Hi Folks,

I have a question for those like myself who are looking for jobs in the UK in september.

I'm interested in applying to a two-year research fellowship, funded by a university (rather than a grant awarding body e.g. ESRC, NERC, MRC, etc).

The problem i have is that my partner and i have grand plans to get hitched and go traveling for a year after i've worked for a year. this means that i would be cutting my fellowship short by a half, meaning that i would be going into the post (if i get it, of course!) knowing that i wouldn't be able to complete the whole research project.

my question, then: how hard is it to leave a research fellowship? is it just like any other job, where you give a month's notice and try to tidy up the loose ends before you leave?

and is it fair to the university for me to do less research than they expected me to do when they offered me the post? will they even be bothered? will they give me a bad reference for leaving early?

this is a really difficult subject for me, because traveling is a great dream of mine, and me and my partner have been planning it for years, but i also don't want to scupper my future academic career by pissing off a load of colleagues and messing up my very first job in academia. please help!!

Is there a specific reason why you can't simply delay travelling for another year (i.e. until the completion of a 2-year postdoc, rather than leaving a postdoc part-way through)? Leaving a fixed-term contract mid-way through without good reason (e.g. being offered a full-time post at another institution) proably isn't going to look too good in a context of extremely fierce competition for academic posts, and the consequent need to demonstrate a clear commitment to the profession.

Whereas if you go travelling after the end of a postdoc you can always cite being "out of contract" as a good reason to do so.

Or go travelling first and use that as "experience" on your CV.

WJ_Gibson - dare i say it, the reason that i can't really wait an extra year is that my partner is a few years older than me and wants kids before she's too old!

but anyway, thanks for the advice, that is what i feared... i am a geographer, which makes traveling seem a little more acceptable in the eyes of departments, but with such intense competition it may be risky i agree.

another quick question - are one-year research posts especially common (in the social sciences)?

I actually think that - thinking about the long game and your future career - that if you want to continue in research/academia, then quitting half-way through a post-doc will look far worse on your CV than not having a post-doc at all.

To be honest, I think in any new job, even outside academia, your employers wouldn't welcome the prospect of a new recruit going off travelling for a year by choice at the end of their first year, let alone on a 2 year contract. Unless you really are the only person for the job, there are likely to be plenty of other more reliable (in the uni's view) candidates for the post. I don't think you can afford to mess employers about in the current economic climate.

We've had a lot of one year post-docs in our faculty (humanities). I think leaving a 2 yr post to travel will look disastrous. If I were you - I would just do it straight away.