Tag: post-phd

Moving on

Posted on by Doctoral College

Photo of Richard Budd

Richard Budd was awarded his PhD in September 2014, having successfully defended his thesis a few weeks beforehand. Based in the Graduate School of Education, he conducted a comparative case study of how German and English undergraduates understood and negotiated their respective higher education contexts. This required implementing a qualitative research design, conducting in-depth interviews with students at universities in each country. 

I dotted the last ‘i’ and crossed the last ‘t’ on my PhD seven months ago; it seems like aeons ago. It’s developed into a platonic thing now where our time together is infrequent. I’m afraid we simply grew apart. The attraction that emerged after initially circling each other cautiously was followed by a period of intense and all-consuming passion, a long stretch of easy cohabitation, then increasingly frequent rows and finally, heartbreak. What remains is respect and a shared history, but the viva was a counselling session when my examiners highlighted what I already suspected: the writing was on the wall. No hard feelings; I’m a better person than I was before and am very grateful for that. For a time this was the centre of the universe, and then there was the sudden realisation that the orbits had shifted, leaving a (mostly) fond memory and a reference in my bibliography. I haven’t got space for that kind of relationship any more. I’m just juggling too many different things nowadays.

My last blog in this series looked at what you need to do to boost your post-PhD employability. I was doing well enough back then, and three months later, I’m pleased to report further progress. I’m working part-time as an RA on a project that looks at maths teaching and widening participation (WP). We’re currently analysing data from group discussions with the teachers who participated in our study. It’s complex, challenging and interesting, and is clocking more miles on the research tachometer. We’ve had a symposium with some other WP projects accepted at a big national education conference in September. I’m also giving a paper of my own at the same conference – this way the project pays for me to go and I get to fly my own flag, too. I’ve had the same paper admitted at a European conference, and have been awarded funding to attend that. This one is particularly handy because it’s profile building, networking, and a small tick against the ‘garners funding’ box. Oh, and it’s in Budapest!! I’ve also drafted an application for money to put together a seminar series on graduate employability, and this is about the only other type of funding I can apply for as a part-time, fixed term researcher. It’s a slow burner, though, because the person I need to help me polish it up for submission is simply too swamped with other stuff to be able to help for the time being.

What else…I’m supervising a Master’s student, which is great. My supervisee is, thankfully, engaged, energetic, and receptive to advice. Helping others develop their projects is rewarding and helps me realise how much of the research process is second nature now. My blog, Stuff About Unis, is attracting a steady level of traffic, and I’ve been out in schools delivering a workshop I put together on the nature and results of educational research. I submitted my first paper in February, and I’m expecting to hear back from the editors in about June. They say that your first review is a bit of a (painful) rite of passage. Provided they accept it, I’m braced to have quite a bit of work to do before resubmitting it. Then it gets read again, further changes recommended, back and forth, until it’s finally done. I’ve got another paper I’m looking to submit in June, and again this’ll be subject the same prolonged period of negotiation. I might have two of my own publications by Christmas. I also work part-time for GW4, coordinating academic staff development projects across the four universities. Working with people in four different organisations, all in separate geographical locations, is challenging, but it’s providing an inside view of academic careers, collaborative projects, and doctoral training, as well as an education into how universities function behind – or alongside – the academic work. This is all really useful as much of it taps into things that I’ll be expected to have experience of in the future.

Something that’s struck me over the last few months is how incomplete my understanding of the academic job market was. Most of my knowledge has been picked up piecemeal, from conversations, CPD sessions, and staff developers. Particularly since the introduction of tuition fees, student satisfaction, and employability ratings on the league tables, there’s an enormous emphasis on undergrad career support. In comparison, postgrads get a raw deal in my view. We are supposed to be more independent and seek things out ourselves, but some structured, clearly available support wouldn’t go amiss. For example:

  • What is an academic CV supposed to look like? You could possibly hunt down some of the examples buried in the Vitae website, but did you know that our own HR pages have useful information on this? I found out about this from a mentoring circle. It’s intended for internal promotions, but gives a really good template of what needs to be on there.
  • Where do you look for jobs? I knew about jobs.ac.uk, which should cover the UK, but only last week a friend mentioned Euraxess, which has positions all over Europe. AcademicKeys might be of interest: it’s mostly US-focused, but also has jobs around the world.
  • How do you put an application together? Some of it is simply filling in boxes, but the personal statement is an art form that a friend of mine recently talked me through. You have to be absolutely explicit about how you satisfy all of the essential criteria (what’s on the last blog, and probably more), and hopefully a good proportion of the desirable ones. You also need to look at the teaching/research profile of your potential employer and make it very clear how you would fit within this.

Seven months out, post-PhD life is more or less on track. All I‘ll need is time, elbow grease, and the planetary alignment of a job whose requirements I meet more than the competition. Don’t ask me what the interview might look like or what I’m expected to wear, though, I’ve no idea. Answers on a postcard, please…

Right, you’ve got your doctorate. Now what?

Posted on by Doctoral College

Photo of Richard BuddI don’t know how common this is, but I gave no thought to ‘post-PhD’ when I started out. I was mostly interested in the field and wanted to see if I had what it took to do a doctorate.  Job thoughts came later, with an academic career emerging as the frontrunner by several lengths. I love my area of research, I really enjoy teaching, and there’s no ceiling as to how far you can develop intellectually. I had a good job for a time before I started my postgrad studies – interesting, well paid, international travel, nice people – but after a while I wasn’t getting any better, just learning more facts. The next options for me were to go into management or get involved in more advanced kinds of research. It was a no-brainer: I had to go back to university.

So, here I am, with my PhD, and looking at the job market. It looks like getting from a freshly passed viva to a lecturing post requires having a few things on your CV:

  • A doctorate;
  • Research experience (in addition to your doctorate);
  • Teaching experience;
  • Conference presentations;
  • Journal publications, and preferably a book;
  • Successful research funding bids;

I’ll go through the list, in principal and in (my) practice.

You didn’t always have to have a PhD/professional doctorate but you probably do now. It might not be as important in some subjects like nursing, teacher training, or architecture, but having one in those will certainly not count against you. In most subjects, though, it’s a case of no doctorate, no entry. For me, that’s a check.

Getting research experience – preferably as part of a research team – seems to be pretty important. Not many have the opportunity to do this before their doctorate and you can’t always squeeze it in during. You might get to be involved in other people’s work if you’re in a lab in your research group, but this is not an option for everyone. Teaching is readily available if you’re studying in a department that has undergraduate students, less if you’re not. I had a career in non-academic research before I came back to university, managed to get a few cameo research jobs during my PhD, and am now working on a research project. My department was a graduate school and you couldn’t teach until you upgraded from MPhil to PhD, but I previously taught English in Japan and then accumulated quite a few bits of bobs after my upgrade, too. So far, so good!

Most people do conference presentations as they go along. They’re nerve-wracking, but you get to share your research, pick up new ideas, and often meet some interesting (and perhaps useful) people. You can start off small, presenting at student conferences or at the ‘early career’ section of a major one, and then at some stage move into the bear pit with the grown-ups.  It’s all a practice thing and I did a few of these every year, some of which went well, some of which didn’t. Still, I learnt from it, quite enjoy it really, and that’s another box ticked.

Publishing is tricky, particularly during your PhD, unless you’re involved with someone else’s research project. Like me, you may not have anything new to say from your doctorate until you’re near the end of it. You can do book reviews, though, but I’m personally not sure how much this counts. There can be quite a lead time on journal publications: a few months to write, share, revise and then submit them, then a few more until they’re reviewed and sent back. Then you have to address their suggestions and resubmit it, provided they didn’t reject it outright in the first place. Only after all of that – once it’s all been approved, of course – can you put that precious ‘Budd (forthcoming) Catchy But Serious Title, Prestigious Journal, 3 (1), pp.34-52’ on your CV. Books are another option, at least in the social sciences. Unfortunately, you can’t just send the editor your final thesis copy, it’ll need months of rejigging and then more editing. Publications are where I fall flat at the moment. I have one that I’m working on by myself, two collaborative ones from other work I’ve done or am currently doing, and then at least three more from my PhD. In a year from now, it’ll all look rosier, and in two years, peachy!

Research funding is a bit of a Catch-22 in that you can’t get funding without a permanent job or a permanent job without funding! The ideal route is that you get a two to three-year ‘post-doc’ soon after your viva that brings everything on the list with it – research, teaching, presentations, publications, and research funding. People in the sciences tend to do a few of these before getting a permanent job, but in the social sciences it’s usually one, and there are far less of them around. They’re often not that well paid and/or quite short term, which is completely unhelpful if you’ve got a family and can’t move around every six to 12 months.

I hope most people are more informed about what happens after the doctorate than I was four years ago. I did manage to work most of this out as I went along, though, and am now only a few publications short of the next stop on the ladder. Some people I know have moved from their doctorate to a lectureship almost seamlessly, but this is pretty unusual. It’s probably good to be aware that there is a bit of a chasm between completing your thesis and The Job. You may have to fill the gap with part-time and/or short-term contracts, and you’ll need to collect certain building blocks to construct your bridge to the other side. Good luck…