Workshop: Academic Burnout — Identification, Prevention, Management

Research suggests that burnout and other work-related mental health struggles are common in academia, with incidence roughly in line with other caring professions such as healthcare. These struggles are not always ‘caused’ by work, but work is often a contributing factor.

While these struggles may have different drivers in different career stages (e.g., precarity and low pay in early stages; managerial stresses in later stages), they can occur at any stage in an academic career. Academic work has also become increasingly complex and dynamic, with much work being collaborative, multi-stakeholder, cross-sectoral (e.g., with collaborators in civil society, government, or business), and international. In addition, research on human rights may involve exposure to the traumatic experiences of others.  The cognitive and emotional difficulty of managing this logistical, relational and emotional complexity is rarely discussed explicitly.

The aim of this workshop is to reflect on what academic burnout and other work-related mental health challenges we have encountered or can encounter in our careers. It will focus on how academic burnout can be identified when, or before, it happens, how we can understand its causes and what we can do about it in our various formal and informal roles, at various levels (e.g., individual, project team, community) and when we need outside or expert help to address it.

Overview of the workshop

• The workshop will begin with introductions and an opt-in ‘tour de table.’
• Dr Anna Katharina Schaffner, cultural historian of exhaustion and burnout coach, will provide expert input in the form of a short talk and an interactive session with the participants.

Facilitators

The workshop will be facilitated by Six Silberman, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights; and Başak Çalı, Head of Research at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights.