Research and Politics

It’s taken a while to get around to it but you can’t talk about research for long without getting on to the topic of politics. Yes, research, just like everything else is bogged down in politics both organizationally and at the national level.

Organizationally, your Faculty can either talk you up or talk you down, it’s as simple as that. Often when you are starting out and little or no threat to anyone then you may find you are talked up more often than talked down. As you find your feet in research, get promoted a couple of times, you will find you are talked down more and more. Your research is not high quality enough, you don’t work with enough with other staff, you don’t produce enough, you don’t obtain enough funding and the list goes on and on …..

The lack of resources for research is one of the main reasons for the politics. People will try to obtain an advantage by creating a perception about your work and so it is largely personally driven. It has been said that university politics is so heated because the stakes are just so low!