For many academics, long distance travel and flying are seen as both necessary and a perk of the profession. However, as concerns around the environmental impact of flying mount, especially the impact of high frequency fliers, there are growing calls t…
Category: The Impact of Academic Travel
The environmental burden of the international job market for economists
Each year, the ‘international job market for economists’ involves over 1,000 junior candidates and several hundred recruiters from all over the world meeting for short pre-screening interviews at annual congresses in Europe and in the US, thus generati…
Rethinking the research seminar for a post-COVID world with Cassyni
Research seminars are a foundational part of academia and an important medium for communicating new ideas and research. However, national lockdowns and social distancing regulations have required research seminars to be translated at speed into digital…
Putting the brakes on professional nomadism? Prospects for long-distance commuting in a post-pandemic world.
Until now, academics have accepted that professional nomadism is part of the job. However, as the global pandemic puts a brake on unnecessary travel, Dr Emily Yarrow and Dr Julie Davies explore the challenges and opportunities that new working patterns mean for commutes, campuses and careers. For many academics, the journey to work is a long one. … Continued
Visa applications: emotional tax and privileged passports
Researcher-artist Bathsheba Okwenje contrasts the visa requirements for a Ugandan national visiting the UK with a UK national visiting Uganda. While highlighting how some passports carry certain privileges, more hidden is the emotional tax non-privileged passport-holders pay by wanting to explore the world, by needing to prove they are worthy of travel in a country that is not their own. […]
Do the best academics fly more?
Academic flying is often justified on the basis that international conferences and travel are important to the production of new knowledge. As such, travel brings researchers into contact with new ideas, allows them to share and refine their own ideas and therefore improves the quality of their research. However, in this post Seth Wynes argues that beyond a certain level […]
Running a ‘nearly carbon neutral conference’ – Lessons from the Feral Conference
Previous posts on the Impact Blog have argued that academic conferences are bad for the environment and can present a barrier to increased diversity and inclusion within the research community. Digital communication media are often recommended as a potential solution to these issues. In this post, Nicholas Holm, Sy Taffel, Trisia Farrelly and Lisa Vonk describe how they organised the […]
Reimbursement Culture and Widening Participation in Academia
The cost of academic travel is often covered with upfront payments by researchers that are subsequently reimbursed by their institutions. In this post Sarah Thomson argues, that in order to develop a culture of widening participation in higher education, it is time to rethink this practice and the tacit assumption, especially with regard to PhD researchers, that they have access to the funds […]
Don’t let your academic career determine your every move – Should early career researchers be expected to relocate regularly in order to land a permanent job?
To secure a permanent academic position, it has become an increasingly common requirement for early career researchers to work in a number of institutions, often across a number of countries. In this post, Eva Krockow weighs the benefits of an international career against the costs of constant mobility and suggests that fostering more stable working environments will ultimately prove beneficial […]