Established Researchers: Where Should Your Experience Count Next?
At an established stage of a research career, the questions can change. Earlier career stages often centre on building expertise, publishing, securing funding and becoming recognised in a field. Later, those activities may continue, but experience creates another possibility. Your contribution can extend beyond the research you personally produce.
New Zealand's 2026 Tāwhia te Mana Research Fellowships Terms of Reference (last updated 18th March 2026) make this explicit. The Mana Tūārangi Distinguished Researcher Fellowship is intended for distinguished researchers with expansive career success and a prominent international reputation. Its objective is to support contributions that extend beyond the researcher's own career span, while its criteria include strengthening international or domestic research connections and mentoring and training early-career researchers and research students.
That raises a different question:
Where should my experience count most now?
Experience can take several forms
A 2025 analysis by Tristan McIntosh and Alison Antes distinguishes between three roles within research teams: research leader, research manager and research mentor. An established researcher may therefore contribute not only through their own research, but also through developing people, shaping research culture, strengthening collaborations and helping others make better research decisions.
Recent Australian research also shows what can be lost when experienced academics leave. A 2026 qualitative study of early- and mid-career nursing academics reported loss of institutional knowledge, mentorship, as well as gaps in succession planning and communication, after senior colleagues departed. It was a small study in one discipline and one university, so the findings should not be generalised. But it illustrates an important point. Some of the value of an experienced researcher exists in judgement, relationships and knowledge that others acquire through working with them.
Choosing where to contribute
For an established researcher, many options may be worthwhile:
continuing a major research programme
developing other researchers
leading teams or centres
strengthening international or industry relationships
contributing to research culture
starting something intellectually new
The challenge is not necessarily a shortage of opportunities. It may be deciding which ones deserve your attention. Useful questions might include:
Which work still needs my direct involvement?
Which knowledge should I be passing on?
Where can my experience create the greatest contribution?
Which responsibilities am I carrying because they remain useful, and which have simply continued over time?
What would I like to leave stronger because I was involved?
Where coaching can contribute
Coaching cannot decide these questions for an established researcher. It can provide a confidential setting to examine goals, assumptions, competing priorities and possible directions.
A 2025 randomised controlled study involving 202 managers found higher perceived goal achievement among participants who received four external coaching sessions. The participants were managers rather than academic researchers, so the study does not establish the same effect for researchers. It does, however, support the use of coaching as a structured process for working with important professional goals.
For an established researcher, the goal may no longer be another promotion or another line on the CV. It may be deciding where experience, attention and influence should go next.
Perhaps the three career stages raise three different questions:
Early career: How do I establish myself?
Mid-career: What do I want to establish myself as?
Established: Where should my experience count next?
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