The mid-career reset: how to be strategic about your research direction
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Bluesky
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Credit: EikoTsuttiy/Getty
A decade or so after earning a PhD is a pivotal stage in a person’s academic career. The urgency of establishing your career has faded — you are probably no longer scrambling to secure your first grant or write your first independent paper, and you might be tenured — however, you are not yet a senior academic. You occupy a middle space that is rarely discussed.
The scientific system leans on mid-career researchers heavily, but this time period can feel surprisingly precarious: expectations rise, responsibilities multiply and maintaining a clear research direction becomes difficult.
I am a palaeoclimate scientist at UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. My research seeks to understand how changes in ocean circulation and carbon cycling have shaped Earth’s climate in the past, using a multidisciplinary approach that combines marine fieldwork, laboratory geochemistry, plankton biology and model–data integration.
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