Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to highlight suicide risk factors experienced by graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, and then outline suicide prevention strategies for these populations. Design/methodology/approach: Through analysis of literature and application of theory, the authors use the diathesis-stress model and Joiner's…

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…

Black matters, according to Black feminist geographer Katherine McKittrick (2006), are always already spatial matters. As Black academics, we are intimately familiar with hostile environments and unwelcoming spaces (Dade et al., 2015; Griffin, 2013; Misawa, 2015). Embracing the sacred principle of nommo, which is to conjure images of biological…

Whilst China has become home to the second largest doctoral education system in the world, with over 20% of its doctoral graduates taking up postdoctoral researcher positions inside and outside of China, a lack of information regarding the expectations of these doctoral graduates in pursuing postdocs has resulted in a failure to meet their…

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…

Background: Postdoctoral training holds an increasingly important place in preparation for leading academic and research positions. While little empirical research has described postdoctoral training beyond the sciences, across all fields, "misaligned expectations" are often touted as a key source of postdoctoral strife.…

This study aims to empirically analyse whether, in the context of South Korea, postdoctoral researchers' career plans are closely associated with their postdoctoral experience, along with whether these postdoctoral experiences differ by gender and discipline. Data were collected from an online survey targeting postdoctoral researchers at a…

Insecurity and intense competition for permanent academic positions appear to be common experiences for early career researchers across the globe. With academic precarity now firmly on the international research and policy agenda, this article looks comparatively at postdoc precarity in three European countries: Ireland, Norway and Switzerland. It…

Research on co-teaching in higher education often focuses on the benefits to the apprentice, but co-teaching partnerships should benefit both team members. As part of our institution's recent membership in a professional development network for future STEM faculty, we developed a postdoctoral certificate in teaching excellence that includes…

Impostor phenomenon (IP) is an experience of psychological discomfort where some high-achieving people disbelieve their success. Those experiencing IP feel undeserving and fear being discovered as a fraud in one's area of expertise. This study examined how early career researchers or ECRs of Hispanic/Latino origin in science, technology,…

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…

Scientific communication (SC) has important social-cognitive, behavioral, and career-related benefits for emerging researchers, but both mentors and mentees find development of SC skills challenging. Whether training mentors to effectively mentor development of SC skills could have a meaningful impact on mentees was not clear. The Scientific…

As a practical theory of language, translanguaging refers not only to speakers' use of multiple languages, but also to the deployment of other semiotic resources and artifacts in communication. To examine the use of semiotic resources and translingual negotiation strategies in STEM communication, this study explores the intersectionality of…

Whilst the extant literature on the publish-or-perish culture in the West is plentiful, there remains surprisingly little scholarship exploring the ways managerialist policies have become integral to local identities, work and life in Chinese universities. We address this gap by taking China's endeavour to become first in the global higher…

Postdoctoral researchers are important contributors to European higher education, playing significant roles in research, but also in teaching and societal engagement. Despite their valuable contribution, the situation of postdoctoral researchers remains challenging in Europe as issues such as temporary or short-term contracts, high workloads and…