Law postgraduate researchers and the cost-of-living crisis: an intervention

Abstract

ABSTRACT Law postgraduate research studies are chronically underfunded and riddled with systemic inequalities. While financial precarity is an almost universal experience for postgraduate researchers (PGRs), the cost-of-living crisis has thrown this into sharp relief. In this piece we outline the financial reality for law PGRs, including the competing demands of research, teaching, maintaining good physical and mental health, and more, and the normalised hidden costs of these. We argue that the default response of universities – that PGRs should apply for hardship funds through burdensome, time-consuming, and intrusive application processes – is woefully inadequate. Powerful stakeholders in the PGR experience, who benefit from the teaching labour and research outputs of law PGRs, should take immediate and meaningful action to address the unequal funding frameworks that perpetuate financial precarity and its concomitant adverse physical and mental health effects. Thus far, PGR solidarity groups have undertaken the bulk of this work, and it is time for universities, learned societies and funding bodies alike to back their PGRs, providing more accessible financial resources to improve the PGR experience.