Professor Kate Purcell

35 years on...

By Professor Kate Purcell, Emeritus Professor at the IER

"On the noticeboard of the engineering workshop where I did my PhD fieldwork, some joker had posted ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps’.

I laughed because it wasn’t true.

Then I came to the IER, and after 35 years, have worked here on and off ever since, I realised that this was the kind of environment the original poster author must have had in mind!

'The best job in the world'

I joined the IER in January 1986 to work on the ESRC Social Change and Economic Life, working with Professor Peter Elias as the qualitative complement to his quantitative skills. In the 1980s, the Institute was mostly staffed by economists more excited by models of the economy than researching what was actually happening, although Peter and Robert were exceptions. I recall Peter saying “Research is the best job in the world! You get to ask interesting questions, work with interesting people and travel to interesting places.” He was right. Our generation of researchers enjoyed all those aspects.

Professor Kate Purcell worked as a researcher at the Institute from 1986-89 and 1996-99, respectively, and remained an Associate Fellow for most of the intervening periods. She returned to the IER in 2006

But because of how research is funded in the UK, it is invariably also masochistic, with very little opportunity for ‘blue skies’ scholarship and constant deadlines and pressures to apply competitively for funding to cover your salary and the admin costs of being able to operate effectively.

Many talented early-career researchers have passed through the Institute and then gone on to become internationally renowned academics, but a core have remained, or gone somewhere else and then returned.

Collaborative research and influencing government policies

So why did I keep returning? In the end, it boils down to what Peter said. First, I’ve been able to do really interesting research on the labour market issues that interested me most: access to opportunity, the relationship between higher education and employment, and employment precarity – always with a focus on gender and other structural inequalities. In a policy-focused institute such as the IER, you got the opportunity to influence government and other organisational policies, and the satisfaction of knowing that your research and your findings really mattered. We’ve been focusing on impact for years, but the downside is that very often, opportunities for research are policy-driven, rather than based on a desire by the funders to develop research-led policies.

Secondly, I have largely really enjoyed working with the stimulating and committed interdisciplinary researchers across the IER with whom I have been able to develop research and analyses that I simply could not have done as a mainstream sociologist. In addition, there have been opportunities to work with and make lifelong friends with researchers in other universities, here and overseas.

Thirdly, international collaborative research, exchanging ideas, challenging assumptions and uncovering how important context is in understanding labour market change really does broaden the mind. My most important research outputs, as a result of working with Professor Adalberto Cardoso of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (who subsequently spent time as a visiting professor at the IER), are two grandsons: the children of my son Andrew and Yula, Adalberto’s stepdaughter who, introduced by us, married in 2006. And yes, after 35 years, I really am retired now!"

Professor Kate Purcell worked as a researcher at the Institute from 1986-89 and 1996-99, respectively, and remained an Associate Fellow for most of the intervening periods. She returned to the IER in September 2006 after spending seven years as Professor of Employment Studies at the University of the West of England in Bristol. Kate retired at the end of December 2012 but continues to work part-time at the Institute.