Collaboration across three continents during and after a global pandemic: reflections of early and established career academics

The International Research Centre to study the Effects of Autonomous Vehicles (AV) on Vulnerable Road-users (VRU) (ICAROS) was established in September 2019. This ambitious international research centre brings together academics from Loughborough University UK, Queensland University of Technology, Australia and Tongji University, China. We had big plans for collaborative working to tackle the problems of AV and VRU interaction, we were set to go. Then 2020. Like others we switched to online working and we made the best of what we had - online seminars, online workshops, emails. This paper presents our perspectives on research and collaboration during a global pandemic, and the positive/negative legacy of the pandemic on our current working. Reflection is made on how personal experience differs by careers stage comparing options of authors who are current Ph.D students (early-career n = 8) and those who had worked in research for at least 5 years prior to the pandemic (established-career n = 8). A major impact on early-career academics has been a restriction in establishing academic networks due to lack of face-to-face experiences. Early-career academics have enhanced their skills in online data collection but have had fewer experiences at in-person data collection. Postdoctoral funding will have a huge role to play in expanding the horizons of this new generation of academics. Many elements of pandemic working are a compromise not an ideal.