Resources and support

If you have experienced an academic set-back, been unsuccessful with a funding application, or had a paper rejected and are looking for help, you may find the Warwick self-help resource useful. As well as providing techniques and tips for dealing with the emotions that come from experiencing failure, this resource suggests new ways of thinking about what failure is and how it is part of academic development.

If your experiences have brought you to contemplate your career progression, then you may want to consider having a coach or mentor to explore your challenges, ideas and career aspirations? Both are available at Warwick. Find out more here.

The Ambassadors for Better Research Culture are periodically host ‘Safe to Fail’ session with academics sharing their experiences of and learning from failure. Details of upcoming sessions will be posted here and advertised in the WMS newsletter.

Academic research and reflections

There is a small, but growing, literature on what ‘failure’ is, what it means to academics, and how it shapes our working environment. Here are some links if you would like to learn more about the research and initiatives that are seeking to challenge how we think about ‘academic failure’:

This podcast ‘From setback to success’ is part of the Research Culture uncovered series and explores how to support researchers after unsuccessful funding applications.

This article ‘Grieving academic grant rejections: examining funding failure and experiences of loss’ considers rejection as a form of loss and the synergies with grief and what support is available.

There are suggestions of what to change – now and in the future – within the papers of this special issue (2020) Reclaiming failure in geography: academic honesty in a neoliberal world.

It includes this paper explored the range of different types of failure “Failure failure failure failure failure failure: Six types of failure within the neoliberal academy”

Normalising and depersonalising failure

The provision of a safe, inclusive, and supportive research environment, in which all can thrive, is a central tenet of a ‘good’ research culture. This includes recognising that ‘failure’ is a predominant feature (not a ‘bug’) of academic research that affects every level, from early-career researchers to senior professors.

Historically, little attention had been given to how “failure” affects both individual wellbeing and a University’s research culture.

But more recently there have been initiatives across academia and within Warwick to better understand the effects and implications of non-success and failure.

There are two key aspects to this. Normalising failure is simply to recognise the extent that failure is part of academic life. Whether it is not being successful with a grant application, having a paper rejected from a journal, or not getting a job – we should openly recognise that these happen to every academic.

This recognition can help us to depersonalise failure. This is not to ‘blame’ others, but to place our personal setbacks within the context of how research operates.

Being fourth in a competition for three grants does not mean you did not work hard work or failed to provide a high-quality submission. You can do your part, but we all need to accept that whether you are successful or not is beyond any one individual’s control.

There is much more to be done and is being done across Warwick and higher education. If you see a resource you found helpful, please let us know so we can share it here by contacting us.

Additional wellbeing resources that you may find helpful are signposted from here.