I have known him involved in so many different types of projects that it could be hard from the outside to define exactly his research niche. As an interdisciplinary researcher and thinker, Matt acknowledges that both his stubbornness and his position of privilege have contributed to his continuing academic career. The need for academic freedom and his desire to understand the world have maintained his motivation to pursue a career in the university environment. The dissonance between institutional policies on wellbeing and the realities of workloads - what is actually needed to gain & retain academic position continue to puzzle him.

 About Matt

Dr Matthew Cheeseman is Associate Professor of creative writing at the University of Derby (UK). With a background in history from his Bachelor, Matt entered the world of academia from a marginal area of study, a PhD in folklore, studying the history of what it’s like to be a student at the University of Sheffield. His work looked at students’ cultural behaviours and became an ethnography of contemporary students’ life. For example, Matt looked at the consumption of alcohol and how it is used as a product of university life to students.

 The transition to his current position took many turns: teaching Erasmus students in an English department, access to bits of funding on various projects, a senior lectureship position at the Solent University in Southampton, then an institutional move to a new lectureship in creative writing in Derby.

 Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking

·      Whether dabbling in lots of interests or keeping a sharp research focus is working for you in your research transition

·      How the politics of your institution align or not with your values and the way you want to live your research life

·      What resistance, persistence and resilience to academic pressures look like for you

You can also find the Podcast on my website: https://tesselledevelopment.com/podcast

Interested in being a guest on the podcast, get in touch: sandrine@tesselledevelopment.com

Transcript

Warning- getting a perfect transcript is  hard. This transcript may have mistakes. Be kind to us by accepting these potential errors. I hope that the transcript is helpful to some of you! Apologies in advances for any mistakes in the transcript.

[music]

Sandrine: I have the pleasure today to have with me Dr. Matthew Cheeseman from the University of Derby. I don't really know whether Derby- where Derby is located in terms of the original denomination. It's not Yorkshire or South Yorkshire anymore, so what's the location exactly now?

Matthew: Derby is in the East Midlands.

Sandine: East Midlands.

Matthew: Yes, and it's the main town in Derbyshire. It's half an hour on the train from Sheffield, and about an hour and a half from London.

Sandrine: Matt, you are an Associate Professor of Creative Writing now. When we last met, I was still working at the University of Sheffield, and also you had a teaching role, if I remember correctly, in Sheffield. What would be really interesting for our listeners is to hear a little bit the early years of

your research career. Can you tell us how it all started?

Matthew: Yes, sure. I think the best way of telling the story, I did my B.A. in History back in the '90s, and I don't really count that as part of who I am as a researcher. I decided to do a Ph.D. in 2005 and I chose a very marginal, small field. I had absolutely no idea about job prospects and carry on life as a researcher after that.

I did a Ph.D. in Folklore. At that time, Sheffield was the only institution in England that offered Ph.D.'s in folklore, that could supervise Ph.D.'s in folklore. I started that in 2005, I ended that 2010 and in fact, I hold the last Ph.D. in Folklore awarded by an English HEI.

Sandrine: Can you tell us what your Ph.D. was on? Because for many people, probably folklore is an ID that's a little bit cryptic. Can you tell us what this was about?

Matthew: To explain what folklore is, it essentially looks at cultural tradition. It looks at how we create the future in the present by performing texts and ideas from the past. I particularly looked at higher education students. I looked at students at the University of Sheffield, undergraduates, and I looked at their traditions and the things that they pass on year on year in terms of everything from ambient cultural behaviors to actual traditions, i.e., songs, chants, texts, et cetera. I wrote a history of what it was like to be a student at the University of Sheffield from- that looked back to the 1920s even, but really focused on an ethnography of contemporary student life as it was then.

Now in the middle of this Ph.D., I decided-- I mean, it became- as all Ph.D.'s do, it became huge, it became massive, it became endless. I found it extremely politicizing, so for the first time in my life, I think, I understood or felt the role that politics had in guiding and organizing our life. It kind of overwhelmed me. I could also see the importance of alcohol, the consumption of alcohol to students, youth, et cetera, and how crucial it was; A, in expressing student identity or mainstream student identity, but also as a product that is sold to students. Let's leave it at that.

In the middle of my Ph.D., I took a year out and did an M.Sc. by research in Public Health, and then came back to my Ph.D. and finished that. I've got a B.A., I've got an M.Sc. by research, and I've got a Ph.D. in Folklore. I was on the sociological end of folklore. Some people look at texts, other people look at kind of the folk people, and I was really focused on people.

Since then, I graduated and by that time, I'd secured a little bit of teaching within the School of English, teaching their Erasmus students in a very marginal kind of position. I was in that job for five or six years, all the time developing and trying out and experimenting, and it gave me just enough money to live on. I was applying for research grants at this point as well. I was successful in a few cases. I dabbled in lots of things, I think.

Eventually, I was appointed as a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Theory at a very different university to the University of Sheffield, Southampton Solent University in Southampton, where I taught a variety of students, everything from English students to fashion students. Do you know what? I absolutely loved teaching fashion, amazing students, and it was really interesting getting to grips with the theories behind fashion.

Anyway, I moved on from then to the University of Derby where I got a lectureship in creative writing, where I'm now an Associate Professor. In that time between 2010 when I graduated with my Ph.D. and 2015 when I first attained a tenured academic position or a permanent academic position, I was focusing a lot on creative work. Part of that was indeed strategic. I realized that I'm a Jack of all trades.

Sandrine: That's something that's really interesting in your past, and also it makes it really difficult to understand who you are as an academic because-- One of the questions that I have is about, because you are incredibly creative in the way that you engage in projects, why stay in academia? Because you've been involved in publishing books and you've done projects with artists and so on. Is the academic context the best context to make these things happen?

What kept you in that space instead of working, I don't know, for a publisher? What's really the anchor that's made you want to stay in academia at the end of your Ph.D.? Because in the years after when you were teaching, and we know short-term contract and teaching contract, the money is not great, so why stay there?

Matthew: Yes, good question. I think that, well, a combination of reasons. I.e., if you're going to work as an artist outside of academia, even a writer, the money is terrible. Absolutely probably worse than scraping along in universities, or it's very difficult in other ways. You also have to pay a lot more attention to what the market wants.

There is a certain freedom within the university where it really-- Although funding bids are certainly attendant to market desires, academic freedom in terms of what we can do and think about is pretty attractive, A; and B, I've got a kind of technical mindset and approach. I'm interested in the theory, I'm interested in understanding the world, I'm interested in all sorts of academic disciplines and pursuits.

I mean, because I've come through as a researcher from a number of disciplines, I kind of-- Not I'm jealous, what's the right word? I wonder what I would be like if I was coherently formed within a discipline. Because that's never been how I've managed to work, really, aside from those few years of the Ph.D. I'm an interdisciplinary researcher and thinker. That has a lot of strengths to it. That allows me to access different domains of knowledge, and it makes me very motivated to stay in universities so that I can collaborate and work with researchers.

Sandrine: Do you think that it's been difficult in terms of creating a narrative in terms of your employment? Because often if a department is seeking a lecturer to teach X, the narrative that you have about what you bring, with the vast range of projects that you've been working on, it can be really hard to articulate what it is that you bring. Also from a funding perspective, if you're applying for a bid, you need to create a narrative about who you are as a researcher. The fact that you've worked on such diverse range of projects can confuse the funders as well.

You know what I'm like. I'm somebody who is very keen in supporting interdisciplinary work. At the same time, I have seen early career academic really struggling constructing the research niche that they need to portray or have found difficult to actually identify what the research niche ought to be. In a way, with you there is a sense of freedom of saying, "Well, I don't care about the research niche. I'll just work on whatever I want to."

Matthew: Well, that's kind of you to say. There is a slight privilege in that as well, and I do carry, I think, a slight privilege of being able to do that. To answer your question there, I remember-- After I graduated and was doing temporary work at University of Sheffield, I remember senior academics giving me advice, saying, "To get a position, you absolutely need to form a very coherent identity, and I just look at what you do and I don't see that at all." I've heard that quite a few times, especially I think in, of course, Russell Group institutions, more senior institutions, where the disciplines are absolutely better supported, I think.

I certainly found as I moved to newer universities that that was not always such a concern. It certainly wasn't such a concern at Southampton Solent University. They were looking to my experience by then from having taught at university level and from doing all the projects that I had done. However, I did also begin to frame myself as a creative worker.

Now if you think about a creative writer, being an artist, you can draw on all disciplines. Yes, there is a disciplinary knowledge within creative writing just as there are within all the creative arts, but it is also acceptable, I think, within the academy to frame yourself as that- or it certainly was in the last decade, and that helped me a lot.

I'm finding now, as I've been doing this and being involved in a range of projects for so long, that it's now not that hard to develop a coherent narrative because I can pick and choose from what I've done depending on what I'm focusing on or applying for. There are a few narratives within my work. There's the folklore. There's an attention to higher education. There's an interest in popular culture, popular music. There's an interest in capitalism and neoliberalism. Those narratives develop as I go on, and I can focus on them through that.

To return to the point about privilege. I did this mostly in my 30s, i.e., the difficult period where I was just stubborn and dealt with not earning anything and doing whatever projects could come about, et cetera. I did that at the expense of my mental health to some extent during that period. If I'd have been a woman, I would've given up my fertility in that period. I was working all hours doing this, saying yes all the time, et cetera, just pushing through, really, on stubbornness.

Not that strategic, just stubborn. All right, there's not a grand narrative to me. I'm not coming from this point of disciplinary push, knowledge, et cetera. I'm going to remain voracious and interested in lots of different things.

Sandrine: Is there a different way to go about it for those who are less privileged?

Matthew: Good question. I often think if I was a woman, then I would've made different decisions during those years. I would've done. That's not to say-- Or the sacrifices would've been different. Maybe the sacrifices would've been different. Certainly, these kind of reflections have been definitely orientating the research bids that I'm working on now in an attempt to support greater diversity within folklore specifically.

Sandrine: In the work that you do within your role as a teacher, as an academic, how do you want to contribute to the research space, to the academic space? What's really your purpose? Because of the great diversity of interest that you have, at the crux of how you want to contribute, what is it?

Matthew: That's a good question. At the crux of it, I think I'm essentially reasonably selfish and-- Well, okay. I will try and answer it by thinking about myself in comparison to other colleagues. I know I'm not that interested in teaching. I enjoy teaching. I like teaching. I really enjoy working out disciplinary, the stuff about creative writing in relationship to teaching, et cetera, but my drive is definitely towards research. It's definitely working with Ph.D. students to some extent, but mostly to research. Realizing myself is really important to me via my academic labor.

Sandrine: What does it mean to you realizing yourself? How do you articulate that?

Matthew: Testing myself, learning more, creating artistic and theoretical and provocative and sometimes entertaining, impactful work is something that I suppose at base I enjoy. Also, politically. I make sure the politics of what I do is consistent with my own politics, I suppose. I still can't boil down my mission to this thing or that thing or whatever. I'm not strategic in that way. I wish I was more strategic. I tend to do what is thrown in front of me.

Sandrine: That's an interesting thing because one of the question that I had for you was, what is your approach in choosing to work on a specific project or with somebody? People come to you, you meet people. What is your approach, if you think that you're not strategic, in saying, "Okay, I really fancy doing this project, or I really want to work with that specific person"?

Matthew: I would say that whatever it was, whatever collaboration it was-- If you and I went to say, "Okay, let's think a work about this," wherever we went with it, that we would find something very interesting and something very alive. I almost think you don't have to be strategic sometimes because-- This is something I learned from you, Sandrine, as well in the Crucible programme that you ran, what, in 2011, '12, '13? I can't remember when it was. Whereby conversations were initiated amongst researchers from different disciplines and almost, you get somewhere without deciding about where you're going to go first. Non-output-led. I think that's a very creative way of working and also a very satisfying way of working.

For that reason, just outside from that Crucible programme, I worked on comics and cancer. This project that we did on-- It was about leukemia patients. After they'd had cancer, after they'd had radiation therapy, their sex lives were very unsatisfactory. How do we improve the ways that they can approach and deal with their sexuality? We interviewed them. Then we commissioned artists to make comics about their sex lives. That got me involved in the whole community of graphic medicine.

Essentially, these are medical professionals who really love comics. I'm not a comics scholar or a comics person. I read comics, I like comics, I'm involved in them, but I've really enjoyed since then having a minor interest in this and contributing to conferences and making friends and allies within that field. Now none of it is at all, oh, I want to move into graphic medicine or whatever, but I've found that I've learned stuff about research impact from there. I've learned stuff about medicine and healthcare. I've learned stuff about subjectivity and how to position yourself as a researcher. I've learned stuff about how to communicate, various different things.

I think if you just let yourself go and be open to wherever you are taken, then the journey can be more rewarding and fulfilling than if you are controlled and strategic about it. It's only recently, really, that I have really begun to build a program of, yes, I'd like to do this and then that and then this. That's only as a result of my current job and trying to develop myself as a researcher at the university. At the same time, it's I've learned how to do that from being open to lots of different research projects.

Sandrine: I must admit, this project that you're referring to is one I always use it as an example when I run workshops on public engagement or collaboration because I've always found it really, really fascinating. One of the thing I'll be interested to hear about is about what you found the most challenging in building your academic career. You've referred to initial teaching contracts where you don't earn very much and so on, but also could you describe some situation where you've had to make really difficult decision in term of your career or the choices that you've had to make, or sort of a departmental context where things may have been difficult?

Matthew: What's the most difficult? Materially, it was only being employed for nine months a year on a part-time temporary position, signing on in the summer. Then you've got the dissonance. I can remember going to a conference at-- I think I got my fee waived because I had no money, and it was a conference at a big hotel outside of Newport.

Sandrine: Oh, I know. It's the Society for Research into Higher Education. I was there. I remember seeing you there. [chuckles]

Matthew: SRHE conference there. One of the times I went there, I'm not sure which time it was. I was signing on because it was in the summer, and I had to sign on on the Friday in Sheffield and if I didn't sign on, I'd lose my benefits, but you can get a special dispensation to sign on in another jobcentre. I remember getting the bus to the jobcentre in Newport to sign on. Then I'm running a research network into student experience in the hotel, this luxury hotel, which I wasn't staying at. I was staying at another cheaper place.

You have to deal with the dissonances, I suppose, which if I wasn't carrying privilege would, I imagine, be a lot harder to do. I definitely suffered mental health stuff all around those kind of-- Where everything is saying that your work and your approach and your ideas are not worth it, they're not worth paying for. All you have is your stubbornness to do it, but that stubbornness does, absolutely in my case, ride on a lot of privilege which I've accrued, I think, or which I have anyway. There's that. That was materially a good example of the places that I got to in those years.

Then difficult decisions? I find working in-- Or difficult places. I find working in higher education highly emotional. I think it's something about the neoliberal university, whereby-- I haven't quite worked this out yet, but there is this relationship to the self and the subject where it just wants you to give, give, give. Strive, strive, strive. Where you've really got to-- You're really the conscience of the whole system. The whole system doesn't care about anything. It only cares about building and growing these universities, growing, growing, growing.

To care about your discipline or the disciplines you work within, to care about your students, to care about your career and the other careers about you; that whole thing, you've got to carry all of that yourself, you got to give it all of yourself. I find working in universities highly full of affect, full of emotion. Often, I get so involved in projects, and you come up against spaces of dissonance and spaces of where your will and others' will and conflict. It can make things hard and difficult.

Sandrine: How do you build resilience within that space to actually-- You're talking about mental health issues, and there are so many reports about it in the academic context. We keep talking about it, but what are we actually really doing about it? You can't wait for your institution to change its work allocation model to make you well or to make you survive in that competitive environment. At an individual level, how have you addressed it to be able to stay sane?

Matthew: Yes, so what definitely works for me, and it helps me know myself as well and know the pressures that I'm under, but what definitely works for me is to prioritize the one thing that I want to do or I need to do. I write every day, and I do that as soon as I get up so it's done. I get up early and I will write for- after I've had a coffee, I will write for half an hour or an hour. My nature is very like tick-boxy, so I do the writing every day. Almost doesn't matter what I do, but that is always for me in some way, and it's also space where I can reflect and I can keep a hold of myself within all of these forces that we have to work in every day.

I've also noticed that-- It sounds stupid to say, but even keeping healthy, eating well, exercising. I'm rubbish at eating well and exercising. I've learned to be better at it. That's helped a bit. In terms of actual when the work gets going, I'm not sure if I am that good at dealing with it. I'm a finisher, I have to finish everything, and so I often work- I work over-hours. Again, that rides on those-- You shouldn't overwork.

We had our first child just a matter of months ago. Only recently I'm I coming up against an immovable force that is stronger than my own desire to tick boxes, and that's that little girl. I look at her and I think, "Why do I have to do all of this?"

Sandrine: In a way the interesting point for me here is that between-- You're very driven in term of wanting to produce knowledge, wanting to write. In a way I think when we talk about the research culture and challenging the research culture, there is this dichotomy between the inner desire of pushing yourself towards new knowledge and at the same time, the expectation of institution.

It's like, what comes first? Is it we're putting that upon ourself or is it because there is no other way to have an academic career? How can you exist in academia when you want to push knowledge, when you want to be successful but at the same time, when you want to have a balanced life? Because if we are really serious about challenging the research environment in term of creating an environment that diverse individual can thrive and be successful, what needs to change in term of this culture that is push, push, push and no space for the person that is not the academic?

Matthew: It's strange, isn't it? I think that, that choice that researchers, that academics make to, do you want to develop into management? Do you want to develop into research? Et cetera. Those that develop into management obviously lead this push-push culture. They're in that, that's what they do. It's their imperatives. To an extent, there needs to be some structural change in terms of the management, but what can a researcher do? A researcher needs to build in work-life balance and diversity and mental health elements into their research bids now. It's the only thing they have any control of in terms of how their working life is dictated.

Sandrine: How does this look like in practice?

Matthew: In practice, in terms of impact, in terms of how research funding is managed, then these commitments to mental health, to working life, they must be in there in the bids. It sounds like-- It's such a weak answer, but it's one thing that researchers do have control over. In all the other strategies that have always been there, the cynicism towards the institution is interesting.

I still run a kind of, I never criticize myself, never really establish a narrative in which I could be criticized at work. Everything is excellent, et cetera. It's not true in some of my research outputs, obviously you fail and by failing you learn more, but in terms of my work within the institution, and I wonder whether that has to break. I've been thinking recently whether that would actually politically be much- would be more important if I did step down from the overwork and began criticizing myself for doing that. Then again, I'm in a position in my career when I can do that. I can rely on a salary, et cetera.

What irritates me, and I'm sure you're familiar with this, is that it's just the amount of bureaucracy elsewhere within the university. I have to work for 40 hours before I get to the bits of the job that drive me, and those bits of the job that drive me, I reach every week but I do it by overworking. That's wholly how the system is set up to squeeze the most value from researchers.

Sandrine: Do you think that there is a difference between different institutions? Having worked in Russell Group institution and now working another type institution, is it exactly the same or is there a difference between them?

Matthew: There's so much difference between the institutions I've worked at. All of them have their pluses and their minuses, I think. Certainly, I should say working at a Russell Group university, there's a lot more breadth within the academic staff. There's a lot more academic staff. There's a lot more support for research. There's a lot more stuff going on, but there's also a lot more pressure to get those funding bids, to do all of this kind of stuff, to be that kind of researcher.

Working at University of Derby, there's less support staff there to support bids, et cetera, or there's less of an internal machinery. What support staff we have there are amazing and brilliant, but there's just less breadth in terms of that stuff, but there's a lot more praise and encouragement and support there. There's a lot more positive energy, I would say, compared to kind of negative energy at some Russell Group universities. I don't really know why that would be so, but I would say that was a difference.

Sandrine: How do you see your role now that you are an associate professor, and maybe at some point a professor, in term of the way that you think you can shape the research culture within your own context? Because obviously, you now working with Ph.D. student, you're teaching, you're writing bids where maybe some post-doctoral researchers will be working with you and you may employ research associate or whatever. Now you are a pillar within the institution and you have, maybe you don't feel like it, but a certain power in the way things are created within your own space. What kind of a research leader are you aiming to become over the next few years within the institution where you are or will go to in the future?

Matthew: I can answer that one pretty easily or quickly in that I know what I am good at. One of my strengths is bureaucracy, is administration, is kicking off things, ticking boxes, as I said. I really would like to bring together bids, to bring together people, to bring together collaborations. To use my experience in doing that in the past to make sure that; A, things happen, and interesting and politically relevant and disciplinary relevant and important things happen; B, that the people doing those things are diverse, open and supporting academics at various levels of their careers. I would like to do just that, really.

I know that I am not going to be a research leader in this field that the university thinks that we should really push. That's not going to be at all what I'm interested in. Even though universities have, I've noticed, making it more and more attractive to say, "Oh, why don't you do this great bid in this great area? You can have nine Ph.D. students, and we'll support you in all of this kind of stuff," if I can align it to my priorities then yes, but I don't really like how some institutions are aligning or branding their research through-- In terms of that, I think I'm going to try and fight that. In terms of putting things together and in terms of being an administrator, leader in that way, yes, I think I could do that.

Sandrine: Where do you think that your quirkiness in research comes from? When I think of you, there is a sense-- Maybe that's not something that you feel but to me, it feels like you have a sense of freedom that is not seen in so many people, or maybe because I don't know enough academics within your field. I really see you as somebody that has an immense sense of freedom and quirkiness that is like, where is this-- How did you build this? Where is this coming from?

Matthew: I think there's two answers to that. Firstly, I think I am good at being myself in some way, and they do represent someone who has-- I've got a wide range of interests and I like going deep on those interests, et cetera. Some of that is me, and I recognize that as a person that I have been since growing up. The other thing, though, is that when I became a researcher, I think, in that 2010 to-- Once I'd done my Ph.D. and was scrabbling around 2010 to 2015, this was as the Impact Agenda was being formed, really, and tested and just establishing itself.

There was also in that period, and there still is to some extent and this is a result of neoliberalization of HE, there was this great desire to put things together and see what happens. Assemble. Let's just assemble different things and let's see what we can generate from that energy. I think the Crucible programme shared that energy. That energy is to do also with the ambition of discovering new knowledge, but it's also from the ambition of capitalism in general to experiment, try new things, et cetera. At that period in my career, I had very little direction or knowing how to go forward.

Before Impact, I think, especially Impact, before that, it became very clear how Impact was going to be rewarded from the research councils.

There was, "Oh, so do you want to do this? Do you want to put on an exhibition of this?" Or, "Do you want to work with this artist?" Or, "Hey, I want to do this," whatever. "You can have 500 quid to do this, people would be interested." I think the quirkiness from who I am really met a really quirky environment at that point. I think that's why there is that diversity.

Sandrine: Do you think that we've moved away from that?

Matthew: Yes. I definitely have spoken to Impact managers at universities, and they've definitely told me, "Oh, there's projects that you did in 2012 which we would never fund now." I think materially, yes, we have. It was because universities were adjusting to a new paradigm, and that is the Impact bit of the REF. That's always the case, isn't it? There's constant change in this field, in HE. There's constant change, and so there will always be places where that kind of experimentation is possible.

Sandrine: How do you think that you've built your confidence over the years? One of the thing that you say is that your stubbornness of you really wanting to think in depth about things and wanting to understand, and people develop their confidence in lots of different ways. For some people it's just seeing their work published, is just, okay, that's the confirmation that what I'm thinking has value for others. In your case, what's the inner belief that what I'm doing has got value in my own eyes?

Matthew: I think all of that is also to do with how you obviously are as a child brought up. For me anyway, comes from- my confidence comes from a privileged background in lots of ways. I've never really had any challenges to my core and my identity, and I've always learned how to make my curiosity interesting to others. I've been allowed to do that. I haven't had to justify myself in any other way or whatever. There is those long-standing things. Then in terms of times when I've been troubled by it, then there's also all of those things that we do to manage our sense of wellbeing, be that Prozac or socializing or keeping fit or whatever.

I think that the lesson, though, is that- or the one thing that I could give or demonstrate is that it's to persist, to not give up and to keep going even in the same place intellectually, bears fruits and to trust in doing that.

Sandrine: In some ways, the privileged background, and for some it would come from the family and for others it may be just the university where they went for their undergrad, create some of the building block of trusting your thinking, trusting yourself in the way that you're trying to navigate your career. For those people who do not have that privileged background or come from a different racial background where privilege is not given or is not just there, what kind of environment are you constructing yourself for others that enables that confidence to be built?

Matthew: I think the most important thing in doing that is to make sure that as you develop your research career is that everything that you do should be built with an attention to diversity in building those researchers, but I don't know the answer to that. The answer is to ask the researchers. The answer is not to say, "Oh, well, here I am this super confident researcher. I think you should do this and you'll be more confident like me."

That's not at all what anyone needs to hear. No one needs to hear at all you saying, "I think it's this or that," or, "I was lucky to have a stable family background and school didn't knock me at all. I went to a great university," et cetera. They don't need me to say at all anything. People only need to be asked themselves and to be valued in themselves about their own strengths.

To be honest, if you're at university and you're researching and you've come through various challenges as a result of your identity, then you've probably got a lot more capability and ability than someone who hasn't been challenged like me in that way. I think the answer to all of those questions you asked in terms of advice is to make sure that people like me don't tell you how to be more confident. That's what I would say.

Sandrine: How do we support research leaders like you to learn to become better listener and to learn to create the environment for others where you are not going to say, "Oh, you should be doing it this way"? Because one of the thing that I've always felt frustrated is that people get training on all sorts of stuff, but the space given to reflecting on the way that we interact with each other in the research environment is not something that's really given space.

I guess you were referring to the Crucible programme that I ran. For me the intention was, yes, to get people to consider interdisciplinary collaboration, but it was also about giving people the space and the time to reflect on their career, on their interaction, on their desire in the research space, but reflection isn't embedded in the practices. Maybe it is for people who are in social science, but reflecting on how you're interacting, it just doesn't exist.

Matthew: It doesn't exist. Similarly, I think it's connected to reading. I speak to friends who don't work in HE, and I tell them that I literally have no time to read anything. Reading is not part of my job. I mean, it is. Probably if you look at my work plan, it may be in there but that evaporated a long time ago. They just can't believe it that academics do not read. It's rare. I think you've got to take a holiday to read.

I think that is connected to reflection. It is connected to overproduction and manic spaces and growth and all of these things. Of course it is. It seems almost revolutionary to read at the moment. The greatest thing about doing a Ph.D. is you've got time to read to some extent. Reading, of course, is a form of reflection, where we are reading the words of another and thinking on those ideas.

How do we create those spaces? It's all about doing less, isn't it? It's all about doing less and from doing less, encouraging a growth which is authentic rather than forced. It is frustrating as well because all of the things you're saying, like, how do we encourage our institutions to encourage these spaces, et cetera, they're already saying it. They're already saying, "Oh, let's focus on wellbeing. Let's reflect on this." All of that kind of stuff is stuff that you hear every day in every institution in the UK.

It's the same way that most Hollywood films are anti-capitalist. Every Hollywood film goes on about how bad big business is. It is the message of each Hollywood film, and we've got to save the environment and business is terrible. The same way every Hollywood studio is a huge capitalist organization.

It's the same with universities. It's the narratives or the ideas that you're talking about are also there within our institutions. They're there and good people are doing good things and trying to change working cultures but at the same time, the way that these super complex institutions work is that change is co-opted; A, co-opted; and B, is just face value.

Sandrine, my question for you, if I may, is it's very hard-- Once you get into puzzling through this, it's very hard to not just end up at policy. "Oh, the policy has to change. We have to take a step back from the Browne Report," or, "We have to elect different leaders that will change the HE system." Now I think that is a trap, thinking that it's all policy-led and that it's also more complex in various different ways.

My question for you is, are there ways in which we can change without changing policy?

Sandrine: It's interesting you asking that because I guess for me leaving the institution where I had been working for 20 years was because I had a sense of frustration of the policy is sitting there and doing nothing. The work that I do now in working as a coach with academics, it's about saying, "Well, let's change the environment one conversation at a time." I've done a project with a Ph.D. supervisor, just getting some interviews with their Ph.D. students and postdocs asking them, what is it like working with your PI, with your Ph.D. supervisor? And using that as a way of helping the PI reflect on his or her approach to working with others.

It's very slow work, but it's really deep work of one conversation at a time, listening to one person at a time instead of these grant policy documents. Because I was involved in some of the Athena SWAN application and so on. Lots of good things on paper, and then you feel [groans] those things happens, and the discrepancy between the good intention of the policy document and actually the reality of making things happen.

For me, it's about, say, "Okay, I don't give a damn now anymore about the policies. What I want is to help individuals in the research environment one conversation at a time." It seems very- I don't know, maybe it's very small in its scope, but that's the way, personally, I'm trying to go about it.

Matthew: Yes, and it's not small in its scope in that you're also mediating it and putting out interviews and putting out ideas. Ideas are never small in their scope, are they?

Sandrine: No. We're going to finish this conversation because I've taken a lot of your time this morning. The last thing I'll like to ask you is, if you were reflecting to when you starting your Ph.D., what would you tell your young self now that you are full of wisdom in term of easing the path and making it easier on yourself to travel through this journey?

Matthew: I would say that there are certain things that I could have done earlier that would've made my life easier. For example, I would've said, build an audience more in terms of social media, specifically. I would've focused a bit more on that because I think that just makes your life easier in terms of communicating your work. That's quite a dull answer. What else? I don't know whether I would say, "Keep going." I might say, "Get out now."

You were saying, "Well, why not work as a creative artist within the market?" That's one of your suggestions. That would've been an interesting avenue to explore, I'm way too embedded within HE now, but then I'd have lost so much of what I've learned, and so it would've been a very different thing or I would've been a very different thing.

A lot of the stupid choices-- Not stupid. A lot of the non-career choices I've made have ended up making me understand more. I would be loath to tell that person to make this career choice and then this career choice and then this career choice, and you'd have a more secure life earlier. I wouldn't give them that advice. I would just continue.

Sandrine: Keep the freedom.

Matthew: Yes, but you've got to play the hand that you are dealt. If I had been dealt another hand, if I was someone different, then I wouldn't have made the choices that I've made, I think.

Sandrine: Thank you, Matt. It's been really a pleasure discussing with you. I hope that you can enjoy the company of your lovely little girls in cozy.

Matthew: Thank you.

Sandrine: It's a really, really precious time. I hope that you know that you can leave the reading and the writing a little bit on the side. Before we started the recording, I said one of the best memories that I have when my kids were little is just to hold my baby and sit on the sofa and just be there. I hope that you can give yourself permission to leave a little bit the academic work and then just do that, sit with the baby and enjoy the moment.

Matthew: I'm going to take that as an order. I'm going to go and do that [unintelligible 00:55:09]. Thank you very much for creating this space for reflection-

Sandrine: Thank you.

Matthew: -which, I've found, very engaging so, yes, thanks for that.

Sandrine: Thank you.

[music]