By Carmen Ting, Editor for the SAS Bulletin
In October 2019, I took up the position of my dream as the Renfrew Fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. I was extremely excited about moving back to the UK – a place where I spent most of my 20s growing into the person I am today (on both personal and professional fronts); but more importantly, I was full of hopes of setting up my new project on exploring the making of Islamic glazes. I thought I had everything figured out: I would spend the first few months settling in the new place, adapting to a new working environment and culture, laying down the groundworks of my project, and perhaps meeting some new, interesting people. I would then go to Central Asia and Middle East to visit some sites and sample some materials, and begin the first phase of my laboratory work. I would have the first results ready just in time for the International Symposium for Archaeometry in Lisbon, where I would catch up with the friends and colleagues I have met over the years. In between all these, I would travel to Cyprus and Denmark to contribute to two training workshops. I had everything planned. 
I will never take the opportunity to be able to work in a lab for granted.
And then COVID-19 struck. The whole nation was being sent to lockdown in mid-March. It had to around this time because I remembered it only took a week to have gone from an extravagant banquet celebrating the 20th anniversary of royal charter of the college I am affiliated with to an empty college where almost all students were sent home. I remembered I would stop and stare at the ‘guest this way’ sign at the empty ground in front of my college accommodation during my weekly grocery trip, and wonder what was real and what wasn’t. By this time, I was not even six months into the first year of my fellowship. I tried to remain hopeful and developed new routine and new plan: Clearing up the backlog of publications, applying grants here and there, checking the FCO advice on foreign travel on a daily basis, avoiding the social media where people seem to be very productive in the most explicit way, and so on. I also kept telling myself that things would be resumed to normalcy very soon, and I would be more prepared than ever to catch up with the lost time.
Now into the beginning of the second year of my fellowship, and with the prospect of a second lockdown looming in, I am not sure when I will be able to travel for fieldwork and meetings, which are all essential to making advance on my research and building my career. I know this also affects lots of researchers; but for many postdoctoral researchers with a fixed-term contract, this is going to leave a massive gap in our CV. In my case, I have been informed from very early on that my fellowship will not be extended due to the pandemic. Another year will pass by quickly and I will be back to looking for jobs and applying for grants, only this time opportunities will be scarcer as I can already foresee a drastic reduction in the funds available to research in arts and humanities (in the case of the UK, crashing out of the EU will further limit the funds available to UK-based researchers). I am not going to lie: I don’t have a pension because I have been moving from one country to another every two years or less to keep myself employed. I am not eligible to any unemployment benefits because I am not a European citizen, even though I have been paying tax to different European governments all these years.
As an avid baker, I have tackled the challenge of making filo pastry during the lockdown.
Before making myself sound like a spoilt brat who is too whiny and ungrateful, I must say I have received tons of support from my fellow postdoctoral community and colleagues, and more importantly, the patience and love of my mother who has now adapted to the fact that her daughter is not around for most of the year (and never even complains once about the situation). But this doesn’t stop me from contemplating if this life as a postdoctoral researcher sustainable? What sort of security is guaranteed for postdoctoral researchers, not only me but hundreds and thousands of us, at times like these? I am not even referring to job security but also life security. With our livelihoods being at stake, I wonder will there even be a postdoctoral community after this pandemic?
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