1. The document provides advice for PhD graduates on potential career pathways after completing their degree. It discusses options such as pursuing an academic career through postdoctoral research, publishing, applying for teaching positions, and developing research agendas. 2. Statistics are presented on employment outcomes for graduates in different fields, showing varied rates of unemployment and seeking alternative work. The author shares their own pathway from PhD to current position as a university lecturer. 3. Tips are provided on networking, gaining experience through teaching and committees, applying for grants, measuring success beyond just publications, and preparing for a versatile career outside a single path.

1. Post-PhD Pathways
OR: You’ve done the thing, so what’s next?
Brady Robards
University of Tasmania
brady.robards@utas.edu.au
@bradyjay
Griffith Centre for Cultural Research HDR Summer School – November, 2015

2. PLAN
• Help frame the day
• Conferences
• Publishing
• Social media + the ‘public intellectual’
• Share my own experiences as a Griffith graduate + ECR
• Applying for academic jobs
• Developing a post-PhD research agenda
• Challenges and opportunities around contemporary academic
labour

3. 1. Telling children you’re in the 25th grade.
As curated by Buzzfeed’s Jessica Misener:
25 Deeply Painful PhD Student Problems (Besides Your Thesis)

4. 3. Realizing your vocabulary is permanently scattered
with words like “problematic” and “ontological” and
“hegemony.”

5. 5. Going to parties and everyone’s just standing around
talking about their research.

6. 8. When someone claims that being in a doctoral
program isn’t “the same thing as having a real job”:

7. 11. …and feeling ultra-guilty anytime you try to relax.

8. 12. Finding an old paper you wrote your first year of grad
school:

9. 17. Feeling some degree of “impostor syndrome” at least
once a day.

10. 21. Grading your undergrads’ papers:

11. 22. When someone asks how “writing” is going:

12. 25. When ANYONE asks you what your plan is after you
graduate:

13. WHAT DO PHD STUDENTS DO WHEN THEY GRADUATE?
(Mewburn 2013 – http://thesiswhisperer.com/2013/07/17/whats-your-edge/)
• Perpetual and ongoing state of
crisis? (Kendall 2002)
• Oversupply
• Elite vs ‘non-elite’ institutions
• The PhD as a pathway to
research and/or teaching but
not much else
• 2003: 8% of research degree
graduates were ‘unemployed’,
although 23% were seeking other
work (Mewburn 2013)
• My pathway is (mostly) an academic one, but this is not the only post-PhD
pathway…

14. SOCIALSCIENCES
http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/ - 2015

15. HUMANITIES
http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/ - 2015

16. MY PATHWAY
PhD/Level A Professional Level B
• 2008 – 2012 (4 years
FTE)
• Tutoring
• RA work
• Guest lectures
• Acting convenor
• 2011: Level A
contract (FT)
• QIBT
• 2012 – 2013
• Student Advisor
• Non-academic, but
paid the bills
• Retained position
and affiliation with
Griffith
• Continued to work
on
publications/projects
in spare time
• Excellent mentors
• 2013 – current
• 40/40/20;
continuing/tenurable
• RPEs
• 1 HERDC point/yr
• HDR supervision
• $7k/yr
• 3 unit teaching rotation
• 25 EFTSU/sem
Griffith Griffith UTas

17. POST-PHD RESEARCH AGENDA

18. POST-PHD RESEARCH AGENDA
Undergraduate
Honours/Masters
PhD
Post-PhD

19. POST-PHD RESEARCH AGENDA

20. STEPPING BACK: DURING THE PHD
On saying yes to (almost) everything…
• Publishing
• Four journal articles + one article and one chapter on the way
• Contributed to a textbook, Think Sociology
• Co-edited a special issue and a book
• Book reviews
• Peer reviewing
• Blogging
• Teaching
• Taught into ten different courses (all levels)
• + guest lectures (mostly paid)
• Applied for teaching awards
• Service: Committees (HDR rep, symposia, professional associations, reviewing)
• Conferences  networking
• Mentors
• Web presence

21. SELECTION CRITERIA
+ An emerging track record of applications for external research funds
(grants, fellowships, project funding)
Find the selection criteria for the kind of
jobs you want to apply for and start
thinking about how you could respond to
them. Ask people for their job applications.

22. ‘RESEARCH PERFORMANCE EXPECTATIONS’
 Assessed in 3-5 year windows

23. GRANT CULTURE
• Australian Research Council (ARC)
• Discovery
• Linkage
• DECRA
• 5 years post-PhD
• 2 shots
• Find alternate funding bodies
• Get advice from research office/research support staff
• Internal grants to ‘build capacity’
• Proactively partner with senior colleagues and mentors
2016 1220 200 16.4%

24. MEASURING SUCCESS?
• Completion time
• Done is better than perfect
• The PhD as a licence to apply for jobs
• BUT ALSO a time to be protected and relished as one of the few
times you will have to focus on your own research for a sustained
period of time
• Publications
• Quantity + quality
• Downloads/views
• Citations
• Impact (methodological, theoretical, etc.)
• Altmetrics (tweets, shares, etc.)
• Developing networks (peers, mentors, collaborators, co-authors)
• Engaging with the media (radio/newspaper/TV interviews)
• Teaching might represent the biggest and most important ‘impact’ most
academics can hope to have

25. MY ‘SHADOW CV’
• What my CV says: 9 journal articles over the past 5
years, with 2 under review, and another 6 in
preparation.
• Shadow CV: A string of rejections, failed
collaborations, and half-written articles
• What my CV says: 4 books
• Shadow CV: My institution doesn’t ‘count’ any of
them as they are edited books (x2) or classified as
textbooks (x2 – I’m appealing one!)
• What my CV says: A continuing, full-time Level B academic job at a solid mid-
range university with a strong sociology program, straight out of my PhD.
• Shadow CV: 10 failed job applications, short-listed for two; moving away
from my friends and family to a place where I knew no-one, and had to build
a new life.
• What my CV says: $560k of external + $15k of internal research funding over the
past 2.5 years
• Shadow CV: The bulk of it was by chance, and part of it involves evaluation
work that is very time intensive.
Inspired by Devoney Looser (2015) in
The Chronicle of Higher Ed

26. CROWD-SOURCING ADVICE

28. BUT not a pushover

37. THE CHALLENGE
• Academic pathways appear to be increasingly fraught, non-linear
and involve at least some ‘treading water’
• Exploitation, casualisation, and short-term contracts
• Four essential elements to address these challenges:
• Planning, resilience, tenacity, and kindness

38. PREPARE FOR VERSATILITY
Take stock of the skills you develop during a PhD, and learn to translate
them into different position descriptions and selection criteria:
• Research
• Literature reviews - translating complex existing research into
accessible language
• Methods (qual, quant, recruitment, ethics)
• Project management
• Writing and editing
• Grant/tender applications
• Identifying funding organisations
• Writing persuasively
• Responding to criteria
 BUT: It’s a PhD, not a Nobel Prize (Mullins & Kiley 2002)

39. FORGING NEW PATHWAYS
• While we must continue to confront a range of challenges in
negotiating what comes after the PhD (personal, institutional,
structural) there is cause for optimism…
• Develop your own measures of success
• An academic career can be incredibly rewarding, but those
rewards do not always have to be found in conventional
academic positions
• In the Humanities and Social Sciences, we are uniquely
positioned to contribute to a range of discussions and industries
outside academia
• Other pathways today and tomorrow: Jodi, Catherine, David, Indigo

40. FURTHER READING
• www.thesiswhisperer.com - Inger Mewburn (ANU)
• http://theresearchwhisperer.wordpress.com - Tseen Khoo + Jonathan
O’Donnell (RMIT) +
• ‘It’s a PhD, not a Nobel Prize’ (Mullins & Kiley 2002)
• ‘Me and my Shadow CV’ (Looser 2015) -
http://chronicle.com/article/MeMy-Shadow-CV/233801
QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION
• Please be open/honest with your
own
uncertainties/anxieties/frustration
s