The uncomfortable plight of postdoctoral research fellows (PDRFs), who are neither formally employed by their institutions nor categorised as students, and whose jobs are often open to casualisation, was highlighted during a national postdoctoral forum held in South Africa earlier this year.
The forum was designed to “stir the conversation around professionalisation, skills development, support systems and policies as well as employability within and outside academia”, according to Dr Palesa Mothapo, head of the Stellenbosch University (SU) postdoctoral office, who organised the two-day gathering in July, together with Dr Francois van Schalkwyk from the SU Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology and the PDRF Society (seemingly the only active one in the country), chaired by Dr Melanie Cilliers.
What emerged, inter alia, is that, because they are denied permanent employment, postdoctoral research fellows also struggle to secure housing bonds, phone contracts and, in the case of foreign nationals, permanent residence.