Dr Natascha Mueller-Hirth

Any tips for staff looking to share your career success?

It’s really important to start thinking about career planning. If you are looking at getting some bigger research grants in a few years’ time, then take a look at some smaller one which you could be going for at the moment. If you’re thinking of developing a new research area, then have a think about the kind of networks you want to be building right now.

Tell us about some of your career achievements

My research activities have generated significant income and high-quality publications, and I’ve been able to develop collaborations with both industry and international researchers.

I’m really proud of the breadth of work I’ve accomplished. I’ve contributed a lot of research to peacebuilding, particularly around the temporality angles of peace and conflict. Through this work, I’ve been able to build an important international network, and I have also produced a co-edited collection and co-authored a book on peacebuilding.

The book brought scholars together from all over the world to write, through empirical research, about a number of post-conflict societies and how time shapes how these societies deal with their violent past. Old wounds very much inform the present and sometimes victims can’t move on from the past. Victims can get left behind – even though on paper the society has gone through a peacebuilding process.

In addition to these achievements, I am Co-Investigator in a collaboration between RGU and the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences involving research into the social aspects of climate change. There’s this idea running through natural science literature that climate change affects each person in the same way. However, often older people, disabled people, men or women are all affected by extreme weather events very differently. That partnership has already resulted in two peer-reviewed articles.

I was also the Lead Academic for a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between RGU and Petrofac. Its aim was to examine the safety understandings of the company’s multinational workforce across four countries to develop culturally appropriate training materials that can improve safety in the high-risk oil and gas sector. It brought significant income to the university and contributed to RGU’s strategic aim of supporting organisations to be more successful.

What’s the drive behind your success?

I’ve always been interested in gaining a better understanding of how different people experience the world in different ways. It could be women in Kenyan communities and how they experience violence and conflict, or whether it’s victims of human rights violations in South Africa who are having a very long wait for reparations, I’ve always found it fascinating how each individual will experience these in their own unique way.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

If you’re looking to have help or input on your qualitative work, or even if you’d like to get into qualitative research but haven’t so far, you can join the Qualitative Researchers Network. We run monthly events and have a whole range of researchers in the network. We share and develop research skills and facilitate peer-to-peer mentoring for staff.

If you want to know more about it, please just email me at n.mueller-hirth@rgu.ac.uk.

You can read more about my work in Time and Temporality in Transitional and Post-Conflict Societies to see how time is experienced, constructed and used in transitional and post-conflict societies. Or, you can read The Sociology of Everyday Life Peacebuilding, a book based on six years of empirical research in three different conflict zones. It reports on a wealth of interview data to support its theoretical arguments. This data serves to give voice to victims who are otherwise neglected and marginalized in peace processes.

The next steps in your career progression

Explore opportunities to progress your career with your line manager.

There are many examples of career paths from staff across the university on the Sharing Success webpage from which you can draw inspiration and ideas. Information on the latest application window can also be found on the Sharing Success webpage.

The HR team is on hand to offer advice about progressing your career. You may also find it helpful to speak to your colleagues who have already taken the steps you intend to take on their career paths.