• Home
• About
• Latest Issue
• Board
• Search

Being a Post-Doc in Political Science in Italy

Background

Post-doctoral research fellowships (“post-docs”) are offered to young PhDs planning an academic career with the purpose of helping them to improve their research skills and academic experience within a Political Science department. It is generally assumed that a post-doc will be involved in the ongoing research projects of the department. In Italian universities, post-doctoral positions have existed in one form or another for many years, but in a more formal sense they are a relatively new phenomenon (they were regulated by the Law 449 of 1997).
Little is known about the quantitative and qualitative aspects of this phenomenon. This is a first attempt to produce some knowledge about the post-doc population in the field of Political Science. We are curious to know who these post-docs are and how they are recruited; the relationship they have with their supervisors and research teams and how satisfactory are these relationships; the way they manage their fellowship and how productive they are; the overall evaluation of the post-doc experience and their career plans.

The population

Data available on post-doctoral scholars is limited. While the Italian Ministry of Education keeps track of graduate students enrolled in PhD programmes and has clear records about university professors, post-docs are an in-between category that is somehow forgotten by these statistics. Furthermore, department websites are quite often ambiguous when describing these posts. We have attempted to ascertain the population of Italian post-docs by contacting all Political Science departments and asking them to provide the contacts of research staff who meet the following criteria: 1) they have earned a PhD degree in Political Science and 2) hold a contract with a duration of the least one year within a Political Science department. shows the estimated number of post-doc fellows in Political Science in Italy¹. The total might be a little higher due to our failure to obtain data from a small number of departments. Our data show that with the exception of five universities (Bologna, Firenze, Milano, Siena and Torino) there are very few Political Science post-docs in most universities.

Number of postdocs by University

________________________________

These numbers should be compared with the number of regular Political Science staff (i.e. Full Professors, Associate Professors, and Assistant Professors or ricercatori as they are called in Italy) that are indicated in Figure 2². The new category of political scientists is rather narrow compared to the others and suggests a recent thinning of resources in the field of research.

The Academic Community of Political Scientists (2008/2009)

The Survey

The survey was conducted in the period 3-25 June 2009 by email. A request was sent to all 43 post-docs; 21 answers were returned. The questionnaire was divided into 6 parts containing questions about academic background and previous experience, their recruitment as a post-doc fellow, the supervisor of the post-doc project, the research team, research activities and time management, the overall evaluation of the post-doc position and career plans.
Recruitment in post-doc positions

The results of the survey indicate that current post-docs in Political Science have earned their PhD degree in 2004 at the earliest, and include freshmen from the 2009 PhD promotion. Some of them were hired just after the conferring of their degree or a couple of months afterwards. In some cases, though, there was a longer period of about 3 years after the PhD degree before reaching the current post-doc position. The tenure of post-docs at the date of the survey varies from 3 up to 44 months, while the mean is 18 months. 33% are in their first year of post-doc, 40% are in their second year and the remaining 25% are in their third or fourth year.

Gender is equally distributed in our estimated list; however, only 30% of the respondents are women. 85% of them are Italian. Each of them has spent at least 3 months abroad- as a visiting scholar, as an Erasmus student, or to attend language courses.

Source of Funding: Half of the post-doc fellowships are financed from budgets provided by the host universities or from projects won by professors in competitions at the national level (e.g. PRINs). 40 % of the fellowships are paid with money from European projects and the last 10% are grants offered by private entities.

Advertising and Mobility: 80% of the respondents initially heard from a professor about the possibility to apply for the fellowship. It is important to notice the low mobility among the post-doc fellows: about 80% of post-docs had completed the PhD program or the BA in the university where they are actually pursuing the fellowship. This suggests that an “open market” is still a goal to be achieved in Italian universities.

The Scientific Supervisor

The survey shows that 95% of the respondents have a supervisor and 80% of them have to follow a research plan for the project set up at the beginning of the post-doc appointment. Having a research plan is important and can be taken as a commitment for the efficiency of the fellowship period. In most cases, respondents declare that their supervisor has a strong or rather strong involvement in the same field of research (see Fig. 3). 73% declare that they meet their supervisor to discuss the project at least once a month. Half of the respondents write scientific articles together with their supervisors and this is true even for the post-docs that are in their first months of their fellowship.
Most supervisors act as mentors vis-à-vis post-docs, offering them rather frequent feedback on research and academic writing, helping them to take important decisions for their academic career and to insert themselves into the Political Science network within the national academic community.
Still, a few of our respondents report a weak line of communication with their supervisors, as they claim to receive very little feedback regarding these important post-doc matters⁴.

Teaching is a fundamental element of the academic apprenticeship. Good didactic skills improve career perspectives and make a post-doc fellowship more competitive. Nonetheless, not all post-docs have the possibility of acting as teaching assistants. When they do, supervisors generally do not offer any help with didactic methodsv. Despite these shortcomings, when asked to provide an overall vote (from 1 to 10) which evaluates how their supervisors manage the post-doc fellowship, the mean vote of our respondents is a strong 8 (see Fig.4).

Evaluation of the Supervisor. To what extent do you agree with the following statement: My supervisor…

________________________________

Evaluation of the Supervisor: On a Scale of 1 to 10 how would you grade the overall performance of your postdoc supervisor for the way he manages the postdoc?

The research team

The overall success of the post-doc experience may depend as well on the environment where the research is held. Good informal relations within a department may be translated into mutually beneficial scientific collaborations with other professors and post-doc colleagues. While the relationship with the supervisor is essential and immediate, a good collaboration with other members of the same department can take time develop. As it may be expected, our data show that those post-docs in at least the second year of their fellowships have more research contacts and write more articles with department colleagues than first year post-docs (Fig.5). Furthermore, there is slightly more cooperation with other professors than with other post-docs of the same department. This indicates that professors of the same department have an important role as well for our post-docs and that the interaction with other professors may be regarded as an integral part of academic training.

Participation in the research group(s) of the department

Speaking about the overall integration of our post-docs in research teams, 38% strongly feel that they are integrated, and another 52% feel that are somewhat integrated into their research group (Table 1). To be noted that the post-docs of the 1st year perceive themselves as more integrated than the ones in the second year. Are the first enthusiastic or the latter realistic?

Integration in the research group: To what extent do you agree with the following statement: Overall, I feel well integrated in my research group

Year of Post-doc

.	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	Total
Strongly agree	50	12	67	50	38
Somewhat agree	37	75	34	50	52
Somewhat disagree	0	13	0	0	5
Strongly disagree	13	0	0	0	5
Total(row percentage)	38	38	14	10	100

Research and Time management

In this section, the research activities and time management of post-docs is discussed. The evaluation of academic activity may be measured by the scientific production expressed in research projects and published pieces. We want to see to what extent the post-doc position offers the possibility to accomplish these goals.
From our findings (6), Italian post-docs work on a mean of 2,5 projects during their fellowship and sometimes the research focuses on two or more projects at the same time. When asked about the way their time was divided in the previous month, respondents indicate that about 45% was spent on the research for which the fellowship is granted (min 0/ max 90%); 20% on research for other projects (min 0/ max 70%); 16% on planning future research (min 0/ max 60%) and 17% on teaching assistance (min 0 /max 60).

Time spent by postdocs in different activities

When it comes to the dissemination of research results, national and international conferences are accessible scientific showcases for our respondents- each has made at least one conference presentation.
Still, only some of these presentations have led to the publication of their work. Chapters in edited books and articles in peer-reviewed journals represent the most frequent published pieces by our post-docs (Table 2). Peer-reviewed co-authored articles and articles in non-peered journals follow. The survey results show that post-docs manage to publish books, and usually these are improved versions of PhD theses. Of course, the amount of time that has passed since the PhD degree influences the number of published articles: those post-docs that have published more than two peer-reviewed articles and a book finished their PhD at least four years ago.

Number of items published and conference participations as a postdoc

.	.	total N	Mean	Max
Items published	Book reviews	5	0.24	2
.	Articles in non-peer reviewed journals	11	0.52	4
.	Articles in peer- reviewed articles where you are the only author	28	1.33	7
.	Co-authored articles in peer-reviewed journals	11	0.52	3
.	Edited journal special issues	1	0.05	1
.	Book chapters	28	1.33	8
.	Books	6	0.29	1
Conferences	National	37	1.76	6
.	International	41	1.95	10

Future plans

A post-doc fellowship in Political Science typically prepares one to pursue an academic career, and the ambitions of our post-docs go along with this (Figure 7). The majority of them have clearly decided to enter a university career. This is the first preference and the other options offered by the labour market are not among the most preferred choices. Among our respondents 20% have tried the odds in competitions for positions of Assistant Professor (ricercatore) and some of them participated twice in these calls. Think tanks or research centres are regarded as temporary alternatives from which to wait for opportunities to apply for an academic position.
The perspective of an academic career could convince some to work abroad, though medium or long period experiences outside Italy are not seriously taken into consideration⁶.

Postdocs and the job market: Given that the post-doc position is temporary would you indicate how interested you are to find a job in the following areas?

Evaluation of post-doc experience

In an overall assessment of their fellowships, post-docs declare that they enjoy their experience mostly for the prestige of the university where they stay, the possibility to do research close to their interests and for research collaborations and networking (Figure 8). The unhappy part of the post-doc regards the material aspects like small salaries⁷, low availability of funding for research and participation in conferences abroadv³. In fact, with few exceptions post-docs have to fund their own mobility.

Satisfaction with postdoc position: Overall, how satisfied are you with the following aspects of your postdoctoral position?

Speaking about the evaluations of the skills trained by Italian post-doc programmes, the respondents declared to be very satisfied with the possibility to improve their research skills, academic writing and writing research projects (Fig. 9). Ethics of the research seems to be an important issue as well. The aspects that are a bit less popular are teaching (as mentioned previously), fund-raising for research projects and small opportunities in terms of project management⁹.

Satisfaction with postodoc training opportunities: Overall how satisfied are you with the postdoctoral training in the following aspects of your career

In conclusion, 90% of our respondents would strongly recommend the post-doctoral experience to fresh PhD’s.

Footnotes

¹ University websites sometimes provide lists of ‘assegnisti di ricerca’ but it is not always clear how many of them have a PhD title.

² For the analysis of the distribution of places within academic community and tenure of professors see Luigi Curini in this journal http://www.italianpoliticalscience.org/issue2/eight-years-of-development-the-italian-academic-community-of-political-scientists-within-university-and-departments

³ The survey was promoted by Prof. Maurizio Cotta (University of Siena), who contacted the Political Science departments for the post-doc contacts. We wish to thank all of the respondents who have offered their help

⁴ This miscommunication might depend on the personal style of professors or inability of the post-doc to ‘ask for attention’. Regardless of the reasons for this miscommunication, the quality of research of the post-doc might be compromised as a result.

⁵ This might indicate a few things. Firstly, the professors do not have time to follow the way teaching occurs. Other hypothesis (the one we prefer) is that professors completely trust their pupils and they think no feedback is needed. Or the last, teaching activities are not among the priorities of the supervisor – post-doc relationship and the professors intend the post-doc mostly for research activities rather that training them for academic career.

⁶ Maybe here is a selection bias – these are people that pursue clearly a national academic career, the ones that were more opened to this choice are already abroad.

⁷ According to the Ministerial Decree 45/ 2004 Universities have the possibility to set the amount of salary of post-doc fellowships on an annual base in a range between 16.138 euro and 19.367 euro.

⁸ Data on who gets what are not at hand as funding availability is a matter of university and department budgets.

⁹ Still, there are cases of post-docs dedicated to project management only, see Nicolò Conti in the first issue of this journal www.italianpoliticalscience.org/issue1/being-project-manager-in-a-eu-funded-project