4: Using Professional Credentials in Pursuit of Research Pathways

Featuring early career researchers Alfred, Amy, Jane and Ole

For those with professional experience and a doctorate, this chapter will support your consideration of roles as pracademics and prosearchers and your transitions to academia and industry. This chapter explores the place of the pracademic and prosearcher within the academy and industry. Stories of boundary crossing reflect the unique skills, contributions and challenges related to being a pracademic or a prosearcher. This tension is one of a system of tensions explored through this book (Fig. 4.1).

The stories in this chapter describe the preparation and trajectories of pracademics (researchers engaging as academics, delivering teaching, service and research) and prosearchers (researchers engaging as professionals, applying research-led practice in industry and education). Employers benefit from doctorally qualified professionals’ unique capacities to cross the boundaries at the intersection between the academy and industry. They use their professional experience and doctoral education to prepare the next generation of professionals and enable the conduct of research-led practice.