Back to Birds

Perhaps I am showing my age when I quote the TV show, Stars in Their Eyes “tonight Matthew, I’m going to be….” but this is the most accurate representation of my experience of academia to date. For those unfamiliar with the show, contestants transform themselves into a music artist for a night. They reveal to the host who they will be before stepping through some smoky doors and re-emerging as a carbon-cut copy of their musical icon. I have done this throughout my academic career, as I struggled to establish my research identity. Everybody knows that in science we stand on the shoulders of giants and success is more attainable when you build on existing ideas and projects. I was privileged to work on an amazing long-term study system for my PhD and have access to longitudinal datasets, while also working within a large multi-disciplinary team. However, as a student who disliked molecular biology and avoided being in a lab, I was surprised to have dedicated four years of my life to genetics. It was my sheer love for birds and conservation that got me through it, but in hindsight, I questioned how I ended up doing a PhD in a subject that didn’t suit me.

Towards the end of the PhD you begin to panic, in the midst of writing up, about securing your first postgraduate job. I found myself scrolling through various academic jobs websites and every time I saw a post that mentioned some of my buzz words like evolution, conservation or ecology, I found myself again thinking “tonight Matthew, I’m going to be… whatever this post wants me to be!”. I did a couple of postdoc positions in different places, and while I did the job well, I knew I was selling myself short. It is my nature to go above and beyond when I am passionate about something, and this wasn’t happening. It certainly didn’t help that I encountered some of the (unfortunately) typically encountered negative behaviours, as an early-career researcher such as bullying and exploitation (https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/expectation-versus-reality-the-early-career-researchers-guide-to-surviving-academia/). When you find yourself working in a toxic environment, and your heart is not in the work you are doing, you naturally question whether it is the right job for you. I wondered if research was for me and moved to a full-time University teaching role. This was revealing in that I absolutely missed being a researcher! While I do love teaching, it became clear that research-led teaching was my mantra, but I was now stuck. The longer I was absent from doing active research, the harder it was to reignite my career. What’s worse, it’s impossible to jumpstart if you do not know your unique selling point as a researcher.

Figure 1 Working with birds in Honduras! © Danni Hinchcliffe.

I realised although I was an excellent Stars in Their Eyes contestant, I couldn’t keep pretending to be whatever my supervisor or line manager wanted. In order to succeed in academia, I needed to identify my research interests, my research questions, and set my own research goals. My skills, knowledge and experience appeared varied on paper – molecular biology, genetics, physiology, behavioural ecology and evolution – but always applied to conservation. While papers are the currency of academia, I was driven by other impacts. I want my research to shape and improve how we protect our wildlife, and specifically, birds. Avian model systems have always served me well to tackle the bigger biological questions. Outside of work, they continue to serve me on a personal level, by boosting my mental health and wellbeing. As a birdwatcher, they give joy but also challenge me to learn new things – whether it be species identification or observing novel behaviours, understanding habitats and community-species interactions. What’s more, I feel it is my responsibility to ensure that many of our British birds are still around for my son as he grows up. If my research can help ensure that, what better motivation could I need? I have just started my first Lectureship and bringing my focus back to birds has enabled me to identify my research identity. Becoming an active member of the BOU has cemented this, which leads me to three top tips for other early career researchers who also battle imposter syndrome:

• Keep the big picture in view: why are you doing research, and why do you care?
• Know your academic village: surround yourself with researchers that share common interests, ethics and attitudes
• Value all of your research impacts: funding bodies are increasingly recognising that research outputs are varied, and impacts are diverse – as are the researchers!

It took me years to figure out that I do not need to be a carbon-cut copy of a job description. I was an ornithologist all along, and I am looking forward to seeing what I can uniquely bring to the ornithological community, with the ultimate aim of increasing our knowledge of and conserving the most wonderful group of animals.