In discussion: Holly Eva Ryan

BISA is run by a board of trustees who make up our Executive Committee. They have expertise and interests that represent the main areas of our activity and a breadth of experience from the wider world. We hope this interview series will help you get to know them a little better. This time it's the turn of Dr Holly Eva Ryan who is based at Queen Mary University of London.

Tell us a bit about yourself and where you are from.

I am a Reader in International Relations based in the Department of Sociology, Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. I have been there since 2018 – nearly a decade now. As a Londoner - born-and-bred - I feel incredibly fortunate to work in the city where I grew up, close to my family and the communities that shaped me.

Getting here, though, was far from straightforward. Towards the end of my PhD and after completing it, I moved through a series of roles at Sheffield, Manchester Metropolitan, King's, Aston, City St George's, and internationally at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam before joining Queen Mary.

Like many early-career academics, I followed opportunities where they arose. For a time, it felt like these were getting further and further away from home. However, each position, locality, institution, taught me something new. And, perhaps even more importantly, each introduced me to colleagues who became lasting friends. These experiences ultimately made me a much more grounded and reflective researcher, which is why I always cherish the opportunity to return to these places and reconnect.

Why did you want to be a BISA trustee and what do you hope to achieve during your term?

So, BISA has been a constant presence throughout my academic career. I was lucky enough to be one of the first recipients of the Founders Fund, which helped support me through the final year of my PhD. Since then, I’ve contributed to a number of BISA working groups and initiatives. I’m also a former member of the Research Directors’ Forum, which I found to be a hugely valuable space for those of us trying to make sense of the ever-evolving rules and structures of the REF.

More than anything, though, I’ve always valued BISA as a genuinely welcoming and supportive community. The annual conference, in particular, has always had a real sense of collegiality and shared purpose about it. I think there is something quite special about the culture that BISA has built, and it is something worth looking after.

That sense of connection is one of the reasons I feel this is the right time for me to become more involved. I’ve reached something of an inflection point in my own career: I’ve taken on a number of larger administrative and leadership roles, I’m an experienced reviewer, I understand the UKHE landscape more and I’ve developed the kinds of skills and perspectives that come with being a mid-career academic. These are things I simply wouldn’t have had five or 10 years ago, and I wanted to put them to work in a way that would give something back to a community that has supported me throughout my career.

There is also a wider reason as to why I think this matters now. We are in a really difficult moment for the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Funding is under increasing pressure and academics, as producers of knowledge and people who help make sense of the past and present, are facing growing challenges to the value of our work and to the role of expertise more broadly. In moments like this, professional associations matter more than ever. They provide spaces where we can support one another, make the case for what we do, and think collectively about how we respond to a changing political environment.

So in essence I’d like to play a role in helping BISA continue to grow as a strong, outward-looking professional association: one that nurtures its members, protects the space for critical scholarship, and continues to provide a platform for the important and incredibly varied work that our community does.

What is your area of research and how did you get into it? What are you currently working on?

I suppose I’m a bit of a wanderer. For the mostpart, my formal education has been in International Relations but much of what I research and write about sits a little outside of the discipline’s core preoccupations.

My PhD, and my first monograph, explored the role of street art and graffiti in expressing and signalling political dissent under dictatorship in Latin America. My second monograph, which will be published by Bristol University Press next year, turns to friendship in international relations. It brings together a decade of research on twin town and sister city networks, exploring how these translocal  networks of friends articulate and rehearse alternative visions for the world. At its heart, the book argues that friendship is not simply a private or interpersonal relationship, but a source of considerable political power.

The project I’m starting to map out next is much more personal. It explores the political and aesthetic legacies of indenture through the stories of three generations in exile, including members of my own family, who are of Indo-Caribbean heritage. Using composite storytelling, it asks how displacement, memory, and fractured histories continue to shape political identities and aesthetic practices across generations.

A lot of my research involves arts-based methods. Across different projects I’ve worked with visual archives, drawing, lino-cut, painting, life-writing and creative workshops. I recently learned to screenprint with master printmaker and knitter, Adam Hogarth. I’m increasingly interested in how these approaches can help us access forms of political knowledge, emotion, and lived experience that are often difficult to capture through more conventional methods.

Looking back, the connecting fibre running through all of this work is probably an interest in political emotions and what I think of in terms of ‘practical aesthetics’: the ways art, culture, and everyday relationships don't just reflect politics but actively constitute it. Whether I’m writing about graffiti, friendship, or family histories, I’m interested in the often-overlooked practices through which people imagine different futures and create political change from the ground up.

Can you tell us a bit about your career journey so far? Do you have any advice for colleagues just embarking on an academic career?

Oops - I think I half answered this above, but I'll try to be a bit more specific here.

On the one hand, if you look at my CV, it probably suggests a smooth, linear path to where I am now: three and a half years of doctoral study, an 18-month postdoc, a couple of teaching posts, and then a permanent job. But CVs have a way of flattening out the bumps and travails along the way.

If I'm being honest, I don't think I'll ever forget the feeling of existential insecurity at the end of my PhD. I was juggling multiple zero-hour contracts that paid me less than I could have earned working in a bar or coffee shop, and I had no idea when - or even if - I would be able to land a more secure position in academia. I was on the cusp of giving up and taking a job in real estate when I was offered a postdoc at Sheffield.

Even after that, when I got my first permanent post in Manchester, I was doing wildly unsustainable commutes halfway across the country on a weekly basis. I'd get on the train at 5am in London so that I could be in Manchester to teach a 9am class. I’d write abstracts, lectures and job applications on the train. That's the part of the story you don't see on a CV.

To be clear, I'm not telling it to glorify or endorse that approach. An academic career is privileged in many ways, but many of us also give up a great deal to make it work, and that simply isn't possible for everyone. For example, I couldn't do that kind of cross-country schlep now with two small children in tow and an elderly parent to care for.

I think we need to do a much better job of preparing our PhD graduates for the realities of the job market, because the harsh truth is that, difficult as I found it 10 years ago, it's even harder now. That means being much more honest about career outcomes from the outset, rather than treating an academic career as the default destination. It means giving doctoral students structured opportunities to build skills and networks beyond their thesis - through placements, internships, public engagement, teaching, policy work, or industry collaborations - so that they graduate with a broad portfolio of experience and a transferable skillset. 

At the same time, universities also need to look inward. If we want academia to be genuinely accessible to talented people from the widest possible range of backgrounds and life circumstances, we have to reduce our dependence on insecure, short-term contracts and create clearer, more stable pathways into permanent academic careers. Otherwise, we risk entrenching recruitment decisions that are not based simply on talent but instead on who can best afford the years of financial uncertainty or sustain a kind of hyper-mobile lifestyle.

I think my advice to anyone embarking on an academic career today is threefold. First, find yourself a strong community of friends and colleagues who will be your sail rather than your anchor. Some PhD programmes unfortunately foster a really competitive environment which only really serves those with the largest egos. Avoid getting sucked into this. Care, trust and empathy will carry you much further in your doctoral studies, and in life, than being hyper-competitive. Second, network, network, network. Academia is built on relationships as much as ideas, and the opportunities that shape a career often come through the people you meet along the way. Third, never stop writing. Writing is a skill that requires constant practice: it needs time, space, and room to breathe. The more you write, the better you'll become, and the easier you'll find it to work your way through the inevitable blocks and ruts that every academic writer encounters at some point.

Is there anything else we should know about you? 

Umm, I know this is going to divide people but I’m definitely more of a cat person than a dog person. My mackerel tabby cat Luna likes to snuggle under blankets and make herself invisible so sitting down on a sofa or bed in my house can be a risky move. I also love spicy food, tropical climates and dystopian fiction. Finally, I just wanted to say that I’m really looking forward to meeting many of BISA’s members in the months and years ahead.