The ‘roving researcher’ model offers a practical solution to maintaining research continuity. Roving researchers, employed typically at a postdoctoral level and managed by a departmental committee, provide skilled support to labs when staff are unavailable or working reduced hours. Their broad expertise allows them to sustain experiments and workflows that might otherwise stall. In some cases, they enable flexible, shared arrangements where responsibilities are distributed across team members who have moved to a part-time working pattern.
Outside academia, practices such as maternity cover, job sharing, and a re-distributed workload are commonplace. Organisations routinely ensure that work continues during absences rather than expecting roles to pause entirely. Adapting similar approaches within cancer research could normalise flexibility and reduce attrition, without compromising productivity.
A call for systemic and cultural change
While individual initiatives like returner fellowships and roving researchers are impactful, they are not sufficient alone.
Broader cultural and systemic changes are needed to embed flexibility into research careers. By adopting evidence-led approaches and valuing diverse career paths, the research sector can retain skilled individuals, enhance inclusivity, and ultimately strengthen research outputs – particularly in fields like cancer, where talent retention is critical to discovery science.
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