Dr Emma Bolger

The final proofs of my forthcoming book have been checked and it has gone to the printers! A few reflections at this point on how it came about, and why. I wrote The Career Professional’s Guide to Research  primarily to encourage career development professionals to engage in practitioner-led research. Through it, I hope to demystify research, and promote how frontline practitioners are uniquely positioned to conduct meaningful, ethical, and impactful research project. In the book, I explore the full research journey; from identifying and justifying a topic thought to data collection, analysis, and dissemination (sharing your work with the right audiences). I cover what makes a good researcher and topic, explore key skills such as qualitative and quantitative methods, and provide practical tools to support you through the planning and delivery of a research project. Throughout the book you will find practitioner quotes and practical templates to support readers’ learning now an...

January is over! For those who celebrate the winter festivals, it can feel like the longest month. January is also traditionally a time to take stock and think of the year ahead. I started the year with a review of my own career, thinking about where I am at, what I still want to achieve in the careers sector and what matters to me. It wasn't just the new year that set me off. Late in 2024 I passed a significant milestone: 20 years of working in careers-related roles. It has not been an exclusive career in careers. I have worked in careers posts, undertaken education roles that have integrated an element of career development work and combined careers activity within a wider portfolio (some connections will even remember me as a creative, rather than a careers person). Hello to everyone who has been with me on my journey; January has also been about reconnecting with quite a few of you! What has my work in careers taught me? Readers will already have different views of what “ca...

We all have different reasons for wanting to close down a social media profile. They might be personal, professional, ethical, or simply because a platform has fallen out of fashion. In our increasingly digitally connected working lives, it is reasonable to be worried about the work-related connections you might lose when you shut down a career-orientated social media account. A social media platform may have been invaluable previously. It perhaps helped you cultivate employment-relevant connections, collaborations and networks. It may be where you found opportunities or learnt about ideas, news and topics that matter to you. You might fear disadvantaging yourself somehow if you leave and see starting afresh elsewhere as an uphill journey into the unknown. Metaphorically, your commitment to the platform is akin to being in a job you want to move on from but are struggling to leave. Thinking about handing in your notice? The principles I discuss here apply to any social media site y...

I was interviewed for a French publication looking at the concepts of career showers. For non-French speakers and those aware of the limitations of Google translate, the gist of my comments was that we should be better at celebrating career milestones, in the same way we celebrate pregnancies. Welcome to the Jungle: Career Showers  

A new article I have co-written with Elsa Olaru will be published this month in the Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling (Issue 48).  Our work on this topic is continuing, and we are pleased to announce that we've recently been awarded funding by the UWS-Oxfam partnership to undertake research into the barriers to apprenticeship provision faced by single mothers. Our paper on the career development needs of single parents can be read via this link below: Olaru, E. and Bolger, E. (2022)  Meeting the career development needs of single parents . Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling.  NICEC Journal April 2022: Issue 48

I have written a new resource for the CDI, on the dissemination of research produced by CIAG practitioner-researchers.  This resource provides information and guidance on how to share and promote your research. It is available here . If you are keen to take your first steps into research as a career development practitioner, I am now leading CPD short courses on this topic at UWS. For further information go to CGD Short Courses Information on the UWS website.

Today Uuganaa Ramsey and I appeared on the WeAreCareers show with Chris and Sabiha, to discuss the impact of unconscious bias on our work as careers professionals, how we can challenge common misconceptions about unconscious bias and what we can do as professionals to facilitate conversations in this space and increase representation within our sector. If you missed us live, you can watch on-demand here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKjsRS9GhWk

Today marks the publication date of the article below. In the last week we've also learned that we've been awarded funding from the Alzheimer's Society for a major project into developing a career guidance intervention for people with dementia.  Bolger, E., Egdell, V. and Ritchie, L. (2021) Dementia in the workplace: the implications for career development practice . British Journal of Guidance and Counselling. doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2021.1902471

On Friday 26th February 2021, I will be presenting at the CDI/SDS/Napier/UWS CPD Conference Scotland 2021, on Family Background and Career Decision-Making, with my collaborator from Germany, Jens Boernemeyer. 

A new article written by Uuganaa Ramsay and I is available in this month's issue of the Career Development Institute publication, Career Matters.  Uuganna is the founding trustee of the Mongol Identity , and recently appeared on BBC Radio Scotland talking about her work, which you can listen again to here . In our article we discuss the limitations of unconscious bias training, how career development professionals can actively mitigate their own biases in their work and practical positive action approaches that can be taken to address racial stereotyping and oppression. Our article can be viewed online here . 

I have made an English language translation  available of this article written by Uuganaa Ramsay and I, which was commissioned by Skills Norway and published on 28 August 2020. You can access it here .  The original article remains online and is available in Norwegian here .

This month will see the publication (in translation) of an article I have written in collaboration with Uuganaa Ramsay , on the importance of addressing unconscious bias and white privilege in career guidance practice, for Skills Norway . In addition we will be delivering a webinar  on this topic on 27th August, for the same organisation.  We will be sharing our work more widely in coming months. Students on the Postgraduate Diploma in Career Guidance and Development at UWS can also look forward to seeing more in relation to race-aware career practice in their learning this year, as we focus on what we can do as a sector to address racism in our society. 

This year's CDI Student Conference England has been moved online , due to the COVID-19 restrictions in place across the UK, and globally. I hope all followers of my blog/website are keeping healthy and well at this challenging time. I have recorded a video commentary of my keynote, which addresses the topic of unconscious bias for career development professionals. This will shortly be made available on the CDI website at the page linked above and is also available  directly via Loom, at:  https://www.loom.com/share/6ffdd9c459e74ff4bbfab6203d47c360 Title slide for keynote

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been discussing the possible impact of COVID19 restrictions with those working in our sector, colleagues and fellow careers-researchers. We know that what we are facing at a local, national and global level will have a huge impact on all of our careers – in our working, learning and personal lives. What we are going through right now will bring huge changes to the work we do and the way we do it. It may change how we value certain roles. It may mean the things we planned to do with our lives change drastically. There will be people who feel the immediate impacts of the coronavirus restrictions far more acutely than others. More widely we need to consider the impact of the current situation on those around us. This is not a competition as to who is in most peril or which group is “entitled” to most help. Every situation is different. We must support others.  Work is a huge part of our lives. Work is money, and so much more. Work is what we...

We will be hosting the Career Guidance and Development  CPD Conference Scotland at UWS next week, and as ever have been focusing on accessibility, inclusion and thoughtful design as we plan and deliver this new format conference. The event builds on and amalgamates the CDI Student Conference Scotland with the UWS/ENU/SDS Research Symposium and in addition offers a broad CPD opportunity for selected practitioners in the sector in Scotland. This conference is designed to highlight the latest developments in the sector and is presented by a range of expert keynote speakers and workshop presenters all of whom are leaders in their field. The keynotes and workshops are focused on issues of equality, diversity and inclusion in the careers sector. The final version of the conference programme is available here  (note that workshop rooms will be advised on the day). Our audience will be students undertaking postgraduate studies in career guidance and development in Sco...

A particularly flexible and valuable form of ongoing CPD is to undertake learning via Open Educational Resources, or OERs. These are free or 'open' online learning resources. Popular OER sites include:  FutureLearn OpenLearn edx Coursera   OERu I provide a list of relevant OERs to students on the UWS MSc Career Guidance and Development programme  but it makes sense to present an expanded and contextualised list publicly. In this blog post, you will find a list of currently available resources, and a brief description of why each is useful and relevant to our field. If you have completed any of these OERs or others as part of your flexible work related learning, please post your feedback in the comments section of this post. If there are other OERs you recommend, please contact me and I will add them to the Resources page on this website. OpenLearn: Thinking about how I work with other professionals Note that while this course focuses on early years practition...

Next month, Dr Valerie Egdell and I will be presenting at the British Society of Gerontology 48th Annual Conference which takes place from 10th – 12th July 2019 in Liverpool. We are paper 136, part of the Work, retirement and the economy session . An abstract for our paper can be found below.  This is the first public presentation of our (with Dr Louise Ritchie ) highly important work on this topic.  Abstract It is recognised that dementia is, and will increasingly be, a workplace issue. While continued employment is not appropriate for all, it is possible (Ritchie et al., 2018). At present however, many individuals leave the workplace before, or on receipt of, a diagnosis of dementia (Ritchie et al., 2018). Continued employment, facilitated by reasonable adjustments, or redeployment, may not be considered; such that employers may fail meet their legal and human rights obligations to support employees with dementia (Egdell et al., 2018; Ritchie et al., 2018). The ...

My presentation from the NICEC  conference 2019 is available via this link . This is a succinct summary of my PhD research to date, on gender and career decision-making, with a focus on the Scottish Modern Apprenticeship programme, and now includes some initial findings from my quantitative research.