Pathfinder Career Narratives 5: Public and Community Engagement Manager (and Comedian)

Pathfinder Career Narratives is an ongoing series tracking the career choices and experiences of doctoral graduates. You can see all posts in the series here. You can find all of the Pathfinder resources and opportunities here. This post is by Dr Zara Gladman, Public and Community Engagement Manager at the University of Glasgow. You can find her professional work account on Twitter here, or her unprofessional comedy account on Twitter here.

Name: Zara Gladman

Doctorate subject area, and year of completion: PhD in Ecology, 2012

Role: Public and Community Engagement Manager, Research Services Directorate, University of Glasgow

Approximate salary bracket of this type of role: £38-55,000

I’ve never known exactly what I wanted to do. At school I flitted between art, geography, French, biology. Choosing between the arts and science felt impossible but I eventually opted for zoology, largely influenced by my dad’s collection of Wildlife Fact Files (if you know, you know) and Michaela Strachan. Science won, sorry arts! Or did it? We’ll come back to that. 

Post-degree, I worked in pubs while I considered my next steps. In 2008 I began a PhD in ecology, researching the spread and impact of the invasive North American signal crayfish. Summers were spent wading through rivers and lochs; winters were in the office, analysing data and writing. I had four brilliant supervisors drawn from academia and environmental agencies. The research had a clear remit and application, which I found reassuring.  

I quickly realised that the elements of my PhD that gave me most satisfaction were those that involved communicating and connecting with others. I loved teaching and presenting, whether it was to school children, students or the local angling club. I took part in engagement projects like “I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here!” and completed a placement with the BBC Science Factual unit. I co-founded a podcast and (with encouragement from the Researcher Development Advisor at the time, Elizabeth Adams), secured funding to start Bright Club in Glasgow, a comedy night in which academics share their work via stand-up. I performed Lady Gaga parody songs about invasive crayfish at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Fortunately, my supervisors were supportive throughout, allowing me to balance my research with these sometimes leftfield diversions. Many of these projects ultimately benefited my academic work: once you’ve performed stand up comedy, presenting your research at an international conference feels like a walk in the park. It also enhanced my life outside of university – comedy remains one of my biggest passions and creative outlets (my TikTok addiction has got out of control this year). 

By the time I completed my PhD, I knew that a career as a full-time researcher wasn’t for me. While I enjoyed the research (and had a fantastic PhD experience), I didn’t feel the burning passion for science that I saw in others; I’m thinking with particular fondness of my ornithologist flatmate who stored dead birds in ice cream tubs in our freezer and would rise at 3am on a Saturday to go ‘ringing’. Postdocs are competitive and I wasn’t interested in uprooting my life every couple of years for something that I “quite enjoyed”. However, I was passionate about public engagement, which was fast becoming a viable career option, as universities and funders invested in posts and made strategic commitments.  

The wide range of non-academic activities I pursued during my research and the freedom afforded by my supervisors to do so, undoubtedly aided my transition to working in public engagement. By the time I finished my PhD, I was comfortable engaging with a broad range of people, groups and audiences, and well-networked. Twitter in particular was a useful reference for keeping up with the sector, and was populated by people who wanted to engage outside of academia. I was also a regular user of the PSCI-COM mailing list. 

What does my role involve?  

I’ve now been working full-time in the public engagement sector for 11 years, firstly at the Royal Society of Biology as an intern, then at the Glasgow Science Festival and currently as the University of Glasgow’s Public and Community Engagement Manager. My seven years at Glasgow Science Festival were a huge learning experience. I was part of a small team (headed up by Festival co-founder Dr Debbie McNeill), with just over 3FTE staff running projects and events that regularly engaged 100,000 people a year. We didn’t have a dedicated education, communications, marketing or fundraising team like some festivals. Resourcefulness and a willingness to collaborate and learn a broad range of skills were essential. I developed content, gave training, wrote grant proposals, evaluated impact, built community partnerships, managed events, built websites, edited videos, designed print materials, wrote press releases, secured sponsorship and reported to funders, among other things.  

The festival, through its headline event in June and a range of community projects throughout the year, took me from Possilpark to London to Hong Kong. After my PhD, I had briefly considered returning to university for a Masters in Science Communication; I’m now grateful that I opted to learn as a practitioner on-the-job, which gave me ‘real world’ experience and perspectives that continue to shape my approach today (as well as being much more financially feasible than an expensive degree!). When I secured a grant to co-write a musical comedy inspired by the detection of gravitational waves, to encourage young people from areas of multiple deprivation into STEM, I knew I was in the right place. For someone torn between the arts and sciences, I suddenly found myself at the perfect intersection.  

Leaving the Science Festival was daunting; I’d learned so much and felt a loyalty and investment in its future. However, I was ready for a new challenge. In spring 2019, I was appointed as the University of Glasgow’s Public & Community Engagement Advisor (recently upgraded to Manager), facilitating and embedding good practice in engagement by researchers across all disciplines. This represented a shift from a high-paced delivery role to a behind-the-scenes, facilitatory one. It was also my first ever permanent position, which felt like a huge achievement. Secure public engagement posts can be hard to come by, often tied to project funding. Having the breathing space to think strategically was a game changer; and the financial security came at a good time, as I’d just purchased my first home. 

So much of my role involves conversations: with researchers, professional colleagues and partners. I love the variety and the freedom to move between disciplines, teams and sectors. Last year I returned to my festival roots as Manager of ARCadia, a public festival that celebrated the opening of the Advanced Research Centre (ARC), involving 712 staff, students and partner staff and 54 non-university organisations. It’s an exciting time to work in engagement at Glasgow, with campus developments creating new civic spaces that catalyse partnerships and have huge potential benefit to local communities.  

The community of public engagement professionals in the UK is a wonderfully open and welcoming one. Networks like the Scottish Public Engagement Network and the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement are worth joining, for anyone wishing to dip their toe into the sector. The European Science Engagement Association brings together engagement professionals from across the continent. 

Despite leaving research, I still value and draw on my PhD experience: having an understanding of the research landscape and the competing demands of academia allows me to support people from a place of empathy. There’s also the uncomfortable reality that holding a PhD ‘validates’ my opinion for a minority of academics. Valuing diverse types of knowledge, breaking down hierarchies and enabling more equitable partnerships are principles that sit at the heart of public and community engagement; I hope we can mirror this in our institutions as we strive for a healthy research culture that benefits everyone, inside and outside academia.