Finishing my PhD in law was an incredibly special milestone. It was something I was immensely proud of. Years of work had gone into developing expertise, resilience, and a work ethic few people ever experience, and I had produced a thesis I was genuinely proud of.

Like many PhD graduates, I was excited about what was supposed to come next: a post-doctoral position that would allow me to explore similar research interests, or funding to pursue my proposed follow-on project. The project focuses on designing and evaluating a behaviourally informed justice system intervention to support the recruitment and retention of younger solicitors in Criminal Legal Aid practice in England and Wales. Either would allow me to publish further, build my profile, and begin progressing towards early career researcher status and academic independence.

Six months post-PhD, however, I have reached a difficult realisation: if I want to continue with the academic career I had planned, I will have to do so alone.

Why? Because in practice, there is a glaring imbalance between the number of PhDs universities produce and the number of funded post-doctoral opportunities actually available, particularly within the social sciences, where my research sits. There is also a mismatch between the limited post-doctoral positions on offer and my specific research interests.

In response, I have sent my proposal to relevant universities and academics in an attempt to secure funding.Most have not responded. Those who have replied have described the project as both “outstanding” and “excellent” but cited a lack of available finances to offer post-doctoral support.

Compounding this, my research does not fit within the remit of two of the four main post-doctoral funders (AHRC and Leverhulme), while the British Academy and the ESRC require an extensive publication record and prior post-doctoral experience as prerequisites.

This is a reality that does not appear in glossy university brochures and is rarely discussed openly with prospective PhD students. As a result, a suitable post-doctoral opportunity is unlikely to materialise for me any time soon.

So what does that leave me with? Going it alone.

My project is both novel and time-sensitive. It responds to an urgent need to strengthen the long-term sustainability of the criminal legal aid profession in order to safeguard justice system users’ equal access to justice. As a result, it is not a project that can simply be put on hold indefinitely while waiting for funding cycles or institutional opportunities to align.

In practical terms, this means continuing my interdisciplinary research without funding, institutional backing, or the infrastructure that quietly underpins most successful academic careers. It means reading, writing, and refining work in evenings and at weekends, alongside paid employment, simply to pursue a project I am passionate about and a career I still strive for.

It also means publishing without the safety net of a university affiliation. There is no internal peer review, no departmental research seminars in which to test ideas, and no formal mentoring from senior academics who have already navigated the system. Instead, feedback becomes sporadic and informal, often reliant on the goodwill of overworked scholars or blind peer reviewers who encounter the work only once it is already submitted.

Trying to build an academic profile without institutional attachment also means lacking access to opportunities that are often taken for granted: funded conference attendance, research assistants, methodological training, or time formally protected for research. Every decision—whether to attend a conference, submit to a journal, or pursue a new idea—carries a personal financial and emotional cost.

Perhaps most difficult of all is the absence of mentorship. Without a post-doctoral position, there is no designated senior academic whose role includes helping you develop as a researcher, advising on funding applications, or signalling when your work is “good enough” for the next step. Progress becomes self-directed, self-assessed, and often deeply uncertain.

This is what “going it alone” looks like: not a lack of ambition or ability, but a slow, unsupported attempt to remain academically visible in a system that is not designed for those without institutional attachment, while continuing to pursue a project with the potential to contribute to emerging access to justice threats.

Why This Shouldn’t Be the Price of an Academic Career

This is not an individual failing. It is a structural one. Universities benefit from the continual production of PhDs yet bear little responsibility for what happens when formal training ends due to a lack of funding. Funding bodies require post-doctoral experience as a prerequisite, while providing too few routes to actually obtain it. The result is a bottleneck that pushes early career researchers into invisible, unsupported labour, or out of academia altogether.

It should not be acceptable that highly trained social science researchers are expected to continue producing knowledge in their own time, at their own financial risk, and without institutional support, simply to remain “competitive” within academia. “Going it alone” should not be a rite of passage. It should be a warning sign that the academic pipeline is broken.

Which leaves me asking: is going it alone really the future of early career academia?