Pilot career tracking initiative offers evidence-based model for long-term research career development

Findings from a new report tracking the careers of researchers awarded British Academy funding – the British Academy Research Career Tracker (BARCT) – show the importance of early-career funding in supporting sustained research productivity, career progression, and workforce stability across the UK’s higher education sector.

Commissioned by the British Academy and conducted by the Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC), the pilot study examined the career outcomes of more than 1,100 former recipients of two key British Academy early-career funding schemes: the Postdoctoral Fellowship (PDF; active) and the British Academy’s Rising Star Engagement Awards (BARSEA; active 2015–2019).

Key findings include:

• Retention of talent: early career funding schemes have a demonstrable anchoring effect, keeping globally mobile research talent within the UK higher education system.
  
• Leadership and mentorship: 78% of surveyed PDF alumni in academia were supervising doctoral students, collectively mentoring over 1,500 candidates – an average of just over three per respondent – illustrating their significant role in shaping the next generation of researchers.
  
• Career progression: More than 80% of surveyed PDF alumni remain active in UK academic research, and 91% hold permanent academic roles. For BARSEA alumni surveyed, nearly 90% have advanced to positions above Lecturer, with almost 40% having reached professorial or equivalent senior roles

Dr Alex Lewis, the British Academy’s Director of Research, said: “This pilot not only highlights the long-term benefits of early-career support for individual researchers – it also shows that investing in researchers early in their careers leads to clear strategic value for the UK’s research base. This scalable, evidence-led approach to tracking research careers enables the Academy – and the wider sector – to develop funding strategies that are grounded in real-world experience and deliver maximum value and impact for researchers, their institutions, and society at large.”

Respondents shared reflections that underscore the personal and professional value of early-career support:

"Whilst the amount of funding I received was relatively small, in terms of visibility, leadership, networking, and getting away from being a scholar who sat in a back bedroom writing on my own, it made all the difference."

"It enabled me to develop policy networks, and to leverage these to provide training to earlier-career researchers. The financial flexibility supported intellectual exploration, and I am still writing papers that draw indirectly—and sometimes directly—on the work I conducted during the BARSEA."

"The opportunity to work in a new institution, to gain substantial independent teaching experience, and to be fully integrated into an academic department gave me the confidence to pursue an academic career in the knowledge that it was right for me and I was right for it."

"Without it I wouldn't have been able to go on with an academic career through a time where there were no academic jobs available. It enabled me to move from a Classics department to a philosophy environment, and also to a new institution where I would have struggled to get noticed or accepted coming from a different university."

The BARCT offers a practical framework for long-term career monitoring that could inform broader research policy and funding strategies across the UK’s Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts for People and the Economy (SHAPE) disciplines.