Post-PhD careers: mobility and 'research' in the non-academic arena

More than half of PhD graduates, individuals trained to be researchers, find themselves working outside the academy, whether or not by choice - with this number expected to grow. What do we actually know about their ‘research’ careers after they make this cross-sector move to new kinds of organisations? In fact, inquiry in this area is limited and tends to focus on either individual factors or the structuring factors created by organisations, economic climate, and national/global policies. A consensus is growing that this approach fails to capture what is key in understanding PhD career trajectories: the interaction between these two sets of factors, individual and structural. To explore this issue, this chapter introduces a conceptual frame, identity-trajectory within nested contexts, which addresses the interaction. It then describes the insights emerging from examining this interaction across four studies, with particular attention to mobility and research work in the non-academic arena. It ends by summarising what we need to research about PhD careers and highlights two issues. The first is the challenge for future research of examining the interaction between individual intentions and the structures that influence the nature of available jobs; and the second, the need to rethink our notions of mobility and research if we are to better prepare PhD graduates for their non-traditional careers.