Purpose: Structural mentoring barriers are policies, practices and cultural norms that collectively disadvantage marginalized groups and perpetuate disparities in mentoring. This study aims to better understand structural mentoring barriers at the postdoctoral training stage, which has a direct impact on faculty diversity and national efforts to…

This instrumental case study explores the messages STEM postdoctoral scholar women received and understood from faculty about having children and an academic career. Of concern, women with children are less likely than men with children or individuals without children to be offered tenure-track positions or to be promoted. This reality suggests…

Postdoctoral fellowships (PDFs) are becoming increasingly common yet remain nebulous to many. The purpose of this research has been to investigate the structures and experiences of PDFs for fellows and supervisors in physical education and sport sciences/kinesiology (PESSK) internationally. Fourteen fellows and five supervisors participated in…

Academic and policy discourse has idealised academic mobility despite studies showing that it can have adverse effects on individuals' experiences and contribute towards exacerbating existing inequalities. This article focuses on career (im)mobility stories of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) early career researchers that…

Having a shared language such as English facilitates the globalization of science, but it can also limit science by posing barriers for those who have learned English-as-an-additional language (Eng+). Research on the experiences of Eng+ graduate students and postdoctoral researchers ("trainees") is needed as our scientific community…

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields have historically been disciplines dominated by white men. The colonial ideology designated Africans as subhuman, inferior intellectually, socially, and culturally to the white masculine norm in STEM disciplines. STEM education and careers were thus constructed to attract white,…

This article explores how organizational mobility and foreign nationality affect a researcher's chances of an internal career promotion in university systems that do not have rules preventing inbreeding and where teaching occurs mostly not in English but a local language. As a case study, we have examined the Flemish university system, the Dutch…

Academic developers play a key role in advancing instructor engagement in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) at their higher education institutions, but face structural and epistemological isolation. To leverage the knowledge and experience of developers leading SoTL efforts at their respective institutions, a group of academic…

The project of establishing a European community since World War II has been further advanced by adding - besides the four freedoms of free movement of goods, persons, services and capital - a fifth freedom -- the free circulation of researchers, knowledge and technology -- that intends to promote community building at the level of higher…

This paper is a personal reflection that seeks to capture most of the observable changes that have taken place in South Africa and in its public university system as a consequence of the sudden and global spread of the novel coronavirus. The purpose for doing so is to provide a record of how the South African university sector has responded to the…

Many barriers have prevented women from advancing in academic STEM careers, especially women of color. Few studies have focused on the career paths of Latina STEM scholars and challenges they face as both women and as members of an ethnic minority group. We are investigating the career paths of former Latina UC President Postdoctoral fellows in…

To illuminate barriers to collaboration, this study examines who participates in cross-boundary scholarly collaboration most often and which types of boundary crossing (disciplinary, institutional, role) are engaged in most often. The data of this study came from an interdisciplinary consortium with five partner institutions, including one…

This article examines the postdoctoral unionization movement at the University of California (UC) using case study methodology. More specifically, we examine postdoctoral union organizers involved in the United Automobile Workers of America (UAW) Local 5810, focusing on their efforts to unionize postdoctoral employees at the UC. The study is…

Psychology internship and fellowship years are exciting yet challenging times of professional development, as geropsychologists-in-training transition to independent practice and work to consolidate their identities as professional geropsychologists. Geropsychology supervisors help interns and fellows to develop and refine attitude, knowledge, and…

This article draws upon concepts developed in recent empirical and theoretical work on high skilled and academic mobility and migration including accidental mobility, forced mobility and negotiated mobility. These concepts inform a situated, qualitative study of mobility among international postdoctoral researchers in life sciences and engineering…