ResearcHER: the power and potential of research careers for women

by Women in Academia Support Network

Not all research careers look the same. Not all academics spend their working lives in labs, or dark offices surrounded by dusty books. A research career can mean working in theatres or schools, influencing policy, working with the world's leading brands and businesses, and much, much more. Showing the true diversity of scholarship, and the women leading the way, ResearcHER offers an A-Z of research and researchers from around the world, exploring who researchers are and what they really do, all whilst celebrating female scholarship. Each short chapter offers an insight into a real-life researcher, their background and journey into a research career, what they're currently researching, their top tips for budding researchers, and fun facts and activities to explore yourself. ResearcHER smashes stereotypes to show you that research is not just conducted by men and women in lab coats or stuck in stuffy offices; researchers are women from all backgrounds, researchers come from diverse geographies, are disabled and able-bodied, are transgender, nonbinary, queer. Researchers look just like you, and you could be one too.

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2022

Reviews

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 4 out of 5]

So often - too often - women have been excluded from higher education. When women became students and academics, we were labelled 'teachers.' We completed the 'housework' of higher education, writing curriculum, designing assessment, and 'caring' for students and colleagues.

So often - too often - women are invisible. Marginal. Marginalized. The warm up act. Never on the main stage.

ResearcHER rewrites the story we have heard all our lives. This powerful book introduces not only a group of remarkable international women researchers, but reveals the power of their diversity. It remains inspiring to see how women - so often living and reading and thinking against the odds and against systems and structures that demean and undermine - can transform knowledge.

This book is useful for high school and university students who cannot 'see' their - or a future. The pages are filled with role models and people who have succeeded against the odds.

[Gaye Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stories of 28 women in academia from several countries with diverse experiences and research fields.

The book shows the diversity of women's contributions to world knowledge and is both a paean to female researchers and an encouragement to females to get into academic research. Or anybody really.

Each entry, written by the women themselves, introduces them and their research, includes a fun fact about them and offers simple activities to do that relate to the women's research fields so that readers can have a go themselves.

Recommended especially to new researchers and school leavers wondering what to do with their lives.