Research and data lessons from a non-academic job

Abstract

It’s been one year after leaving academia and starting to work for a charity organisation. For a bit of context, I did my PhD in Psychology, after which I spent four years across two postdocs (one in France, one in England) and I got to the point where I could no longer see my career progress in academia. There are many reasons why I came to this crossroad, but above all, I realised that my passion is with research and data, and less so with the other aspects of academic life. To my delight, my non-academic journey so far has been full of development and challenges and here are some of the lessons I shared, with some additional thoughts. Here are five things I learnt.