We try to create the space where we assume the people have

skills and knowledge and know what to do.

They just need like a sparring partner

The Dutch universities, they have a slogan that's called Room for Everyone's Talent.

That would mean, little bit of the loosening of the different staff

categories and just thinking in terms of the shared mission of a university.

Although posting stuff on the internet isn't probably the way to make a big

impact on a structural level, but I think people who read it feel seen.

Hello there.

I'm Sarah McLusky and this is Research Adjacent.

Each episode I talk to amazing research adjacent professionals about what

they do and why it makes a difference.

Keep listening to find out why we think the research adjacent space

is where the real magic happens.

Hello and welcome to episode 79 of the Research Adjacent podcast.

We are back to the usual interview format for this episode, and I feel

like if you spend any time at all hanging around on LinkedIn, you will

probably have already come across today's guest, Johanna Stadlbauer.

With a mission to make academia kinder and more fun, her posts certainly embody

that blending compassionate advice with the odd horse or elk picture.

And if you're not already connected with her, then use the link in the

show notes to go and find her now.

Johanna also brings this spirit to her day job, which is running

the Research Careers Campus at the University of Graz in Austria.

Their holistic development program for early to mid career researchers offers

everything from microgrants and training to writing retreats and yoga sessions.

You can get a good sense of Johanna's ethos in the lineup for their Communities

of Curiosity Festival in April.

And again, you'll find a link to that in the show notes as well.

In our conversation, we talk about how she transitioned from anthropology

research to researcher development, the ethos and activism that underpins what

she does and why free pizza is always a good way to bring people together.

Listen on to hear Johanna's story.

Welcome along to the podcast, Johanna.

It is fantastic to have you here as a guest.

And I wonder if we could begin by just hearing a bit about

who you are and what you do.

Yes.

Thank you so much, Sarah.

I'm very excited because I've been following your podcast and you

following you for quite a while.

So I feel very honored that you give me this 30 minutes to talk about myself today

and to have this conversation with you.

So my current job is I lead a unit for researcher development.

We work with people from PhD candidates, actually earlier than that, Masters

students who would be interested in doing a PhD are a lot of our bread and butter,

but generally we, we develop from PhD candidates to tenure track staff and

we offer them events, funding, small microgrants, networking opportunities,

more structured programmmes, retreats like the writing retreat, networking

opportunities and all normal skills workshop, which are one or two days.

And also a listening ear and quick and easy advice if they shoot us an email

or a longer term brainstorming sessions.

Anything they need to make the next step in their career.

And so I lead this unit, which is called Research Careers

Campus, and was established on the first of April this year.

And before that, I was in the same team but responsible for

establishing the Postdoc Office.

Which still exists just now as part of this unit.

And my colleagues or my team are will be soon eight people.

They're all researcher developers and we're also recruiting an

administrative officer or operations professional right now to help us with

the 40 plus workshops we do a year.

And sending over all that funding, all these mini grants for the people

to do their research trips and organized conferences and so on.

So that's my job.

So maybe just for context, the University of Graz is in Austria and

is Austria's second largest university.

It's been around for many hundreds of years and it has 30,000 students and it

has about 4,000 staff members, no, 3,200 academic staff and 4,700 staff overall.

That's, yeah.

So it's a big operation.

Yeah.

Fantastic.

And you said that the, this Research Careers Campus is a new unit, a

new thing that's in existence.

What was the rationale behind it?

Why did the university want to set up a unit like this?

So since 2011, we had services for our PhD candidates.

That was roughly the time in Austria where the first of these services were made.

The first was made at the University of Vienna quite a few

years earlier, I think maybe 2008.

And then we came, I think second and that was the time of the Salzberg

principles and of in general thinking about how to structure doctoral

education to create well-rounded researchers and also well-rounded

professionals for other sectors.

Basically, what is doctoral education for and how do we do it

so that we create excellent talent.

And after that, I'd say was the time of the postdocs.

So in Austria in 2016 the first association was formed that would

care for this later career stage.

And then we came in 2022, was when we established the Postoc Office and now in

our higher education context is the time for the mid-career researchers, let's say,

as, as far as I can understand the trends.

We've, managed to get the university on board to also cater now to people

who are currently fulfilling tenure track agreements so that they can be

made permanent and also try to think of an even later career stage and

how can we engage with researchers who are already rather established

in their careers but might still want good professional development and you

asked me before we talked what else is around in terms of staff development

and our university has had leadership development as many universities

have from the staff development unit.

So that's attached to HR and that's been always around.

So this support for the tenure track phase and for PIs has

been always in existence only.

It is a smaller subsection of the general staff development and HR

operations, and we are now since 2025, basically the central institution

for this academic career support.

Yeah.

So we all have a background ourselves in research and

we are like try to be on eye level with the researchers if they wanted.

Yeah, it makes sense.

And you've said that it's, now that it's come together because of this

understanding that, it's not just early career researchers that need support,

it's more mid-level senior researchers as well who need professional development

and certainly are, there's some situations I've been in where you, you find yourself

thinking, yeah, it's not really the younger ones that need this training.

Some of the older ones definitely need this training as well.

But yeah, I think it is interesting that direction of travel.

I think I've noticed that in the UK as well as people starting to say

why are the PhD students in the early career researchers getting everything?

What about other people.

And one thing that I think, I'm particularly interested in is not

just what about the mid-career and senior researchers, but what about

all the people who are working to support the research as well?

So people like you, people like researcher developers.

What professional support are they getting?

Is that something that's on the radar at all in Austria?

So we have no technician commitment

or something like that.

And I don't think we have as of yet, a large that's not actually true

there, there have been already since the Doc services at the university.

So the PhD services started also professional networking activities,

for example, professionals in doctoral education as it was called then.

So that's started, I think in Austria and is all over Europe.

And now this PRIDE network has also spawned one for postdoc

development professionals.

So the awareness and associations are certainly there.

And in terms of where can we get our own development from our own institutions.

That would always be within HR and staff development.

So they offer the normal, what's called internal development opportunities.

So workshops from project management to leadership.

So for example, my colleague Gerald and me so we are now head and deputy,

head of this unit, which we would just enrolled in this normal leadership

development at our university.

And now we had the pleasure of doing a leadership workshop with new PIs.

They're all together.

All the staff groups get developed together in, in terms of leadership and

that's been going for a long time as well.

So I suppose in Austria, if you are a research professional services

person you'd get your professional development from your own HR staff

development unit, and also within european and German speaking networks.

So there is another called UNIWIND which is an association of all the graduate

centers in the German speaking countries.

Austrian, Switzerland are associated partners.

So we can also go to their yearly meet ups where all the people in our job

get together who work with researchers.

So when I came here, which was in 2020, the team has,

that has been here since 2011.

They would be part of all the relevant networks and would

regularly get professional development from these networks.

Another one is COIMBRA, which is a network of many universities in

Europe and they also have a working group for doctoral education.

And also there's university alliances, so the European University Alliances

every university in Europe is in one of these alliances, and there are, if you

have a working group in your alliance for PhDs and postdocs, you will meet

your opposites at the other universities.

And that's also a form of professional development.

Yeah.

Oh, that also sounds really useful.

Yeah, it's great to know that it isn't just the researchers that

are getting all the attention.

There's also something for the whole research community.

'cause that's how I like to think of it is as a whole team that does the

research rather than just the researchers.

So we first connected via LinkedIn and I particularly love that your,

your kind of tagline on LinkedIn is to make academia more fun and more kind.

Tell me a bit about that and how you're bringing it into

the work that you're doing now.

That stems a bit from my own experience as a postdoc and

from my own experience going through the different contracts I had in academia.

I graduated with a PhD in 2014 and I was a PhD candidate employed

from 2012 on, and no one ever told me much about how to do stuff.

And I was always the only PhD or postdoc at my department.

So I took part in all the women's empowerment programmmes and tried to

build peer networks and try to learn from modeling what other people did.

And sometimes I will get rejected when I wanted to do something collegial or

when I wanted to do something for, just for the sake of it, because people had

the milestones they had to achieve and couldn't do the collegial, solidarity

type thing that I wanted to do.

And also I was really stressed out by the workload and so when I came back to

the university in this role I'm having now or in this role I had before I came

into the, this leadership role, I thought how will I survive being confronted

with all these stressed academics, of which I was one just a few years ago.

And I, so I just make this work that I do and my communications and the spaces

that we create as relaxing as possible.

And I was in for example, a women's network, which was meant to be like an

accountability group where you would push yourself for the next career steps.

And I got so stressed out in this group because they were always telling

me, ah, you need to be more firm with your boss, or you need to do this and

this, and set your boundaries and.

That pushed me almost to the brink of burnout with all that other stuff I had.

Not that this group was had a part in that, but the messaging

you have to do didn't help me.

So that's what I try not to do.

And we try to create the space where we assume the people have skills

and knowledge and know what to do.

They just need like a sparring partner and they need a good pizza, and they need

three nights in a hotel so that they can focus on their writing and they maybe

need some sauna and yoga and they need some fun enjoyment where they can be

together and also build good networks.

So we never do anything where you wouldn't get something tangible out of it.

But we always try create an atmosphere that's somehow nourishing

and not stressing people out.

And we offer many external coaches and trainers and we try to select them.

So that they have messages that focus on the innate talent and skills and

motivation of the people and less on like it's a rat race and you will not

survive if you don't work 60 hours.

And also, so we look at the good things the the good life, the nourishing

aspect, the joy in your work, and how we can create a space where people can

tap into that basically without, we also talk about the bad things and the

challenging things but we don't say this is necessarily the way it needs to be,

and, for example we will have, people will approach me and say, I've experienced an

instance of power abuse in my last job.

Can you tell me if I could talk to someone to find out what actually happened?

So people know that they can approach us for the hard things, for the burnout type

things, for the people not doing they're duty towards you, for stress and overload.

They know that they can talk to us about it, but we don't go around

and say academia is only for the very hard people or something.

Yeah.

And how is that received?

To me it sounds amazing and I think some people listening might already

know that I'm a yoga teacher.

I'd be like, yes, sign me up for all of this stuff.

But how do people react coming in?

Because that's potentially quite different to what people expect from

a professional development programmme.

It, they can get their normal workshops on how to become

tenured and they can get 2000 euro for a conference or for a research

trip and some only want the 2000 Euro.

That's fine.

If you are in a very vibrant lab and your PI takes care of your journey

and you just need a further 2000 euro, you can get it from us and if

you need coaching with someone who really pushes you to the next step.

You can also get it from us, but if you are seeking for some feminist academic

sisterhood, you can also get it from us.

So I haven't had I, I suppose the people who feel this is different, they'll

just take the money and the workshops.

Yeah.

And they will still come to the pizza because pizza is networking, yeah.

And everyone likes a good free pizza.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Even people who are here a very short amount of

time will find their way to us and will get the message very quickly.

That they can talk about these things or that they, can meet people or that they

can do startup groups to do together.

So we have this writing group that's open every Friday and people come

up with all sorts of other groups.

And we also support this peer grouping a lot.

So there's like mothers in science.

We try to give them, for example, money for speakers, or we try to give them the

space to meet or we pay for a buffet.

There's Open Science Graz.

There's many other self-built organizations where we just

try to support a little bit.

So people who are into that and get the message that they can get it here.

It's good that there's there's options for everybody depending

on their preferences, which sounds really, yeah, really important.

'Cause that's one of the most important things about

professional development, isn't it?

Is that everybody finds their path and they get the support

that they need because it isn't a one size fits all kind of thing.

Yeah.

Excellent.

You've said there, you've hinted at the fact that you

were a researcher in the past.

Tell us a bit about your journey what you did and how you've

ended up where you are now.

Yes.

So I've already said, so I'm an anthropologist, a cultural anthropologist,

which means you do qualitative research and you talk to people about their lives

and you're interested in the everyday, and you're also interested in the

things like capitalism and larger scale societal power structures, let's say.

So I think that prepares one very well for everything.

And my PhD research was actually on expatriates.

So people who work in international companies who get sent around and do

these 1, 2, 3 year contracts abroad and bring their family with them.

So in that sense I know already from empirically research how

it is to move every three years.

And it was also I had a gender studies component in there that

also relates to what I do right now because academia and inequalities

are very much should be thought together if you think about careers.

So you have to think about who gets to, do which things and who, which

people maybe are, act actively hindered by the way the system is right now.

So I'd say that PhD and the research topics I did prepared me a little

bit for this and what led me to this professional path was all these

peer grouping activities I did, I think and all the trainings I took

that the university offered already to researchers because before the

professional research development units were built, we've had women's

empowerment units for about 30 years.

And they.

Did everything from leadership development to, trying to fix the

leaky pipeline by giving you mentorship opportunities and all of that.

So I took every opportunity that they offered and I also modeled myself a

little bit after the person who was the main figure in our University of

Graz equality office because she had this one-on-one interest in you and

she would just also open her networks to you and she'd also take no shit.

So she would be like, if you, don't show up to one of the

workshops you're on my blue list.

And so that's good.

If you know who you are engaging with, you are really taking the opportunities

they give you also seriously, because you know who will think about you

not showing up to that workshop.

Yes.

And so through a mentoring programmme there and through

the interventions of this woman, I was also able to make the step out

of academia when I quit my postdoc job that I got after my PhD job.

And set myself on the path to creating more educational programmmes from

research, so after I decided not to continue with my postdoc I switched

to work with NGOs where we would do research on violence prevention and

then make training programmmes for professionals from this research.

And then I worked in the equality offices as well at two different universities.

One in Germany and one in Austria.

And in Austria I was responsible for starting a project towards

a non-binary university.

So how all areas of the university could recognize that there are people

who are neither men or women, and, how that would work in IT, how that

would work in teaching and so on.

And that was a very short project.

And the other one was a longer project about creating a portal against

sexualized harassment on campus.

And that also necessitated going through the whole institution from director to

IT service to the deans to individual researchers and see how they position

themselves against sexualized harassment and then build an informational portal

that people could get information for if they are affected themselves, if they want

to be an ally to someone who is affected, if they want to create environments

that are a culture of care against this.

So I did some organizational development for a few years, and

then I got a maternity leave cover in 2020 in the Doc service here.

So in the unit that served then doctoral researchers and then was tasked by

the man who is now the president of the Austrian Science Fund, who was

then the vice director for research with building up postdoc services.

And then after I had done that successfully we widened our remit,

and I was promoted to be the leader of this unit we have built now.

Yeah it really makes sense.

Everything from the research that you did.

I know that sometimes when we look at our careers, you go, oh, it went all over the

place, but to me it really makes sense.

You clearly had this really deep interest in helping people to progress,

whether that's, going right back to the impact that moving around, with

jobs has on people up to the impact that gender has on how people show up

in the workplace and how the workplace accepts and supports those people.

So it makes sense that you've ended up doing career related type stuff now.

Does it feel like it makes sense to you or is that just looking back it makes sense?

I know my job that I have right now is, the

mix of everything I did before.

So in that sense, it makes sense.

So there's really nothing I did that doesn't fit into this job.

And I basically created this job myself.

So it's not a surprise that it encompasses everything that I like to do.

And I wouldn't say I have an innate love of helping people.

I would maybe more say I have an innate love of talking and writing

and creating knowledge and imparting it, and also engaging with people and

doing stuff collaboratively and getting to, set my own agenda a little bit.

But obviously my job is to help people very much.

No that's, that's really, that's really fascinating because,

because yeah so it's almost like you, you approach all this career related stuff,

then maybe from a slight remove then.

You're more taking a kind of cooler, more theoretical approach to it than

necessarily just in there to help people.

Yeah.

That's fascinating.

Love it.

I also love, I often say to people that doing a maternity cover is a really

good way to get a foot in the door.

And I think, yeah you've proved it, but to be in a position where you've essentially

created your own job is fantastic.

I've on occasion, been in that position myself and it can be

a very satisfying place to be.

Although it isn't always sunshine and roses is it, isn't always exactly how you

expect even when you design your own job.

No.

So the maternity cover was actually, you asked the, when you when we

talked about beforehand, what we would talk about, there is also a bullet

point called challenges you faced.

Yes.

One of my bullet points for that is maternity covers.

Because I was always bit stressed out when I had a temporary role and

especially a maternity cover in Austria is you don't actually know how long

the contract will be until the person has birthed their child and then they

get to determine how long they are out.

And that sort of, so you have a few times that your contract duration is

being renegotiated depending on the needs of the person who is on leave

. I just was, I always was really proactive in what I want out of

this maternity cover and what I would like for myself afterwards.

And I know when they employed me in 2020, someone told me, oh,

this will not lead to anything.

But thankfully we were able to make it lead to something and in no

small part from my advocacy and in showing the hard work that I did.

I think that's also the key there.

And in fact my boss at that time told me she was a little bit overwhelmed

by me advocating for myself so often because I came regularly and said,

so what do you think needs to change?

That we get another position in here?

And yes, you have to strike a balance in that you don't piss

off your superiors by being too proactive, but also show them there

is actually something I could do here.

And, there is a need for that in that institution.

Yeah.

Oh, interesting that you might be perceived sometimes

as being too proactive.

That's not something that people often complain about.

Says more about me, I think because at that time I

was already 35 or 36, and I thought.

What I actually want is a permanent role.

And I would like this to be here.

Yeah.

And so I was also more communicating and see these other conditions

in which I would like to work.

And can you somehow tell me what to do?

That we can meet this conditions together?

So I was 35.

It was being more, on my own terms.

And I knew that I could do things and that people would need these

things so I was selling myself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh it's clearly worked well where you are now.

And one of the other things I encouraged you to think about before

we came on the conversation as well, is what you're most proud of.

What did you come up with there?

That was lovely to think about.

And actually I had something from my time in academia because I quit this

postdoc was a six year postdoc role, and I quit it after two years, but I

quit it in 2016 and in 2015 I was a keynote speaker at the conference with

500 people and it was the Berlin Methods Meeting, which is a very, in the people

who do qualitative research, it's a very prestigious very nice conference.

And I really enjoyed being that keynote speaker there.

And on a qualitative approach that is very niche and.

I thought that's nice that I can go out on a high and this research I did on this

very niche approach is still being quoted and I still get some people who approach

me and want me to do workshops in that.

And so I think the little I did as a researcher has actually made a big impact.

At least for the people who are interested in this specific topic.

So I'm proud of that and I'm proud of this portal against sexualized

harassment that I created in 2020 because that's also still around.

And that's something I always wanted when I was a researcher, that I

could see an immediate impact and an immediate use case for what I did.

If you work against sexualized harassment, you never have to ask

yourself, why are you doing it?

No, absolutely.

So the societal impact is immediately apparent and that's

also cool that they still have that.

Yeah.

On a related note, I'm also proud that everyone I ever worked with would

still be available as a networking contact and has yeah, got gotten a good

impression of me and that I left some things that are still there, basically.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you've left a positive impact on the world it sounds.

Yeah, people still contact me sometimes

and I can also contact them.

So that's nice.

And that's also useful for my work right now because people who are researchers who

are now department chairs, for example, I can invite them as experts for our

postdocs or for our tenure track staff.

And that's very useful.

And what I'm also proud of is the, this LinkedIn sideline I have, which

is also how you found me probably.

Yeah.

Why, what was it about LinkedIn that made you want to just go for it and start

building a network there and posting?

We got an evaluation as a unit from external

evaluators, and they said now's the time you should grow on social media.

And that really social media is where you could also service

your target group, so to say.

And so I took that and tried to do it strategically and read a short

thing from an ad agency or from a marketing agency on how to do LinkedIn.

And then I just did it.

And then I thought since I have, I don't have a Facebook

or an Instagram or anything.

So that was basically my first foray into how to, put the

picture of yourself online.

I think I just enjoy the attention as well because of no other social media.

And then it, I could see, since I did it with a goal, I could see that this

goal is being fulfilled so that, our researchers actually take notice of it.

Researchers we maybe want to recruit also take notice of it.

My colleagues take notice of it.

And the people in the university who we engage with regularly

started taking me more seriously.

It had many positive benefits and that's why I kept at it.

Yeah.

Oh definitely.

For anybody listening who isn't already connected with you on

LinkedIn, I can definitely recommend going and finding Johanna there.

We'll put the link to your profile in the show notes.

People can come and connect with you there.

You post really, like with this whole fun idea.

Yeah.

You post some stuff that's perhaps a little bit out of the ordinary for

LinkedIn, so definitely worth a visit.

Yeah.

And there's also a way to maybe shape the research culture a

little bit through conversations.

Although posting stuff on the internet isn't probably the way to make a big

impact on a structural level, but I think people who read it feel seen.

And they get a different message than the ones I got when I was a postdoc,

and that must be worth something.

So yeah, I think well, change starts with people, doesn't it?

It starts with people deciding that they want things to be different,

and sometimes you have to start having those conversations first,

or planting the seeds, planting the ideas before change actually happens.

So I think it's useful.

I think it's changing things maybe just a little bit, but

it's definitely changing things.

So speaking of changing things, I do like to ask my guests, if you had

a magic wand, what would you change about the world that you work in?

Also a very difficult question.

Yeah.

That's why I love it.

I put down, make it more collaborative and less hierarchical.

So make academia maybe more like in the spirit of the Dutch universities,

they have a slogan that's called Room for Everyone's Talent.

That would mean, little bit of the loosening of the different staff

categories and just thinking in terms of the shared mission of a

university and how everyone can contribute to the shared mission.

And that means also everyone can take the organizational development

into their own hands so everyone gets rewarded and acknowledged for the

things they do for their institution.

So that would mean professors take on the mentoring and don't see it as a

burden in the fulfillment of all the other things that need to be achieved.

That means research support gets together with established academics

and co-create the institutions.

That means technicians are recognized, that means PhD candidates are

recognized and they all get into how to create these structures.

Basically though universities are democratic institutions and they

already have the different committees in which you do that, just to see

that being more rewarded and just to see that spirit maybe more.

And that people don't feel that they need to look down on someone and put someone

down just to maintain their own position.

It's very naive, but I think you sort of learn to move through these hierarchies

by insisting on these spaces which are exclusive and that thereby you

are in the inner circle and you are creating an outer circle and you're

trained to do it through many instances.

Yeah, I think, as you say, it's, you say maybe naive, but it is a

magic wand, so you're allowed to dream.

But yeah, I think it is really interesting that we're trying to, it is almost baked

into the whole idea of a university, that it is to some extent exclusive.

It's like you have to be really clever or really special or whatever

to go to university and it's still seen as that within society.

But then that just as you say, reinforces some of these barriers and hierarchies,

which are yeah, definitely standing in the way of making progress in some of the

ways that I think we need to, but yes.

So that sounds like an excellent use of the research adjacent magic wand.

Oh, thank you.

Just thinking about wrapping up our conversation.

So yeah, so the best place to find you online then is LinkedIn.

Yes, LinkedIn.

And we also regularly do interview series.

Sometimes it's interviews with postdocs about their journeys

after the stint with us.

And sometimes it's interviewing people from the University of Graz

who have also research experience and now work with researchers.

So that would be the library, open access professionals, the gender equality

professionals, the research managers, research development professionals.

And these interviews are always archived on our website, and most of them are

in our blog, which is the RCC blog.

And you could post a link to that.

That has 124 or 130 entries already.

Small snippets, that would be an archive of everything

I've ever posted on LinkedIn.

Fantastic.

Although that sounds like really useful resource 'cause that sounds essentially

quite like Research Adjacent but just within University of Graz yeah.

Fantastic.

We'll get a link for that and put it in the show notes as well.

And yeah, so thank you so much for coming along and sharing your story and sharing a

bit about what things are like in Austria.

It's fascinating.

Thank you Sarah.

That's was so great to get given the space.

Thanks for listening to Research Adjacent.

If you're listening in a podcast app, please check you're subscribed and then

use the links in the episode description to find full show notes and to follow

the podcast on LinkedIn or Instagram.

You can also find all the links and other episodes at www.researchadjacent.com.

Research Adjacent is presented and produced by Sarah McLusky,

and the theme music is by Lemon Music Studios on Pixabay.

And you, yes you, get a big gold star for listening right to the end.

See you next time.