Just came back from a conference on “migration, mobility, and borders”, organised by and for our doctoral researchers. Interestingly, I was invited to give a ‘career talk’. My immediate suggestion was to bring in a career consultant instead, but for a combination of a couple of reasons, I ended up doing the talk. Come to think of it, I have been living and working among doctoral and early career researchers for almost 15 years, while being required to monitor the latest developments in the sector, so I told myself that I might indeed have one or two things to say about for their benefit.
Considering the theme, I prepared my talk along the lines of the increased expectation of (early career) researchers to be available/willing to be globally mobile. That is just one of the many, previously non-existent expectations imposed on the current generation of PhD candidates. I included this image (as a GIF) in my slides because every time I see it, I think of them. I honestly do.
Here are a couple more items that highlight how far things have changed in the PhD game.
# 2015 advice for your 856-year-old Ph.D. (Christian Sandvig, 5 August 2015)
# Academic superheroes? A critical analysis of academic job descriptions (Pitt & Mewburn, 2016)
# 100 years of the PhD (Bogle, 2017, Vitae)
# The UK doctorate: history, features and challenges (Deem & Dowle, 2018 [email of 12 January 2019)
# “How I Got My First Academic Job, 1965 ed” (@profmusgrave, 20 March 2019)
# Thesis declaration, now and then (source: Got this off Twitter two months ago, but despite my best efforts, I can’t trace back to the original link. Let me know!)
+ Speaking of thesis declarations, see also Stephen Hawking’s – one that broke the internet.
