Category: Your Career

The Thesis Whisperer blog has gone from strength to strength over the years. Visibility is a form of currency in academia. A rolling stone gathers moss as the proverb goes (edit: well – actually it doesn’t! That should be a rolling snowball or something? Anyway…) and in my case moss = opportunities. Because of my …continue reading.

What happens after all the dust is settled and you start to pusue this thing called ‘an academic career’? This post is by Dr Pippa Yeoman, who has started what is beginning to be called the ‘post-post-post doc’ stage of the academic career. Pippa is an ethnographer of socio-technical innovations in learning, who is coming …continue reading.

This post is by Anna Wilkinson. Anna is a Research Fellow at Cancer Council Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. Anna has an extensive clinical background having previously worked as a nurse in diverse settings, including in rural and remote Australia and in the UK. This clinical work provided a foundation for further training in public health and …continue reading.

Eleanor Malbon is a research fellow at the University of New South Wales and an aborted PhD candidate.  She researches social policy and public administration, which can be as dry as it sounds, but the people she works with are consistently interesting. You can find her research profile here and most of her published work …continue reading.

First a trigger warning: this post discusses suicide and self harm. If you need to reach out, Lifeline in Australia provides a 24 hour crisis line on 131114. Sorry I can’t list services in every country this is likely to be read, but you can find information on mental health for PhD students on the …continue reading.

Do you identify as ‘introvert’? Many PhD students do. If you are less comfortable with social spaces, the networking part of academia might be painful. To tell you the truth, I don’t really buy the ‘introvert/extrovert’ spectrum as I don’t identify as either. I’m always uncomfortable with such absolute descriptions as people are very complex, …continue reading.

Interdisciplinary research. So hot right now… or is it? To be clear – I’m a super fan of interdisciplinary work. I’m happily ‘post-disciplinary’ myself. My PhD was interdisciplinary, and my current job is transdisciplinary. I work with all kinds of research students, from physics to fine art; education to chemistry, I embrace you all! While …continue reading.

In Australia, enrolling in a Masters by research (or ‘MPhil’) it is a relatively common pathway to a PhD, but how hard is it to achieve the ‘upgrade’? This post is by Jonathan O’Donnell, who has spent most of his career in universities, helping academics to find funding for their research. His doctoral research looks …continue reading.

Have you given up a great full time job to do your PhD? Some of you might have done this fairly recently – what changes can you expect? Jo Khoo is currently enrolled in a PhD at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her research focuses on health services use and financing, particularly related to service …continue reading.

Good advice on how NOT to be an academic when you finish your PhD is pretty thin on the ground. Many supervisors have never done anything else, and/or are not well enough connected with industry to know what is ‘hot’. Careers centres at universities tend to shape their offerings around the huge undergraduate cohort, who …continue reading.