The Early Career Blog

Dr Steve Joy Last week, I had the pleasure of being a guest at Cumberland Lodge , an academic retreat that is elegantly sequestered in the Great Park, Windsor. Just to be at this gloriously peaceful venue felt restorative for mind & body. And my reason for being there? I was speaking at this year's Life Beyond the PhD conference. Here are some reflections on that experience - particularly around the theme of perseverance . The conference was attended by PhD students & postdocs - at all career stages, from all disciplines, from institutions all over the UK. The aim was to prepare participants for 'an increasingly interdisciplinary academic life' as well as to show them 'that PhDs have demonstrable value both inside and outside academia'. I was there, you won't be surprised to learn, to contribute to the latter objective. And, happily, I was the bearer of good news: evidence shows that people with PhDs are employable outside the academy, provided that...

Dr Steve Joy After a brief summer hiatus, let the blogging resume - where we left off, no less, with interviews & teaching questions. In this second post, I want to comment both on some of the simple principles & on some of the political pitfalls of discussing your teaching contribution. In other words, how do you position yourself in terms of existing courses which you could teach & new ones which you would like to develop? I would like to propose four golden rules. Golden rule #1 As with any interview preparation, the best possible way to get answers to your questions is to ask them. No, really. Speak to someone in the department to which you're applying. In most cases, this means that you should, at the very least, speak to the contact for informal inquiries named in the job description. I can't emphasise strongly enough what a mistake it is not to take up this opportunity when it's offered to you. You can & should be asking, in effect, why this pos...

Dr Steve Joy Everyone knows the rules of academic interviews: you get research questions, teaching questions, and a few admin/service-type questions. True, there may be a tricky icebreaker ("How well do you know Aberystwyth?") or a real googly at the end ("What else should we have asked you?"), but the bulk of the interview is given over to this tried-and-tested triptych. The three categories can certainly be subdivided further - e.g. past research, future projects, funding, publications, collaborations, and so on - but we know what we're dealing with overall. Frankly, it's rather comforting. Yet, despite their predictability, I often encounter a lot of anxiety about teaching questions, even from early career academics who are already hugely experienced pedagogues. So, today's post is the first of a series in which I am going to attempt to demystify some of what's going on in these teaching discussions & to offer some tips which you can put in...

Dr Steve Joy Today's post is in response to a phrase that has always been ubiquitous but seems to have crossed my path much too frequently in recent months. You will no doubt recognise it yourselves. "This project will be the first book-length study on [insert your topic here]." Seriously, this won't do. Why not, you ask? Surely, what anyone who has successfully completed a PhD learnt from that process is that research projects need to make an original contribution to scholarship. In other words, here is a gap (as proven by the fact that no book has been written on this precise topic before), and this project will fill it. Sorted.  But here's my question. Does it even matter than no previous scholarship exists on this precise topic? It might well do, but you must say how & why. What are other academics unable to do because of this gap? What has this lack of understanding been leading us to get wrong hitherto ? What will we be able to do differently once ...

Dr Steve Joy We don't like networking. You know what I'm talking about. Those people with a loose rein on their narcissism, who oil their way around a room, talking about themselves & how great they are, schmoozing everyone including the invited star professor (how did they get to speak to her, by the way?). It's a self-important, self-promoting way to behave - too smooth, too corporate, not academic. But what's good is that researchers don't need to do it, because, in higher education, it's all about the quality of the publications & a little about the teaching. The best researchers are always & only the ones who get the jobs. Right? No prizes for guessing that I jest. We all need to do networking, whatever our walk of professional life. Just look at the incredible success of LinkedIn (more than 225 million users) and, closer to home, of the Careers Service's GradLink  interface. It works. People find opportunities to forge personal connectio...

Dr Steve Joy I've had some requests for guidance on how to approach an individual or organisation on a speculative basis, particularly when looking to get some non-academic work experience. Below are some pointers - your starter for ten, if you will - but remember that you can book an appointment with me at any time to discuss this & other issues related to your next career step. 1.  It's not really about you. Counter-intuitive? Not necessarily. In writing or in conversation, don't begin by narrating for the employer what you've done in your career, what you want to do in your career, what you would like to get out of a work placement with them, what you are prepared to do, and whatever else you want to say about you. You'll have lost or, worse, alienated your audience before giving them any motivation to be interested in you. 2. It's not really about you, but it is all about them . Don't forget that you are asking people to do something for yo...

Dr Steve Joy It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a postdoc applying for an academic position must have a long list of ‘research interests’. Or so it seems to me, because I have noticed this scourge an awful lot in recent months. That is, cover letters which begin with long lists of interests that are all-too-vanilla and unconvincing: “My research interests include Thomas Mann, German Modernist literature, psychoanalysis, queer theory and performativity, the senses, the body, chocolate ice cream, Western phonocentrism, and Barbra Streisand.” And consider for a moment the thought, called forth by the menacing presence of the verb ‘include’, that these nine interests are only a select list. Hydra-like, there's no cutting them back. Admittedly, the above list is partly a joke (my attempts to work Barbra into my research never came off), but it mimics a type of phrase that I have very commonly found in the opening paragraph of researchers’ cover letters. And that's befo...