Kjetil Vikene

I have three concrete issues that I think are of particular importance to temporary academic staff.

1. The first issue is UiB practical attitude to temporary academic staff: There are a set of unwritten rules that makes those of us who are temporary academic staff accept a role as cheap or free labor, accepting work assignments that supersedes our work descriptions. We do this partly out of career considerations, but also out of loyalty to our research environments. A typical example is our willingness to take on teaching responsibilities or supervision in positions without obligatory teaching responsibilities. On the one hand teaching experience is a prerequisite for later permanent positions; On the other hand the growth in student numbers at UiB has grown rapidly – making it difficult for many units at UiB to handle their obligations without the willingness of temporary staff to do the work. I think this «extra work» should be made visible in a more substantial way than it is today, preferably through compensation, either economically or that this work can be done in exchange for extension of contracts: Temporary academic staff should not be used as a balancing item for UiB, neither economically nor practically. UiB IS working to reduce the number of temporary staff – making permanent staff the rule. My perspective will be to ensure that the working conditions also for PhDs and PostDocs is seen in this context.
    
2. The second issue is closely connected to the first, namely the often difficult situation temporary staff fines themselves in during transition periods from one career step to the next: We are often expected to “thread water” economically, for instance after PhD defences or waiting for answers on applications either for positions or financing. There are differences between different institutes, centres and faculties at UiB, but in my opinion, UiB has an overarching, central responsibility to facilitate that these transitory periods are kept as short as possible. Concretely I think the time between application for a position (be it PhD, PostDoc or later on a permanent position) should be significantly reduced; Today, more often than not, it will take more than 6 months to get an answer on any application, something I think results in a loss of talented researchers, either because they are offered positions elsewhere, where these processes are more rapid, or because they simply have to take other positions out of economic reasons.
    
3. The third issue is of a more scientific nature: To remove institutional hindrances so that cross-disciplinary research can be done with more ease. It is particularly problematic that – with few exceptions – financing of research is tied to clearly defined areas of strategy or tied to narrowly defined programmatic ideas, something that makes it difficult to find resources to new research ideas that falls outside of these. I think it is important to make sure that UiB central research strategy, focusing on certain areas, is not to the detriment of the breadth of research and smaller research environments that do not fit into these. Smaller research groups and environments should be given more economic flexibility to shape their own research strategies, also with the ability to more quickly start smaller projects. This would be of particular interest to temporary academic staff as this could precisely be a way to trigger employment in the transitory stages mentioned above.