About this blog

By Cambridge postdocs
The Early Career Blog is a joint endeavour between the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, drawing on expertise from a broad team of careers advisers and development professionals.

We welcome all researchers – regardless of their home country or institution – to read and engage with the blog. It provides up-to-date insight into the political economy of early career research, tips for developing personal and professional attributes, practical advice for exploring next career steps, guidance on job applications both within academia and beyond.

The Early Career Blog was created, in 2013, by Steve Joy, who was then working as a Postdoc Careers Adviser. He is now Head of Researcher Development at the University of Cambridge.

Follow us on Twitter: @earlycareerblog

With input from:

Rachel Bray: Rachel works with research students and staff at Oxford University. Trained in social anthropology, her research has spanned social policy, psychology and health as an academic and technical consultant to international organisations, governments and civil society. She has lived and worked in Europe, Asia and southern Africa.

Diane Caldwell-Hird: Diane works as the Careers Adviser for postdocs and researchers in the arts, humanities, and social sciences at the University of Cambridge. She has studied (politics) and worked (in the Canadian Foreign Service and in Higher Education) in Canada, France, Russia, India and the UK.

Anne Forde: Anne works as the Careers Adviser for postdocs and researchers in the life sciences. She completed her PhD in immunology at Trinity College, University of Dublin before working as a postdoctoral researcher at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. She then worked in science journalism as a reporter, and later an editor, for the career development website from Science magazine, ScienceCareers.

Liz Simmonds: Liz advises postdocs and researchers in the physical sciences and technology at the University of Cambridge.She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, specialising in Chemistry before working as an assistant editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry and then as a programme manager for SETNET, a Government-funded organisation promoting science and engineering to school children.

Sally Todd: Sally advises postdocs and researchers in the life sciences. She worked as a VSO science teacher in Kenya before completing an MSc in applied genetics. This was followed by a career in agricultural research/plant breeding in both public and private sectors, before she became a careers adviser first at King’s College, London and now at the University of Cambridge.

Editor

Steve Joy: Steve is Head of Researcher Development at the University of Cambridge. He has been supporting early career researchers since 2009, and he has written on these topics for The Guardian as well as for several books on writing successful job applications. His research was in German cultural studies, and he supervised and lectured for five years.

Popular posts from this blog

What do you mean you don’t have a Plan B?

By Cambridge postdocs
Diane Caldwell “What’s your ‘ Plan B?’” When do you stop pursuing ‘Plan A’ and turn to identifying options for your ‘Plan B’?  Or is it too late to develop an appealing and viable ‘Plan B’? Our everyday reference to ‘Plan A’ for academia and ‘Plan B’ for the other, often less well-known world, is so natural that we hardly notice.  But what are the implications of this binary way of thinking and conversation?  And what do these mean if you think of yourself, or consider others to view you as, having invested in the first stages of an academic career?  There can be many and varied reasons why you might consider ‘leaving academia’.  Common rational reasons: you can’t uproot your life to meet the dictates of the job market; the intensity of the competition is too great; there are no reasonable professional development opportunities etc.  In some of these cases, you may have an accompanying disenchantment with the subject or a desire (at least p...
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Structuring an academic cover letter

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Dr Steve Joy This autumn, the Early Career Blog is undergoing various changes, not least in the colour & choice of font. Whilst we make further changes, I am expanding & updating for 2016 some of the most popular posts – starting with this advice on structuring a cover letter for academic jobs. Below is a skeleton structure for a two-page cover letter, suitable for lectureships & similar positions in the UK as well as at research-intensive universities overseas. If you’re applying to a research-only job, then you could simply omit the two teaching paragraphs. You will notice that I suggest  not  following the standard advice that you should have one 'fit' paragraph, usually the last, in which you say something about the particular job you're applying for. Empathise with the busy academics who will be reading your letter – that is, skimming it in a brisk 30-60 seconds. Don’t make them wait all the way until the end to find out whether you have an...
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Resilience (2 of 5): The feedback dynamics between you and academia

By Cambridge postdocs
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Dr Emily Troscianko and Dr Rachel Bray In the first post in this series on resilience, we thought about how you and the academic environment interact. We considered some of the benefits and drawbacks of working in academia, and some of the personal characteristics that might make you more or less resilient in the face of its stresses. In this post, we offer a way of modelling these interactions in more visual, dynamic terms. Seeing things drawn as well as written can be helpful in understanding the underlying structures (it’s not just about me…), and in adopting a fresh perspective on choices available to you. Once you start thinking of yourself, your life, and the world as a feedback system, it can become an addictively satisfying way of seeing the bigger picture. Feedback dynamics are fundamental to pretty much any system you can think of – biological, technological, institutional, psychological… This means that grasping some feedback basics is crucial to understanding how ins...
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