In 1997 Shannon Bros came out as a transgender woman to students and colleagues. “When I transitioned, everything stopped,” says Bros of her research career. “I had a huge friend base by that time. I was confident, you know, what I was doing. Everything collapsed overnight.”

Bros, an emeritus ecologist at San Jose State University in California, describes the personal pressures that led to the decision and the reservations she had at the time. "I had a perfect life. I had a fabulous marriage. I had kids. I have always been respected in my department. The last thing I wanted to do was transition.”

She describes the support she received, from female colleagues in particular, as she rebuilt relationships. “I spent a lot of energy saying, 'Don’t worry about pronouns, just get to know me again. I’m pretty much the same person.'” As a result, she adds, “I became the best teacher I’ve ever been. I became a fabulous advisor.”

Bros is joined by Kihana Wilson, a computational physics PhD student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Wilson describes the “invisibility/hypervisibility paradox” faced by Black queer female scholars like her, who work in predominantly white, male disciplines.

She adds: “My hope is that the way that we think about how science and academia should be organized, the ideas we have about who are true scientists, and how scientists should look and fit into academic spaces, evolves and expands.”

Off Limits is a podcast series exploring topics that are often perceived as taboo in the academic workplace.

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In June this year developmental biologist Ottoline Leyser stepped down as chief executive of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the country’s national research funding agency. In the final episode of a six-part Working Scientist podcast series about career planning, Leyser tells Julie Gould how the opportunity to lead UKRI came about, and how, for her, good career planning starts with reflecting on who you are what your values are. Leyser also finds the notion of work-life balance problematic, arguing that you cannot easily segregate the two from each other.

“You’re not your job. You are who you are,” she says. “And you can build a really fulfilling career by following who you are, and keeping your eyes on the full range of opportunities available to you to be who you are. And it’s not going to be one thing.

“In research careers, people get locked into this idea that there’s really only one pathway, and that’s the only way you can make use of your research skills and your research interests. And it’s so untrue.”

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In the penultimate episode of this six-part podcast series about career planning in science, Julie Gould discusses some of the setbacks faced by junior researchers, including political upheaval, financial crises and a change in supervisor.

Shortly after embarking on a PhD at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, Katja Loos’ supervisor relocated to the University of Bayreuth, taking his team with him. But weeks later he died of an aggressive cancer.

Loos, who is now a polymer chemistry researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, describes how she worked through the various choices and challenges she faced as a result of her supervisor’s sudden death, and why she abandoned plans for an industry career.

Funding struggles in Argentina led to paleontologist Mariana Viglino relocating to Germany. But before moving she describes how a very prescribed career path denied her the opportunity to think about her long-term plans.

Tomasz Glowacki says abandoning a rigid career plan helped him to better navigate the various challenges he faced after completing a PhD in computer science at Poznan University of Technology, Poland, in 2013.

Finally, Julia Yates, an organizational psychologist and careers coach at City St George’s, University of London, reassures early career researchers facing a sudden disruption to their careers. It’s fine, she says, to put career planning on hold. Sometimes paying bills and putting food on the table has to take priority.

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