How should I avoid being in the shadow of my PhD advisor after I have my own faculty position? I would like to receive some feedback from the community about the following situation.

I have a permanent position as associate professor in an institution for some years now (3). This institution is the one I did my PhD 10 years ago, and in particular I am in the same department as my PhD advisor (who is a Full Professor).

Despite having my own research line independent of the one of my PhD advisor (namely, I have my own research problems, projects, collaborators, etc), the truth is that I also continue working with her, and being sincere I trust that my contribution on works is as important as her contribution. I am advising PhD students on different topics, I have my own national research project, etc.

I know that this should not bother me too much, but the truth is that at the end the person who receives the recognition of our work is her. Here by recognition I mean invitations to conferences, seminars, being in committees and things like this. I also know that being on an early stage is not the same as being a well-stablished professor, but when this happens on a regular basis, it makes me start to feel bad. Just to give an example, in the last year I have not been invited to give any seminars abroad, while she has been invited to present our work at least 3 times.

It has come to a point where I believe that having worked as crazy to get this position in a university in the city I wanted to live (because this one of the main reasons I picked this position... I love the city and most important, it solved the 2 body problem), it comes with the problem that I will always be 'the student of *' in the eyes of everybody, even if I obtain significant breakthroughs on my own. I trust that this will affect, for instance, if I want to become a full professor some day soon.

The question is the following: how to act when you have tried hard (and in part having been successful) to be (researchally speaking) independent of your PhD advisor, but in the eyes of almost everybody you are still her student? If this situation is rephrased saying that we are in the same institution then it explains a little what I was explaining in the previous paragraphs.

So, I would really appreciate advice from the community. I find it a little radical to stop collaborating scientifically with her (in part because there is no one around working on this area!), but as time goes by it seems to me that the best option is to start working alone on this common area, or some similar solution...
I find a little radical to stop collaborating scientifically with her (in part because there is no one around working on this area!), but as the time goes by it seems to me that the best option is to start working alone on this common area, or some similar solution...


There is some truth to the often-heard advise that one should stop regularly collaborating with one's PhD advisor after getting a PhD. I would argue this is doubly the case when you and your advisor work at the same place. To the outside world, you will always appear to be the "junior" in your collaboration, independently of who does how much work, who has had which ideas, or who is where in the paper author list.

My impression is that in the career stage that you are in, you should prioritize collaborations where you are the most senior person in the team, or where you are at least not overshadowed by somebody much more famous than you. Work on papers with your students, or with other people in a similar or earlier career stage than you. Avoid collaborations where you do all the work and some other eminent figure in the community (your advisor or some other senior professor) could be seen as the strategic brains behind the work.