How five researchers fared after their ‘great resignation’ from academia

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Virginia Gewin is a freelance reporter in Portland, Oregon.
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On 9 September, Elizabeth Gadd, a research-culture specialist at Loughborough University, UK, posted a collage of pictures of 35 people who had recently used the #leavingacademia hashtag on X, the social-media platform formerly called Twitter. She asked: “Notice anything?” Most of the images were of women or people from under-represented groups.

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Nature 624, 461-463 (2023)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03484-7
These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
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