Category: Your Career

A couple of months ago I wrote a post called ‘The enshittification of academic social media’, riffing on ideas put in the world by Cory Doctorow. It’s fair to say, this post was a minor viral hit, resulting in me being interviewed by Geraldine Dougue on ABC radio, and a piece in The Australian, which …continue reading.

If I started Thesis Whisperer today, 10th of July 2023, you would never hear about me. I built a readership in my little corner of academia, and some measure of influence, by sharing my work online. When people ask how I got to 100,000 followers on social media, I used to share two tips: 1) …continue reading.

Hey, before I start this post, I’ve got a couple more events coming up at Cambridge if you are around: On 11 July we are holding a forum for ThinkLab at Cambridge for PhDs and PostDocs who are interested in accessing the non-academic research job market (no online option, sorry). You can book for free …continue reading.

Like many academics, I have too many things on. By ‘things’ I mean projects of all shapes and sizes, from ‘write a book on neurodiversity and the PhD’, to ‘Fix up the Bootcamp page on the ANU website’. Exhibit A: I’m going on Sabbatical in the UK from May to August. To minimise disruption to …continue reading.

Academics are always worried about having their ideas ‘stolen’. This deep cultural anxiety affects PhD students more than almost any other member of the community. There’s a good reason why PhD students should be anxious about protecting their ideas – examination. A PhD is meant to be a signal that you’re fit to be a …continue reading.

As regular readers will know, I am a working researcher with an interest in post PhD employability. For nearly 10 years now my research focus has been on job advertisements for researchers. this post is a detailed update on the academic and non-academic job market, 2 years into the pandemic. If you don’t want to …continue reading.

I started the Thesis Whisperer to help PhD students finish. In the last five years I’ve extended that mission to helping people get jobs after they graduate. It’s my firm belief that, although the world has 99 problems right now, research can fix a lot of them. Therefore researchers need to be able to put …continue reading.

The other day I had an actual 3D, face to face lunch with a colleague, let’s call him Simon. After months of 2D Zoom catch ups, it was lovely to be in an actual cafe on campus, eating steaming hot noodles. Simon and I were meant to be discussing business, but of course the conversation …continue reading.

I put this post on ice in February this year when the great Covid crisis hit. The post is about how to supplement your sessional teaching income with academic flavoured ‘side hustles’. Back in March everything was going to hell and it just didn’t seem that… relevant? Now, at the start of semester two in …continue reading.

There’s a looming economic crisis in higher education. Perhaps you have lost work already and you’re wondering how you will support yourself (I’m really sorry). It’s hard to know if you’ll get more or less teaching next semester and what form it will take. Will it be online? Or face to face? Maybe your courses …continue reading.