People Categories

The departmental membership categories are:

• Academic Faculty — direct employment relationship with the department and involved in teaching and/or research run by the department (e.g.Stat Profs, Readers, APs, CUFs, DLs, RSIV, G9 + G10 Researchers, Career Development Fellows) + ex officio Director of UG Studies, and Faculty Teaching Advisor.
• Affiliate Faculty — no (or casual/very minimal) direct contractual relationship with the department but still very closely involved in teaching and/or research directly run by the department AND has an employment contract elsewhere in the university. Must be proposed/accepted/adopted by a research group. Note the department determines whether they are affiliate faculty or researcher rather than the individual explicitly applying for one or the other.
• Research Fellow — contractual relationship with the department (either direct employment or contractual relationship between funder and department) and engaged in independent research.
• PDRA — direct employment relationship with the department and engaged on a specific research project in the department.
• Affiliate Researcher — no (or casual/very minimal) direct contractual relationship with the department but based in the university and wishing to be involved in departmental activities (e.g. JRFs, college lecturers, non-employed (by Oxford) longer term (i.e. more than 1 year) visiting research fellows such as Newton International Fellows and Swiss NSF fellows). Must be proposed/accepted/adopted by a research group. Note the department determines whether they are affiliate faculty or researcher rather than the individual explicitly applying for one or the other.
• Emeritus & Retired Staff — Accepted under the emeritus/retired staff process (typically previously been Academic Faculty and now retired from the department but in exceptional cases can be emeritus/retired academics who did not hold a status in this department at retirement).
• Professional Services / Admin & Support — direct employment relationship with the department in an admin/support role.
• Postgrad (Doctorate) - DPhil students admitted through Academic Admin managed processes
• Postgrad (Masters) - Masters students admitted through Academic Admin managed processes
• Visitorships (Visiting Professorship, Visiting Research Fellowship or Visiting Lectureship) — invited under a
  formal university or department scheme (usually for 2-3 years), typically visiting from another academic institution (or in some cases a company), and coming to the department for particular days/periods within the overall period of the Visitorship, but not being entirely based in Oxford with no other home institution/employer (in which case they would instead be affiliates which provides more involvement with everyday departmental life for those based solely in the university)
• Academic Visitor:
  • Long Term Visitor — invited through normal departmental visitor programme, including approval by (or on behalf of) Executive Committee, for a visit of 3-12 months (includes postdocs and research fellows who hold funds abroad and spend 3+ months here although if the department is to be their only or primary base then they should be appropriate liaison and checks with the researcher procedures too).
  • Short Term Visitor — invited through normal departmental visitor programme for a visit of less than 3 months.
  • Non-employed (by Oxford) longer term (i.e. more than 1 year) visiting research fellows such as Newton International Fellows and Swiss NSF fellows - such people remain formally visitors to the university, but we group them in at a departmental level with the affiliate researchers as noted in the relevant section above
• Student Visitor — if coming for more than 3 months then directed down the recognised student process and
  hence through academic admin, if coming for less than 3 months directed down the short study visit route.

Note the status categories defined above are about membership of the department. In addition to those categories we also have no-status categories:

• Teaching Staff — e.g. people in Stats, Comp Sci, Philosophy, colleges etc whose involvement with the department is purely teaching related due to joint courses.
• External/Collaborator — people who are not members but have been granted some basic level of (IT) access and/or facilities, e.g. ongoing collaborators whose collaboration requires access to systems/services the department provides, people who ask for a short transitional period before starting elsewhere, regular external guest lecturers, people who do not need a status category that suggests more importance yet do need some level of access.

Note in general people are only in one category but there are corner cases/exceptions who are in multiple categories.

Changes of status typically occur for several reasons:

• postgrad becomes a PDRA
• PDRA becomes a Research Fellow
• Research Fellow or PDRA becomes Academic Faculty
• Affiliated individual changes job and becomes a formal employee of the department (e.g. Academic moves from Stats or Comp Sci to Maths)
• Academic Faculty retire and hence can become Emeritus & Retired Staff
• PDRA, Research Fellow or Academic Faculty leave formal employment with the department but retain a connection and hence become either Affiliate Researcher, Affiliated Faculty, Teaching Staff or External depending on the situation

In all these staff status change cases there is an underlying personnel process.