Podcast – Leaving Academia, Staying in Research

Voice Over

“The Dementia Researcher Podcast.” Talking careers, research, conference highlights, and so much more.

Adam Smith

Hello and welcome to “The Dementia Researcher Podcast.” Today we’re talking about leaving academia but staying in research: what it actually looks like, why people make the move, and how they did it.

I’m Adam Smith, Programme Director for Dementia Researcher, and I’m delighted to be hosting today. For a lot of people, the choice when finishing a PhD isn’t really between research and not research. It’s between doing research inside a university and doing something research-shaped somewhere else.

Today I’m joined by three guests who’ve all walked through different doors. They finished their PhD, looked at the academic path, and chose something else. They’re still working with researchers, still working with evidence, still working on problems that matter, just from a different seat.

I’m delighted to welcome Dr Ellice Parkinson from Health Innovation East, where she works at the meeting point of research, the NHS, and the wider health innovation system. Hi, Ellice.

Dr Ellice Parkinson

Hello.

Adam Smith

We also have Dr Alice Carstairs from Alzheimer’s Society, one of the UK’s largest dementia charities, where she works in a wide-ranging research communications role. Hello, Alice.

Dr Alice Carstairs

Hi.

Adam Smith

And finally, we have Elizabeth English, or Lizzie for short, who is with the British Heart Foundation, one of the country’s biggest medical research funders, where she analyses and evaluates the impact of their research. Hi, Lizzie.

Lizzie English

Hi, Adam.

Adam Smith

To start us off, could I ask each of you to introduce yourselves properly? Ellice, why don’t you go first?

Dr Ellice Parkinson

Hi, yes. So, I’m Ellice Parkinson and I work at Health Innovation East. My role is senior advisor in the real-world evaluation team, which means I work with our NHS partners and other stakeholders to evaluate how well innovations or technologies fare in real-world settings.

Health Innovation East is part of the National Health Innovation Network, a group of 15 regional networks commissioned by NHS England and the Office for Life Sciences as the experts in delivering health innovation.

Adam Smith

Fantastic. And when did you finish your PhD?

Dr Ellice Parkinson

I finished my PhD about a year ago. Let’s go for a ballpark of 12 to 18 months ago.

Adam Smith

And this was the first thing you went straight off to when you finished.

Dr Ellice Parkinson

It was, yeah. In my fourth year I was at that stage of writing up and doing multiple fixed-term contracts, and then I got a permanent role at Health Innovation East.

Adam Smith

So, there was a little bit of overlap. Thank you, Ellice. And next let’s go to Lizzie. Hi, Lizzie.

Lizzie English

Hello. So, I’m Lizzie English and I’m the Research Impact and Evaluation Analyst. I realise that’s a long title, so we’ll get into it later, but that’s me at the British Heart Foundation. I’ve only been there since August, so less than a year, and it was my first role post-PhD. Again, there was quite a lot of overlap. I literally got my corrections in last week, so I still need to graduate. I’m still not officially a doctor, but I’m so close now.

Alongside the British Heart Foundation job, I’m also the founder of Women in Neuroscience UK, so I’m still keeping that neuroscience side going. I’ve been doing that alongside my PhD for the past four years.

Adam Smith

That’s brilliant. Are you excited? Has it been hard to get those corrections done while starting your new job as well?

Lizzie English

Yeah, it’s been a lot, doing the nine to five plus basically two other full-time jobs alongside that. So, I’m relieved to have some evening time back, and I’m choosing to spend it with you.

Adam Smith

Well, thank you so much for being here. I do have one question. Were those corrections just on paper, or did you actually have to go back into your lab?

Lizzie English

Good question. My corrections were minor, thankfully. If you do get major corrections, sometimes there are lab things to do, but luckily mine were all on the computer, so I didn’t have to go back into the lab.

Adam Smith

Fantastic, thank you. And Alice?

Dr Alice Carstairs

Hi, everyone. My name’s Alice Carstairs. I did my PhD many years ago at the University of York, specifically looking at bone marrow stem cells. I’ve now moved into dementia research, and I’ve been at Alzheimer’s Society for about a year.

Before that I worked at the NC3Rs, the UK’s National Centre for the Replacement, Reduction and Refinement of Animal Research, in a role that sat across the funding and comms teams. At Alzheimer’s Society I’ve made the shift to work in research comms full-time and dedicate all of my time to telling the wonderful stories behind the dementia research and the researchers that we fund.

Adam Smith

Brilliant. So, you haven’t just had one role since you left academia, you’ve actually had two. We’ll have to make sure we ask you some questions about the NC3Rs as well, because one of our regular bloggers, Kamar Ameen-Ali — wait a second, Lizzie knows Kam too, doesn’t she? Wasn’t she your mentor?

Lizzie English

Yeah. That’s another podcast I was in, there we go.

Dr Alice Carstairs

Yeah, it’s a very small world. I used to work with Kam.

Lizzie English

We love Kam.

Dr Alice Carstairs

She’s brilliant. Shout out to Kam.

Adam Smith

Do scroll back through our archives and you’ll find quite a few podcasts with Kam in there as well. Thank you very much for joining us, Alice.

Before we get into the journeys and how you got there, I want listeners to get a feel for what these jobs are actually like, because I think a lot of people inside academia only have a hazy idea of what working in a charity, a funder, or an innovation network might look like on your average Tuesday morning. So, Ellice, let’s start with you. Could you walk us through what a typical week at Health Innovation East looks like, and where research fits into that?

Dr Ellice Parkinson

Yeah. At Health Innovation East we do a huge range of activities, from our industry partnerships team, who work with innovators and support them with scaling up innovation in the NHS, to our comms and engagement team, our health informatics team with its secure data environment, our consulting team, and the wider delivery team.

My role in the real-world evaluation team is quite specific, focused on evaluating innovations in real-world settings. Each week is really varied, which suits me because I need variety and for things not to be the same. Typically, I oversee five or six projects. Most of them are evaluation projects, sometimes they’re evidence reviews, and on occasion they’re research studies.

On top of that, I’m also overseeing several potential opportunities that may come to our team, whether those are competitive funding opportunities or direct requests for our services. I work externally with charities, the third sector, academia, NHS partners, and public health to scope their evaluations or requests, and then I design and deliver those projects and see them through. So, it’s a lot of report writing, a lot of working on funding applications, and lots of meetings, but lots of variety.

Adam Smith

So, do you get to play a kind of facilitation role between the research and the innovation? Or are you more of a reviewer who has to step back? How involved do you get to be day to day?

Dr Ellice Parkinson

All of it, really. Although I’m not usually doing research day to day, I’m still using those critical appraisal skills, still using qualitative and quantitative research methods, and still doing the project management. At the moment I’m seeing all sides of that and obviously developing funding applications as well.

I still have a really small academic role at the University of East Anglia, which I do in my spare time for fun. What’s lovely is that, although I’m not doing my hydration research full-time, I can do it and merge it in with my current role at Health Innovation East.

Within Health Innovation East we also have our collaboration with the ARC East of England. The NIHR, the National Institute for Health and Care Research, has those applied research collaborations, and we’re aligned with the East of England for the implementation and impact fellows. So, there are really nice collaborations there around implementation and impact work, particularly for my hydration work and trying to make sure it reaches the right people in NHS England, but also for a whole range of other research and evaluation projects that we work on.

Adam Smith

And the reports and evaluations you write — are they published, or are they all internal? How much scrutiny is on those?

Dr Ellice Parkinson

That’s a really good point. A lot of the work we do is for NHS commissioners, so it may inform their business case, whether that’s to decommission something, recommission it, or do something differently. It informs how the NHS is functioning for our regional partners.

For example, I’m working on an SBRI project at the moment, which is NHS England funding specifically for innovators, so I’m authoring a full report for the funder but also working on publications for the innovator. A lot of it is report writing that goes directly to the commissioner for the purpose they need, but I’m also working on publications, submitting conference abstracts, and still occasionally doing poster presentations.

So, our dissemination is perhaps slightly more holistic than what you traditionally get in academia, which is really focused on publications and conference abstracts. We make sure we go to the boards. I’ll be going to the cancer board for one of my projects next month and presenting the findings to a charity.

Adam Smith

That’s brilliant. It sounds like — and this is something we’ve talked about before, maybe even in a podcast with you on one of our other shows — it addresses the gap on implementation. We talked about how, in your old role, you make these great discoveries but then seeing them implemented can be a problem, because they don’t always get picked up. Whereas now you get this exciting opportunity to help others bring those great innovations forward and realise their potential, which must be very rewarding.

Dr Ellice Parkinson

I absolutely see it from idea generation all the way through to implementation, and then evaluation of that impact. It’s a really lovely position to be in, to see the whole trajectory. And that, as a researcher, is what you want to see.

Adam Smith

So, a typical day is really varied. You’re interacting with researchers, the NHS, industry, clinicians, and third sector organisations, doing lots of things your PhD clearly prepared you really well for.

Dr Ellice Parkinson

Absolutely.

Adam Smith

Fantastic, thank you. Alice, let’s come to you. Alzheimer’s Society is a name everybody who listens to this podcast will be familiar with. What’s your role, and what kind of work are you actually doing?

Dr Alice Carstairs

Yeah, so I’m an officer in the research communications team. The team is specialised to do, I guess, what it says on the tin: communicate research to a wide range of audiences. My role specifically focuses on our researcher-facing audiences, so talking about upcoming funding schemes and opportunities for our researchers but also disseminating the outcomes and impacts of Alzheimer’s Society funded research across a lot of different channels, whether that’s our website, our social media platforms, or through Dementia Researcher.

Alongside that, I work with our media team on comments for the press, looking for briefings to give to spokespeople about research. I might also support big announcements, like drug trial results, and help disseminate those. I get to go to conferences and feed that back to teams internally.

I’m one part of the team, and the team also focuses on our internal audiences, so that other teams across Alzheimer’s Society are really aware of all the exciting things happening in dementia research. To go back to what Ellice said, in my role no two days are the same, and that’s something I really enjoy: the variety.

Adam Smith

So, it’s about liaising between researchers and getting those stories out there. These days we come across lots of sessions, and we’ve done them ourselves, about how PhD students can translate what they’ve learned and done in their PhD into an industry or other setting. What didn’t you have for a comms role that you felt your PhD hadn’t prepared you for? Or was everything there? Because quite often people doing a PhD think, “Oh, comms, yeah, I can go do comms,” and then arrive and realise, “Wait a second, people do comms degrees, there’s a whole world to this.” Was there anything you didn’t have?

Dr Alice Carstairs

Yeah, for sure. One of the things you really have to learn in comms, versus the comms you do as a PhD student, is levels of technicality. As researchers, we’re all very used to communicating with each other in quite specific language. Academic publications are written in a very specific way, and there’s nothing else like them. So, there was a level of unlearning that way of communicating and really bringing things back to either key messages or specific stories, which might not always be the first thing you think of when you look at your research.

I’ll give you an example. For my PhD in bone marrow stem cells, I was specifically looking at genetically modifying those cells, and I can talk about all the technicalities of that. But my PhD was actually funded by the people I went on to work for, the NC3Rs, so there was a whole element of replacing the use of mice with human stem cells. That’s a whole other story, and it might actually be what I want to lead with when I’m talking about the research.

So, something I had to learn very quickly was: who am I talking to, and what do they want to know? What do they need to know? Because if I’m not giving them those messages, they’re going to switch off. We’re in a world where you can scroll on your phone and find something different within seconds. So, learning who your audience is, not making assumptions, and working out what your key messages are and the story you want to tell, are super important for a comms role.

Adam Smith

Fantastic. The advantage you have over, say, a comms graduate is that you’ve got this expert scientific knowledge that they haven’t got. Do many of your colleagues come from a comms background or a science background? Are they more science than comms?

Dr Alice Carstairs

In research comms, I’d say we all come from a research background. Some of us have PhDs, some of us don’t, so it’s a mix. In other comms teams within Alzheimer’s Society, the background varies more widely and you’re more likely to see people with a comms background.

What’s really helpful, having done the PhD, is being able to relate to our researchers in even just a small way. I’ve been through that process, I understand the funding side from that perspective, and that really helps. Being able to pick out what’s important from a funding scheme for a researcher to know is really helpful for me. So, depending on which part of comms you want to go into, a PhD is more useful in some elements. If you want to be in research comms, I found it super helpful.

Adam Smith

You can see that, can’t you? The people who work in comms around fundraising might be more likely to come from a comms background, whereas people in research comms are going to come from a research background. Fantastic, thank you very much.

And sorry for keeping you waiting, Lizzie, but you’re at the British Heart Foundation. What does a day-to-day look like for you there, and how close are you to the actual research that you fund?

Lizzie English

So, my role is in research impact. We have a whole team dedicated to research grants that we’re adjacent to — they handle the researcher applications and organise the committees who allocate the funding. I’m on the other side of things, analysing the impact of that research when it’s complete or in progress, looking at who we fund, where those projects are based, and the kind of innovations that come out of it, whether that’s implementation in healthcare or developing new technologies.

It’s a really exciting role. I like that it combines some of the data analysis skills I developed in my PhD. I source the research data from internal spreadsheets, but also from annual researcher reports that we ask them to submit, as well as collecting information from news articles and publications online. Then there’s presenting that impact in data dashboards, which is quite fun and something new that I’ve picked up post-PhD.

There’s also the communication side of it, whether that’s writing those graphs and statistics into public-facing reports or longer case studies on the impactful research we do through BHF funding. I get to collaborate a lot with different staff across BHF, which I really enjoy: the research grants team, but also social media to promote the research impact, and equality, diversity and inclusion work as well.

Adam Smith

We know the British Heart Foundation is obviously involved in dementia research, particularly vascular research, so I can understand how your dementia background still helped you. Did you find you had gaps in your knowledge moving between diseases? I know it’s not entirely moving diseases, but you must work with research now that has nothing at all to do with dementia. Has that been challenging?

Lizzie English

That’s a good question. Every day’s a school day, and I kind of love it. I’m still reading papers in my role, which has pros and cons — trying to get through the jargon, especially in a topic I’m not as familiar with as dementia. But it’s quite fun getting to learn about new diseases and translate that into something public facing. As Alice said, that can be quite challenging. So, it’s a good challenge each day.

Adam Smith

And was there a part of the job you didn’t expect to enjoy but have turned out to really like?

Lizzie English

I guess all of us doing a PhD are nerds, but when you’re surrounded by other PhD nerds, you forget it sometimes. I knew there’d be quite a bit of data in this role, and I wondered, “Oh, am I going to like it or not?” Of course, I’m really enjoying it. Translating things into interactive graphs has been great fun. I like that there’s a mix between data and comms because I was looking at purely science communications jobs as well, so I’m glad there’s still that bit of a mixture in there.

Adam Smith

Great, and you’ve just given me a perfect segue into the next section.

I want to spend a bit of time here, because I think this is the part that researchers listening really want to hear about: the decision itself, the doubt, the point at which you decided, “This is for me,” or “Academia isn’t for me.” Alice, can I start with you this time? When did you first realise that staying in academia might not be the right path for you? Was it a particular moment, or a bit of a slow drift?

Dr Alice Carstairs

A bit of both. The seeds were sown quite early on in my PhD. I had some really exciting opportunities in my first year to write a review for one of the current opinion journals, and pretty soon after, the Biochemical Society wanted to do a feature on my PhD topic in their magazine. So, I had these really nice opportunities to start doing some scientific writing early on, and I’ve always loved words and writing. Those opportunities clued me in to the idea that I could be telling the stories behind the research without necessarily having to do it.

I’d always wanted to do a PhD — I’d known that for some years — and I knew that having a PhD would, for me, be really helpful to tell those stories a little more easily, with that understanding of the research process. From those moments, going on through my PhD, the idea really only cemented for me: yes, this was the right decision, to do my PhD and then look for opportunities in the comms world. That early recognition of the different roles I could take meant I could choose to do writing competitions, speaking competitions, and public engagement opportunities, all of which contributed to that line of thinking. But that first seed, I’ll admit, was really quite early on in my PhD.

Adam Smith

So, at that point you weren’t running away from academia?

Dr Alice Carstairs

No.

Adam Smith

It hadn’t put you off. It’s that you were running towards the role you really wanted.

Dr Alice Carstairs

Yeah, for sure. I really did consider whether doing one or two postdocs would be nice, to get a bit more experience. I’d been fortunate to have a year in industry during my undergraduate degree, so I’d had experience of a few different ways of using research. The bit that really caught my heart was, “Ooh, I could tell the stories.” So that was the bit I followed.

Adam Smith

I love that, it’s a really nice way to put it. Ellice, how about you?

Dr Ellice Parkinson

My story is perhaps slightly different to Alice’s. Some people may know I worked in dementia research as a research fellow, working on Huntington’s disease research before my PhD, for quite a number of years, which I loved. So, it’s not necessarily that academia’s not for me; maybe it’s just not right for me right now. I still have a small academic role at the University of East Anglia, and I really love academia.

For me it was structural issues, which I think a lot of people can relate to. The higher education landscape is really uncertain. As I mentioned, I was in my fourth year, and I’m a lone parent to two little people. When you go to the career’s fairs or careers discussions and there’s a fellowship, they encourage you to go to a different institution as part of your application. For people like me, that’s just not very feasible. The same goes for the fixed-term contracts, and the pay isn’t very good. So, unfortunately, academia just isn’t set up for people in my situation.

Health Innovation East offered much better terms and conditions than I had at the time, so I feel really fortunate that that was an option for me, and I really enjoy it, which is more of a benefit. But that’s not to say I wouldn’t explore what academia might look like in the future. It’s a moving picture all the time.

Adam Smith

You make an important point, which is that as much as you’ve walked away from it now, that door isn’t closed — you can still go back through it. That’s really important, because there’ll be a lot of PhD students listening or watching at home in exactly that same situation. They haven’t got the flexibility to just move to another part of the country, or they have families or children. And even if they’re not in that lone parent situation, there’s the instability of saying, “Oh, well, I’ll take a six-month job.” You can’t always do it. So, it makes sense why that worked for you at the time. And Lizzie, how about you?

Lizzie English

I think Alice and Ellice picked up on great points there, and my experience was a mixture of the two: feeling like I didn’t fully fit in academia and finding other things slightly more interesting at the same time. As I mentioned, I set up Women in Neuroscience UK all the way back in the first year of my PhD, and it wasn’t because I was loving being a woman in neuroscience, surprisingly. There are lots of issues: underrepresentation, and a lack of support that I was feeling personally but also seeing more widely. I saw postdocs in my lab really struggling, always thinking about the next funding and the next job.

It’s sad, because there are some people who are really suited to academia and should be able to thrive there. But reflecting on it myself, I thought, “Am I enjoying the lab as much as I should be, as much as these other people? Maybe not.” I don’t think I was a natural academic fit anyway, even without all those additional pressures. I was much more enjoying the science communication side from very early on in my PhD, getting involved with Women in Neuroscience UK, but also things like Cambridge Neuroscience. Basically, any opportunity to get out of the lab and do something different, I’d be there — always getting involved with networking and gently scoping out career options without even realising it.

Adam Smith

That’s interesting, isn’t it? Other people I’ve spoken to have had similar stories, where during your PhD you realise there’s one particular part of it you really like, and, lucky enough for you, that’s something you can then go off and explore. It’s a little harder if you find you just like one really niche bit of the lab work, because there’s no — we talked about this in our Perpetual Postdoc show a long time ago — there’s no job of “general scientist.” You just want the job of scientist: “I don’t want to be a postdoc research fellow; I just want to be the person who comes in and works in the lab.” That job doesn’t really exist. You’re either on that academic treadmill or you’re not. So, for you, Lizzie, it was that combination of finding another part of your job you enjoyed more and not wanting that pressure. I can understand that.

So, open question to all of you: has any of you regretted it? Has anyone thought, “Oh goodness, I wish I’d stayed”?

Dr Alice Carstairs

I’m nearly 10 years out of academia, and there are definitely times where I think, “What could have been?” I enjoyed the lab work of my PhD, I enjoyed bits and pieces of it, and I enjoyed the work that I did. It just didn’t fit for me long term. You make the point about the job of scientist, and that’s a conversation I had with my supervisor, who was asking me what I was interested in doing. I said, “Well, if somebody would pay me just to be in the lab and do that, I’d probably consider it more.” But that doesn’t exist. So yes, we all have those “what could have been” moments, but I don’t regret the decision I made. I’m very happy doing what I get to do, and very happy that I still get a foot in the door for research and get to champion it, because it’s cool and exciting. I just don’t want to be in the lab doing it anymore.

Adam Smith

What about you, Lizzie? You’ve been away from the lab for the best part of a year now. Is there a particular thing you miss?

Lizzie English

I definitely don’t miss the long lab days; I can tell you that. Doing 12-plus hours in the lab, no. I did think about whether to try out a postdoc and give it a bit more time, try a different lab, and see if I enjoyed it better there. And there will always be the “what if?” — maybe one day something will strike me and I’ll think, “Oh, I’ll try it again.” But for now, I’m quite happy with the gentler nine-to-five pace, not feeling stressed all the time and swimming against the tide to get things done. So, for now, I’m very happy with my decision.

Adam Smith

I was going to ask you, Ellice, but to be fair, it sounds like you’re mostly still doing your old job and your new job. You’ve just reduced your old job to a sustainable side hustle while doing your new job, with a view that maybe one day you can go back to it if you can find the funding.

Dr Ellice Parkinson

It’s funny you say that, because I was reflecting on it while Alice and Lizzie were speaking. Last summer I developed an application for a hydration intervention in care homes because I can do that in my role. As part of my role at Health Innovation East, I wear a hat to identify external income-generating opportunities and collaborations, so I have my network of social care, ICB, and academic colleagues — all the people I could bring together for the most amazing funding collaboration. Unfortunately, it wasn’t successful, but it’s absolutely on my to-do list to do again.

I feel really fortunate that I can bring in some of those great parts, including hydration innovations. There are academics who work in hydration and are developing innovations, and they’ll come my way for me to advise on them or put together funding applications to evaluate them. So, I feel really lucky that I can combine all of my interests. My biggest fear was that I was going to drop out of the dementia area or the hydration area — that was a real concern of mine — so I feel really lucky that, in the work I do, I can still try to stay active and present in those areas, because it’s what I feel really passionate about.

Adam Smith

Well, don’t jump ahead, because you’re going to answer my next-but-one question before I get there. I’m going to come back to you now, Lizzie. You had this great experience with Women in Neuroscience during your PhD, and we should add that it wasn’t something you did before — you’re still doing it now, alongside your full-time job. What roles did you consider? Were you only looking at comms roles? What were you looking at, and what was pulling you towards those different roles?

Lizzie English

It’s a good question. Honestly, it was quite a stressful time, because it was about March and my funding was ending in June. This is similar for a lot of PhDs, where there’s a lot of uncertainty towards the end, and everyone does it a different way. There’s no good or best way of doing it. For me it was dawning on me that the end was coming. I was still writing up and trying to gently apply for things, but I wasn’t doing it very strategically, in all honesty. I’d see notifications pop up on LinkedIn and think, “Ooh, which looks interesting.”

I was applying for a mixture of things: science communication, research engagement, and research impact, even though I’d maybe never heard of research impact before. But it was largely in research charities, because I felt that fitted with my values and the skills I’d built through Women in Neuroscience UK. A few biotech’s also have science communication type roles, so I applied for some of those too. I’m very pleased to have stumbled into this BHF role without reaching the stage of really needing a job. It all fell into place without me being too stressed about it, which was nice.

Adam Smith

I don’t think you’ve stumbled into it — that makes it sound like an accident. You were brilliant. I’m sure what they saw was somebody who’s done brilliantly well and deserved this great new job. So, you mentioned LinkedIn — you were looking on LinkedIn?

Lizzie English

Yes.

Adam Smith

So, you decided, right, comms, impact. Were you looking at project management and other things like that as well?

Lizzie English

I don’t think I applied to anything like that, but I hadn’t ruled it out either. Honestly, it was just what was popping up at the time.

Adam Smith

So where do jobs like that even get advertised, beyond LinkedIn? Where do you look?

Lizzie English

Great question — maybe one for the others.

Adam Smith

Have I put you on the spot there? Guardian Jobs, if you’re in the UK.

Lizzie English

Yeah, and I assume Indeed. There will be more places, but I didn’t get to that stage of panic, so I wouldn’t be able to say.

Adam Smith

Let me jump in on Ellice and Alice. Where have you come across places where jobs like that are advertised? Charity Jobs in the UK, I guess?

Dr Alice Carstairs

Charity Jobs in the UK was one I was looking at. Also, if there are specific organisations you’re interested in, I’d keep an eye on their vacancies. That’s certainly something I was doing, because, similar to Lizzie, when I was looking for a role to move to Alzheimer’s Society, I wanted to move into the charity sector and get behind a cause I believed in. So, it was picking out the charities I was interested in, where I felt I could fit, and keeping an eye on their vacancy’s pages. There are a few sites specific to jobs in the UK, but if there’s somewhere in particular, you’re interested in, keeping an eye on their site can be really helpful.

Adam Smith

That’s important, isn’t it? Lizzie, did you get any feedback on how many people were applying for those comms jobs you were going for?

Lizzie English

Yeah. I don’t want to scare people, but it’s in the range of hundreds, so it is a scary time.

Adam Smith

So, stiff competition. One of the consequences is that they don’t necessarily advertise those roles widely, because they know they’ll get lots of applications. So, your suggestion there, Alice, of finding the charities you’re interested in, going to their website, and signing up to their specific job sections, is a good one, because that might be the only place they ever get put. They might never make it through to wider advertising, because, as you say, they get triple-digit applications for some of these roles.

Lizzie English

Yeah.

Adam Smith

What other roles did you consider, Alice, when you moved?

Dr Alice Carstairs

A little bit like Lizzie, I sort of fell into my job. At the end of my PhD the funder, the NC3Rs, do visits, and the team came round and asked, “Are you interested in fellowships?” I said no. I’d done quite well in my PhD, but I’d not expressed to them before where my career was heading, so it was just natural conversation, and I said, “No, I want to move into this sort of role.” They had an opening coming up within the next few months.

What was interesting is that, although the role had a lot of comms to it, the job title wouldn’t suggest it did. In my previous role I was the science manager in the research funding team. That’s a really important thing to note for comms jobs: you can be doing comms in a lot of different spaces without comms being in your job title. So that’s always something to keep an eye on — read the job descriptions and see what you’ll actually be doing.

Adam Smith

How important was your passion for the topic area? When we did our big ISTAART ECR survey a few years ago, we asked people why they came to dementia research in the first place and what made them pick their topic. Quite often it was a family connection, or a real sense that this disease was important to them. Was it that for you? And how important has it been to keep that through into the things you’ve done post-PhD? Lizzie?

Lizzie English

Let’s address the elephant in the room: I’m no longer in dementia research. It’s crazy, isn’t it?

Adam Smith

Well, you can say you are, can’t you? Because BHF has just got that huge new collaboration with the UK Dementia Research Institute.

Lizzie English

It is true, it’s great, there are still some links there. I went to a BHF Women in Science event recently, and there were some Dementia Research Institute people there. I said, “Ah, hello,” and they said, “Why are you here?” “My job’s here now.” So, there’s always going to be paths crossing.

In terms of passion for the subject, I’ll be honest, I don’t have anyone in my family with heart conditions for now, touch wood. But I was looking widely at research charity jobs, because sometimes they are few and far between, and I was happy to get one at quite a well-renowned charity with large teams where I can gain a lot of knowledge and experience from the people I work with. So that was more my priority with this one. That’s not to say I won’t move back into a dementia research charity in the future, because I definitely had that personal link going into dementia research, and that was a good motivator day to day.

Adam Smith

What about you, Alice?

Dr Alice Carstairs

I started in bone marrow stem cells, so something completely different. I just really enjoyed cell biology and stem cells. But my grandmother had dementia, and one of the things she hooked onto was that, although she didn’t remember my research background, she knew I worked in research. So, she kept repeating to me, “Well, will you research some things to fix my brain?” That was quite a hard conversation to have. Some days I’d explain what I did because she was interested, and other days I’d just say, “Yes, I will,” because that brought her some comfort in the moment.

It was one of those things that sowed a seed of the idea: “Oh, well, one day I could work in dementia research, and that would feel like a really nice nod — I might not be doing the research, but at least I’m supporting the people who could fix my grandmother’s brain,” in her words. So, it wasn’t something I went into straight away, but when the job opportunity came up, it was the one I looked at and thought, “Yes, that’s the move I really want to make.”

Adam Smith

I guess, whilst priorities can change, as long as you still have that direct line of sight between you and benefiting people, that’s important to latch onto. It’s different if you go to industry and you’re making profit for somebody, and I can see why someone might say, “Well, that’s not what I want to do.” But even then, it’s still with a view that this is helping people at the end of the day. Ellice, I want to give you a chance to answer that question too. What roles were you looking at? You needed to stay nearby — I’m guessing the children are in school. What were you looking for, and how far afield? You haven’t gone really far, and you weren’t looking entirely outside of research by that point either.

Dr Ellice Parkinson

No, but it’s interesting you touched on industry and pharma. When I worked in the NHS, I worked on the Enrol-HD study — I was the study coordinator and delivered the Enrol-HD longitudinal registry study for Birmingham. We were a really big site, and I grew the site a lot. It received funding from a pharmaceutical company and had incredible programme management, literally internationally. That was one of the roles I looked into. They come to your site and check that you’ve recorded everything appropriately and signed things off. Everything was paper and pen back then, so they were checking all your paper files. After COVID, a lot of that went remote, because things could be done electronically. That was one avenue where I thought I could stay in research, doing something familiar that I could do at home around my commitments with the children.

For me, I couldn’t imagine going into a totally different area. I certainly couldn’t go into pharmaceutical sales — that’s not where my skill set lies. But if I’m doing something where I feel I’m working with evidence and with research, very much what Alice was saying, I’m still hearing research and hearing evidence. I’m maybe more similar to Lizzie, in that my day to day isn’t working on dementia evaluations. I work on stroke evaluations, cancer evaluations, and public health evaluations, so I now have a really diverse portfolio of programmes.

I’m quite fortunate that I can pull in some of those dementia projects — I get pulled in to advise on the dementia applications, for example. So as long as I’m around it, still exposed to it, still feel I’m having some influence, still learning, and aware of what’s going on in the dementia landscape, then I’m quite happy.

Adam Smith

Was there a point where you felt you were leaving something behind, or letting somebody down — your supervisors, for instance? That transition from finishing your PhD, or leaving one job to the next, is never easy, and it’s messy as well. Particularly in research, you’ve got these fridges full of stuff, half-written papers, experiments. Do you feel like you can just say, “Right, that’s it, I’m going now, I start my new job on Monday”? It’s that messy transition.

Dr Ellice Parkinson

I’ve just published a systematic review that I designed the protocol for in my first year of my PhD. I’m so lucky, Adam, that I still get to write all of these papers in my spare time. There’s no clear cutoff when it comes to research — these things take years.

Did I feel like I was letting someone down? Personally, I felt it, and I don’t know if it’s fair for me to say that. My supervisors were just incredible, absolutely inspiring, the most amazing people I could have wished for, and I have a very good relationship with them. But two of them were hydration experts, and one has since retired while the other has reduced their hours. If I don’t take on that work at UEA, it isn’t done to the extent it was before. So yes, I did feel some responsibility to carry the work on, and it’s about trying to balance that.

In an ideal world, I would have gone on to do a fellowship. It’s something I certainly explored, but I would have had a funding gap of six months even if I’d been successful, and I just wasn’t in a position to do that — it wasn’t realistic. So, if I can stay involved, particularly around raising awareness of hydration — I literally did a teaching session this morning on hydration — then wherever possible I’m waving the flag for it. I’ll do what I possibly can within the spheres that I have. But it is difficult, because there’s this ideal, and, unfortunately, the higher education landscape just isn’t the ideal at times.

Adam Smith

I can see how, in those particular circumstances, you might feel like you were the protégé, brought on to carry on the legacy of this work, carrying down the family name. But the great thing is that you have carried on with it. What about you, Lizzie? How did you feel when you walked away from that — not that you have, because, as you said, you’ve still got your PhD to show for it?

Lizzie English

Mixed emotions, honestly. I’m still quite young, but I was in science for at least eight years, and you do build that up as an identity for yourself. Realising that you’re at your last conferences, at least in that topic, is hard. Seeing other people continuing, still being in the same lab or in the same topics, and realising you’re doing something a bit different, does feel a bit weird.

I never really dreamed of being a professor, though. As a first-generation student, I didn’t know a PhD even existed until my undergraduate degree, so I was just following the stepping stones. It was never a big dream of mine, so at least that wasn’t crushed. But there was a bit of reshaping of my identity and a lot of self-reflection, to accept that making that change for myself was okay and the best step for me. Having that personal connection with dementia, I realised I’m not letting down my grandparents, who had dementia. If they could see me now, I think they’d be quite pleased, honestly, that I’m not working 24/7 and am actually having quite a pleasant day-to-day experience.

Adam Smith

I’m sure they’d be incredibly proud of you, as must all your family. Your parents must be so proud of their daughter, the doctor, who’s gone on to do these things.

We’ve already talked a little about the practical bits, like where the jobs were advertised. Let’s get a bit more into the mechanics. Ellice, walk us through how you actually ended up at Health Innovation East. Was the role advertised? Was it through a contact, or did you go looking?

Dr Ellice Parkinson

I was looking broadly at the time, but very similar to Lizzie, I wasn’t in a position where I had to look very hard at that point. Someone who had been a reviewer on my systematic review during my PhD, who worked at Health Innovation East and had set the evaluation team up, reached out and said there was a newly developed team and it would be great to have my skills, if it was something I’d be open to. So, when it came out, I thought, “Okay, I’ll have a look at the job description.” There was a lot of crossover with what I’d been doing in my PhD, so I applied for it.

Adam Smith

So that network connection was important there. You already knew this was potentially going to happen. And, Alice, you already touched on the evaluation at the end of your study — so was that through a connection as well?

Dr Ellice Parkinson

Yeah, that was through a connection. They let me know the job was coming up, and it was the only job I applied to at the end of my PhD, and I was fortunate enough to get it.

Adam Smith

Lizzie, we’ve already talked about you looking around at charities in particular. How did you position yourself for a role like that, coming straight from your PhD background?

Lizzie English

Without realising it, I’d built a lot of different skills in my PhD that were suitable for research charities. I keep going on about it — broken record — but Women in Neuroscience UK gave me so many skills, from science communication to impact evaluation, organising events, doing partnerships, and even strategy and the business side. So, when thinking about the interview questions, I could pull in lots of examples from those, which I think really helped to set me apart.

Adam Smith

And did all three of you — because, as we’ve touched on, we see a lot of sessions about how you translate managing experiments into project management, or managing a budget in your PhD into similar skills — did any of you make specific changes to your CV to apply to these jobs? I guess you had to. Lizzie, I’ll come back to you first on that one.

Lizzie English

Yeah. I think the main difference was moving those publications from the first page all the way down to the bottom, which feels a bit sad. I still kept the lines about my education at the top. But the things research charities and other organisations outside academia might want to look at are more general: your technical skills, being able to do data analysis more generally, project management, and communications experience. So, I put all of those things above the publication links, which got hidden at the bottom.

Adam Smith

Were there any parts of your PhD — and I’m guessing this is a silly question to ask you, because you’re not in a lab anymore — that were completely not useful at all?

Lizzie English

I’m not in a lab. I’m not dealing with human brain samples day to day.

Adam Smith

No, there are no Western blots, no looking down a microscope.

Lizzie English

No pipetting clear liquids, which sometimes you miss, but most days you don’t. What about you, Ellice?

Dr Ellice Parkinson

Kind of the same, to be honest. A lot of the research roles I did at the University of East Anglia were still along the same trajectory as what I then went for. But what Health Innovation East were really interested in at my interviews was that implementation and impact piece. They were less concerned about what I did in my research itself.

I did hydration impact posters to raise awareness that one in four older people are dehydrated, based on my systematic review, and they were really interested in that: the fact that I got the funding and managed to disseminate it across all the GP surgeries, care homes, and acute settings across Norfolk and Waveney. That’s essentially what a large part of the delivery team does, so it’s what they were really interested to see. How am I disseminating findings? How am I making sure the research or evidence gets to the places it needs to get? That’s what we do at Health Innovation East.

Adam Smith

It sounds like all of you enjoyed those parts of your PhD, and they’re the bits that have carried through into your next roles. So, building a CV around them, or being able to talk to them when you’re applying, came slightly easier than it might for some of the people listening at home. That’s a good takeaway. If you’re doing your PhD right now and thinking, “Oh, I’d really like to go and work for a charity after this,” or, “I’d really like to go and work in industry,” it’s really important that, while you’re doing your PhD, you take the opportunities that come along to do that kind of comms work, to write for a different audience, and to present. It’s almost “dress for the job you want,” isn’t it? You start doing the job you want to do during your PhD.

Lizzie English

Yeah.

Adam Smith

That will gear you up for when you apply for that job afterwards. Would you agree?

Dr Ellice Parkinson

Totally. Take all those opportunities, network, and build those connections. My supervisors were huge advocates of that for me — from day one, start writing blogs, start taking those opportunities. It was the most fun part of the PhD for me. I was so ridiculously busy, and continue to be really busy, but it’s the bit that gives me so much enjoyment.

Adam Smith

Was there something you all had to learn from scratch? Lizzie, I’m going to come back to you on this particularly, because you jumped quite quickly from being in a lab to a completely different role. How did that first week feel?

Lizzie English

The first week felt good, I’ll be honest. But when you actually get into the work after that first week, it was an adjustment. Alice touched on this earlier, but lay writing for the public can be trickier than you expect — translating those complicated journals into something that’s actually exciting and readable for the public. That’s something I’m working on every day, as we put out those impact reviews in brochure format, really thinking about how to write things clearly.

I’ve already touched on it, but interactive dashboarding is super fun. I’m a big advocate for that — it’s a bit more fun than Excel and coding, being able to present the graphs nicely as well. So that’s a mix of analysis and communications in there too.

Adam Smith

Was there anything academia had prepared you badly for outside? We’re constantly telling PhDs — and it’s slightly different for the three of you, because you all moved straight after your PhD, whereas some people listening might have done a postdoc and had a job — but you all moved from essentially being students to being employees with a job. I know a PhD is a job, I don’t mean it isn’t, but we also like to say, “Hey, it’s a learning role, you are there to learn.” Whereas in your new roles, you’re not there to learn anymore, you’re there to do a job. Did that change of mindset take any getting used to? Or did you all think of yourselves as employees anyway, so it didn’t really make any difference?

Dr Ellice Parkinson

I don’t know, maybe it was because I had children and still had to work around childcare, so I very much saw my PhD as a full-time-plus job. But you touch on a really important point about that learning. Sometimes, when you enjoy a PhD, or you have that kind of brain, you need that constant learning, stimulation, and development. So, Lizzie’s gone on to do a data apprenticeship, and I’ve gone on to do a senior leader’s apprenticeship, because I just don’t stop. So, although we say that after the PhD your learning’s done and now, you’re doing nine to five just doing a job, it doesn’t have to look like that. You can carve out what works for you, and apprenticeships are an amazing way of learning on the job, if that’s the way your brain needs that stimulation.

Adam Smith

Okay, so we’re nearly out of time for today, but I’ve got a couple of questions to finish up with. Alice, I’m going to come to you first. If someone listening to this is in the middle of their PhD or their first postdoc and is quietly wondering whether to stay in academia, what would you say to them?

Dr Alice Carstairs

I’d say do give it some serious consideration. You started your PhD for a reason — you were interested in research and, potentially, that academic career — and that’s obviously still something that’s exciting and might well be of interest to you. But I’d also say it’s okay to explore the idea of leaving, and to know that if you do leave research — or, I should say, leave academia — there are ways back in. If, a couple of years down the line, you decide that actually you do miss the lab, you miss your microscopes, and you miss the cells you were growing, there are routes back.

Adam Smith

And, as it happens, Alzheimer’s Society has a funding scheme that could help with that.

Dr Alice Carstairs

Yes, we have a wonderful collaboration with the Daphne Jackson Trust, a fantastic organisation that helps people who have left research academic careers — for care reasons or personal reasons, I should specifically say — to get back into the lab. So, there are absolutely ways back into the lab, if you make the decision that you’d rather go back in.

Adam Smith

What would you say to that postdoc or PhD student, Ellice?

Dr Ellice Parkinson

I’d say you know your circumstances better than anyone else, and I don’t think it’s a decision anyone takes lightly. Do your research — excuse the pun. Really speak to careers advice, speak to mentors, get mentorship. I’m a huge advocate for people getting mentorship. We don’t normally put ourselves in positions where we try to get support from others; quite often, people will freely give support to others but not receive it. So, consult, and speak to different people, but ultimately you have to do what aligns with your lifestyle and your circumstances. And, echoing what Alice said, you can absolutely come back into academia. It doesn’t mean it’s a dead end.

Adam Smith

Absolutely. And Lizzie?

Lizzie English

Not much to add to those brilliant answers, really. But it’s absolutely a personal choice. Try not to be swayed by the people around you. Try to put yourself first, for maybe the first time in a while. I know that, as researchers, we work so hard, but think about what feels best for you, your skills, and your values, and try not to compare yourself to others, because it really is such a different time for everyone.

Adam Smith

Absolutely. Just out of interest, were your mentors particularly helpful in that decision? I guess we tend to pick academic mentors, not necessarily people in the jobs we want, but people in the jobs you’re currently doing. Did you seek out mentors in the space you wanted to move into?

Lizzie English

Yeah, I did a little bit. As we’ve touched on, I had Kam, my academic mentor, and she was involved in the NC3Rs, so she had a bit of outside-of-academia experience, which was valuable. But through networking on LinkedIn and Twitter, I’d made quite a lot of connections in research charities, which became useful. Someone in research impact very kindly had a video call with me before my interview with BHF, to go through my presentation slides and the questions. If nothing else, that was a fantastic confidence boost before going into the interview. And one of the things about research charities is that everyone working there is super friendly. So, if you’re looking in that area and you reach out to someone, I’m sure they’d be happy to give a bit of mentorship.

Adam Smith

Brilliant. So that’s another top tip: if you’re coming to the end of a PhD or in a postdoc and you think, “I’d like to go into research comms,” go and get yourself a mentor in advance who already works in that space, who can talk to you about what it’s really like and give you some tips on the things that might come up in interviews. And luckily for us, of course, we have Alice and Lizzie here, who’ve gone through that process recently — and if you’re listening, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind you reaching out. Just volunteering you both there.

Okay, very last question. Short answer: if you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice before you left, what would it be? Alice?

Dr Alice Carstairs

It’ll all be all right in the end.

Adam Smith

Great. Lizzie?

Lizzie English

Your skills are valuable, acknowledge them. Be kind to yourself. It’s all going to be fine.

Adam Smith

Great. And Ellice?

Dr Ellice Parkinson

Trust the process. I echo what Lizzie and Alice said. It does work out.

Adam Smith

Okay, we’re done for today.

There’s a particular kind of building you sometimes see on a university campus: tall, square, a little weather-stained, with a name carved above the door from a benefactor nobody under 50 quite remembers. Inside, generations of people have spent their best thinking years trying to make something that lasts — a paper, a finding, a small, careful piece of truth. It’s a remarkable thing when you think about it.

For a long time, the story we told ourselves about a research career was that having your name over the building was the destination — that the professorship at the end of the corridor was where you wanted to be, or a lab with your name on it. Although particularly now that everybody puts their name in front of a lab, did you really want the English lab? Actually, maybe not — that would have sounded like a whole different kind of lab.

But what I think we’ve heard today is that there’s a different story to be had. Three people who looked at that building, understood what was good about it, and then quietly walked back out of that door and into something else. Not away from research, but into rooms where research meets the rest of the world: an innovation network, research funders, charities — places where the question is not only what is true, but what we do about it.

What strikes me, listening back to all three of you today, is that none of this was a retreat. This wasn’t running away from research. It was a redirection: the same curiosity, the same rigour, that same stubborn refusal to just accept answers, but pointed at a slightly different horizon. Ellice, Alice, and Lizzie haven’t stopped being researchers. They’ve chosen the room they want to do it in, and I think that’s rather wonderful.

If you’re listening to this and you’re wondering whether the corridor you’re walking down right now is the right one, I hope today has given you permission to look up and look around. The building is beautiful, but the view from outside is too. Thank you so much, Ellice, Alice, and Lizzie, for sharing your experiences and perspectives with us today.

Links, as ever, to all the resources will be included in the show notes, along with a full transcript, at dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk. Don’t forget, we also have the Dementia Research Community app, where you can share your own experiences on this, and we have weekly webinars, where this topic has come up before as well. Thank you so much for listening. I’m Adam Smith, and you’ve been listening to “The Dementia Researcher Podcast.” Thank you. Bye-bye.

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“The Dementia Researcher Podcast” was brought to you by University College London, with generous funding from the UK National Institute for Health Research, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, Alzheimer’s Association, and Race Against Dementia. Please subscribe, leave us a review, and register on our website for full access to all our great resources. Dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.