UK researchers learn leadership through ‘structured serendipity’

Many researchers in Britain feel unsupported, Hepi paper finds

Mid career and senior academics are learning their trade “on the job” because training is focused on early career scholars, a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute has found.

Hepi’s ‘Research Leadership Matters: Agility, Alignment, Ambition’ paper says that more experienced researchers are “commonly expected to assume research leadership responsibilities with very little or no formal training”, with skills developed via “structured serendipity”.