This Researcher Wellbeing (RES-WELL) toolkit offers practical strategies and tools for better supporting the mental health and wellbeing of researchers carrying out emotionally or ethically challenging research. From conducting fieldwork in difficult settings to working with sensitive and difficult data about people’s lives, researchers can often feel the emotional impacts of their work. Researchers can be exposed to traumatic experiences and suffering of others through their work, or it is also possible that some researchers study topics similar to their own lived experience of trauma, which can be emotionally demanding. Researchers not working on such issues may also experience emotionally challenging responses due to their research context, personal experiences or more structural factors (i.e. a lack of support).
This can have serious consequences for the mental health and wellbeing of researchers, their ability to do their job and live a fulfilling life. In the worst cases, it can lead to vicarious or secondary trauma (as the negative emotional reaction to being exposed to the traumatic experiences of others) or re-traumatising for the researcher, which can require professional intervention. When coupled with deeper research culture issues including precarious early careers and a lack of supportive and inclusive environments, these consequences are exacerbated. We have developed this toolkit as a means of helping funders, research institutions, and researchers themselves to more effectively put support mechanisms in place so that this does not happen.
This toolkit has been developed as a collaboration between three UKRI Future Leaders Fellows (FLF) from the University of Exeter, University of Leeds, and University College London (UCL), with funding from the FLFDevelopment Network. As such, it draws on different disciplinary perspectives, and recognises the need for researcher wellbeing to be acknowledged and addressed aspart of funding and institutional structures at the broadest level.