A year ago, I moved to England to accept a teaching position at the University of Nottingham. I came as an American historian at midcareer with a family in tow. Those in other academic fields, or who are single, or looking at a position in, say, China, will very likely face circumstances quite different from my own. Nevertheless, I will try to share what general pearls of advice I have for American academics contemplating relocation abroad.
As any scholar of immigration can tell you, both “push” and “pull” factors explain transnational migration. In my case, institution, not country, was decisive. The push was that I had been teaching on a small regional campus for 10 years and had lost my two best friends on the faculty, one to cancer, the other to transfer. The pull was that I was excited by the chance to teach graduate students in a top-tier program at a world-class research university. When I made my move, Nottingham was ranked 86th in the world by Times Higher Education (the rank has fallen since then after the ratings criteria were changed), and the university’s faculty members in American and Canadian studies had received the highest possible distinction in a British research assessment.
Given my political leanings, it did not hurt that Nottingham’s local folk hero took from the rich to give to the poor. But intellectual exchange was the chief draw. On my former campus, I was the only full-time scholar of American history. In my new program, there are four other scholars in my intellectual-history subfield alone, and other Americanists at work on such topics as slavery, civil rights, literature, and foreign policy.
Moving abroad has proven intellectually justified, but it has not been without challenges—some more severe than anticipated. My family and I were not strangers to life abroad, since I had had previous teaching stints in Canada, Hungary, and Poland (the latter two on Fulbrights). But permanent relocation is a more decisive process. Here are some working notes:
The transition will be complex logistically. In any long-distance move, you can expect many headaches. When moving abroad, expect a multiplication of hassles, large and small.
The visa process was surprisingly daunting. Even for a professional with a job offer in hand, the British government has made the process exceptionally unwieldy. After I filled out countless forms and supplied endless documentation, the process stalled. A few days before we were to depart, I sent a desperate e-mail, and a British consulate staffer in Chicago worked miracles. We now hold three-year, renewable visas. I would take renewal for granted except that debates over immigration have intensified since we arrived.
Once we got here, we had to decide where to live. We would have preferred to live in Nottingham, a bustling city, so I could walk to work, but a check with other faculty members with children indicated that the best primary and secondary schools were overfilled. Our three children would almost surely be bumped into weak schools.
So we settled in a village 18 miles away from the city, renting a converted carriage house behind a large Edwardian house where our landlords live. Directly across the street is an immense stone cathedral, built in the 12th century. The village is picturesque, with butcher shops, bakeries, cafes, and a secondhand bookstore.
It is a storybook setting, but getting our children (ages 9, 10, and 12) into the schools did prove taxing, particularly in the case of our oldest daughter. Residency does not guarantee school enrollment, and our daughter’s case dragged out on appeal for four months, during which time she was in our daily care. Now all three children are ensconced in the schools, which we find excellent.
What would be a short commute in the United States takes longer in Britain, given lower speed limits and circular roundabouts. The university is on the other side of the city, so the journey to work is 90 minutes by bus or 50 minutes by car. That practically obligates driving, so we have taken tests, written and practical, to obtain drivers’ licenses, a process that requires more time and energy than one would have thought.
Such transitional issues—housing, schools, transportation—diminish with each one ticked off. But for the first year, at least, arrangement-making combined with unpacking can seem all-consuming.
Your finances will transpire in two currencies. I did not move for money. Based upon currency conversion, I anticipated a near-identical level of salary, but that turned out to be meaningless because the cost of living in Britain is, in many respects, higher. We therefore took a hit to our income.
In the spring, my wife, a credentialed university reference librarian, managed to obtain a one-year position in the main humanities library at Nottingham. She did so on her own, since British universities do not practice spousal hiring. Her extra income has made all the difference, and we hope the job will lead to something permanent.
Living abroad adds layers of financial complexity to life. We have been unable to use our American savings to put a down payment on a house in England, because to transfer the money here would result in its being taxed at a very high rate. What’s more, despite an excellent credit rating in the United States, I was unable to get a line of credit for more than 300 pounds on any British card—including ones branded American Express, Visa, or MasterCard, companies that know my track record.
Above all, know this: American citizens living abroad must file income taxes in both the host country and the United States. Naturally, the accountants who specialize in expatriate issues charge prime rates.
There will be ups and downs. We have had glimpses of the sublime, as when scaling a mountain in Wales at Christmastime, discovering hot lamb-and-mint pasties at the bakery, happening upon remote castle ruins in Northumberland, or listening to the choir sing Thomas Tallis in the cathedral across the way.
But we have also had days of gloom, wondering whether we will ever belong in this culture, with all of its inscrutable differences. For me the moments of greatest doubt have come when I have held one daughter or the other on my lap as she cries. (Fortunately, that has not happened very often, or I’d have packed it in long ago.)
Technology makes communication easier than ever before, but being at trans-Atlantic distance can still make one feel remote from family, friends, and country, especially at holidays or—I admit, this may just be me—elections.
Kind colleagues have gone out of their way to welcome us. One took me to a professional cricket game. Another, an American, invited us over for Thanksgiving. Still, you find yourself missing home in the strangest moments, as when you need drain-clog remover at 8 p.m. and realize that because you are no longer in a 24/7 society, all the shops are closed.
Words will differ. Living in a non-English speaking country presents challenges, of course, but difficulties arise even when you supposedly share a language with your adopted country. Few people in England talk in the polished tones of the BBC, but the British do have a vocabulary of their own. A variant lexicon of academic life must be learned. Prepare to experience moments of infantilization as you ask for explanations of things that everyone else considers obvious.
Fortunately, you will absorb much of the terminology by osmosis. What we call a dissertation, they call a thesis, and vice versa. A course to us is a module here; a course here is what we would call a major. When we say “class,” we mean a single teaching session; they mean primarily a grade cohort, as in “the second-year class.” Service duties become “admin” tasks. And so on, into the more technical.
The vocabulary can suggest different cultural norms. “Staff,” for example, applies to faculty members here, unlike in the United States, where the word tends to be shorthand for administrative employees. That would seem to indicate an egalitarian sensibility: We are all staff.
In other ways, however, British terminology reflects a more pronounced sense of hierarchy. I, for example, hold two titles: senior lecturer and associate professor, British and American ways of expressing an equivalent rank. At first I thought that in granting both designations to me, the university had extended to me a remarkable courtesy. But when, without giving it thought, I selected “Prof.” on a human-resources form as the designation I prefer before my surname, I learned that I was not to do so, since that designation is appropriate only for those with full professorships. Curiouser and curiouser.
One completely unexpected and delightful advantage of a considerate culture is that, for the first time in my life, almost everyone is calling me by my actual name rather than truncating it in assumed familiarity, as if every Elizabeth must be a Betsy and every Robert a Bob. I had given up on that entirely in the United States.
Higher education will be structured differently. Rather than being compelled to master a broad spectrum of knowledge, the British-university student specializes intensively, taking but a single subject area—such as American and Canadian history and culture—for three years (not four, as in America). Some of my students choose “joint honors” degrees, or double majors, hence complete additional work in politics or English literature. But that’s it—no math, science, psychology, or French.
In our program, the performance of incoming students in the first year does not count toward their cumulative grade-point average. The marks count in the second year for 20 percent and in the third and final year for 80 percent of the final grade. At the end of every year, there is an exam review board, where for several days the entire faculty assembles, with outside observers on hand, to review every single student’s performance. Yearly marks that fall just shy of a given grade may be rounded up.
Instructors here act as “personal tutors” to a number of students. That may bring to mind visions of sherry-sipping sessions discussing Montesquieu in oak-paneled offices, but it is more mundane. You hand them their marks at the end of term and chat about how things are going. Once in a while, a student comes and sees you out of the blue, and it is very nice.
Nottingham’s expansive green lawns set it apart from many European universities, attracting not only locals but also students from all over Britain, especially wealthy southern England, as well as from Europe and Asia. Apart from a generally higher level of fashion sensibility—skinny-legged jeans, scarves, and other accoutrements abound—and a generally greater degree of politeness, students here seem to me to occupy the same range as Americans, from apathetic to brilliant, although the best here are among the best I’ve ever taught. The actual hours spent in the classroom here are fewer (two hours a week, typically) than stateside, so the reading you can assign is less. More emphasis is placed upon lengthy independent research papers as opposed to small, assigned-topic essays.
The Ph.D. is purely a research degree here. Writing the thesis is the rub. Doctoral students don’t have seminars, except when candidates present their research to one another. In our program, each Ph.D. candidate has two advisers, not one.
National policy intrudes upon academic life more directly when higher education is state-provided. A severe budgetary restructuring by the British government, with outsized tuition hikes forthcoming, has introduced major unknowns and righteous student rebellions this year. The Research Excellence Framework—a tool that measures faculty performance, and by which budgets are set—is defined at the national level, with goalposts sometimes moved in the midst of a given cycle.
Despite the myriad differences, however, the elemental life of a university scholar remains largely the same under the British and American systems: dominated by teaching and research.
It may change your scholarship. Being in a more research-driven setting has prodded me to submit more articles to topmost journals. I also find myself writing more for British publications, such as Times Higher Education and the Journal of American Studies.
But the main effect on my scholarship of living abroad has been that in explaining the American past to an international audience across the Atlantic and reading more British history, I am thinking more consistently about transnational and comparative themes in American studies. There is nothing like a move to put things in perspective—particularly if it takes you far away from the country you study.
