This page supports our workshop “Planning for an Academic Career”. You can download the slides from that session here:
Rather than repeat the excellent advice already available on the web, this page will link to the best sites and resources that I’ve found. If you know of others, please let me know.
Understanding the academic context in the UK
Stories in Science – a great new website from Dr Emma Compton and Dr Nicola Phillips at Dundee which sets out the career paths of a range of Dundee researchers, academics and other staff against timelines.
An Academic Career at Manchester University remains the go-to site for insights into academic recruitment and demands.
Running a close second is the Careers Advice section of jobs.ac.uk with profiles and advice on all aspects relating to recruitment into academic life.
The Barton Group at Dundee have produced a great essay about UK academic life : “Our essay on The UK Academic System aims to help people to understand how scientific careers develop, what the terms Reader and Professor mean in the UK and how scientists fund and publish their work.”
Although the errors in one of the figures in this report cause me great frustration, the Royal Society’s publication “The Scientific Century” sets out some of the challenges facing UK science.
The slides I use in the presentation use two schematics from other authors:
The career pyramid is from Bournemouth University’s Research Blog
The academic career ladder is from “Planning an Academic Career” by Dr Tracey Bussoli at QMUL
I’m a strong believer in the value of social media for researchers, so I also recommend that you investigate this for yourself. A good start is to download the RIN guide for researchers:
Social media: A guide for researchers
(and search this site for Social media for various other links).
Some additional links from the workshop:
Peter Matthew’s blog on academic life, Heriot Watt
Other academic perspectives on social media:
http://www.katherinelwheat.com/lifeafterthesis/uses-and-misuses-of-twitter/
http://deevybee.blogspot.nl/2011/06/gentle-introduction-to-twitter-for.html
http://thermaltoy.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/what-is-the-point-of-twitter/
http://occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald/2013/03/23/learning-the-foreign-language-of-twitter/
http://www.nature.com/spoton/2012/10/spoton-london-2012-tweeting-to-spread-the-word/
http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/why-i-use-twitter/
http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/why-should-an-academic-read-blogs/
Negotiating an academic salary
Creativity – recipes for remarkable research and the blog from the project