Dark Thoughts: Why Mental Illness Is on the Rise in Academia
6 March 2014, The Guardian Higher Education Network. I was invited to comment on academia and mental health for this article.
Tagged: teaching
Academic Juggling: PhD vs CV
Some of the most common questions with which PhD researchers are concerned focus on how they should set their priorities during their doctoral studies. What else, and how much of it, should you do next to researching and writing your thesis? As so often, I can’t answer this for all PhD students in all disciplines, but I wanted to try and give you an overview of some useful starting points if you’re hoping to prepare yourself for the academic job market during your doctoral studies rather than after, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. So some of...
The Twilight Zone: After the PhD, Before the Academic Job
You’re close to submitting your PhD, to passing your viva voce examination with flying colours, and to be awarded your doctorate. At various stages in these final months of your existence as a PhD student certain scary thoughts – of the practical kind – enter your mind repeatedly and persistently. When will my university email account be closed? Should I be emailing academic colleagues from my embarrassingly named non-institutional email account? How will I keep researching and writing without physical or online access to my university library and its resources? How will I stand a chance on the...
20/06/2016 “The New Academic: Career Development & Social Media for ECRs” (University of Exeter)
I’m excited to have been asked to deliver two workshops for PhD students and early-career researchers at the University of Exeter: one on how to strategically develop your CV in the pursuit of an academic career, the other on how social media can act as a useful tool academic career development. If you’d like to know more about these workshops and/or want to discuss hosting similar events, please get in touch with me via email (admin@nadinemuller.org.uk).
Academia & Social Media: Practices, Politics, Problems
This post is both a continuation of my previous thoughts on social media in academia, and the product of several workshops and talks I’ve been asked to give on the topic this past year. Most notably, it is a response to and follow-up from a presentation and spirited discussion on social media at an impressive postgraduate conference at the University of Nottingham this month, Homeward Bound: Nation, Belonging and the American Home, and on the first day of the year it seems fitting to reflect on 2013 with a sketch of some of the concerns and questions I’ve...
Academic Job Interviews
Academic job interviews can take a variety of forms, and I’ve experienced a few different kinds of job interview – both from the perspective of a candidate, as well as from the perspective of a member of the interview panel. As with any public speaking engagement, preparation is essential and managing your nerves on the day is a challenge. I found that the interviews I attended after I’d started teaching in a full-time position were much less nerve-wracking, so if you’ve already had teaching experience and got over the initial horror of having to stand in a lecture...
Academic Job Applications
It is notoriously difficult to advise people on how to get shortlisted for an academic job. In the end, someone can satisfy all of the relevant criteria but not get shortlisted simply because someone else satisfies them to a greater degree. The reality is that not all ‘minimally qualified’ candidates can be interviewed; this is simply a matter of practicality, and of course it is frustrating for applicants who fall into the ‘not qualified enough’ category. However, more frustrating is not getting shortlisted because you simply haven’t put together a good application. There is nothing you can really...
Public Engagement
I realise that for many of you none of what I write here will be news. Especially in the social sciences and the creative arts, the practices that have in recent years become known as public or community engagement often have long been an integral part of research and other academic activities. However, I feel that in other disciplines, such as my own, public engagement is still occasionally seen as either some mythical thing, or as an unnecessary and irrelevant evil imposed by managerial and governmental monsters. It’s neither, at least for the purposes of this post and...
