Your goal is to demonstrate the trajectory of your academic profile post-PhD through excellence in your research, as well as in your teaching and administrative contributions. Practice articulating this, as you’ll be doing it through job documents and interviews.
After the PhD, a postdoc or fellowship (JRF, Leverhulme, Royal Society) is the usual next step on academic pathway in order to develop research into next project, advance your publication profile, develop some teaching experience, and gain administrative and outreach experience.
Excellence in research activity
You will ultimately need to show in-depth knowledge of your specialism, and an ability to contribute to knowledge and understanding in your field through original research. Start to identify a strategy for your next project. Does it connect or add a new dimension to your PhD? Get disciplinary-specific intel from supervisors and mentors, such as where you should be publishing and what’s expected within your discipline. This will help you be strategic about how you spend your time and help you to develop a publication strategy.
Articulate how you are starting to fit and make contributions through your work (methodological, thematic etc) so that you can look forward to a postdoc/fellowship and carve out a space for yourself.
Teaching experience or potential
In the longer term in academia, as teaching will be a core part of the job, you will need to think about getting some experience and ways to shows your aptitude and enthusiasm for teaching. The extent of experience needed will differ between institutions and roles. If possible, try to gain experience of different types of teaching (supervisions, guest lecturing, seminars) as opposed to too many hours doing the same thing, which may not bring value to you and take your time and energy away from research.
Collect student evaluations and think about successes in your teaching as demonstrating effectiveness which will be important in a lectureship application. Universities increasingly think about how their new lecturers can contribute to the university teaching profile, as well as TEF results. You can ask your supervisor about getting involved in teaching or supervising students.
If you are interdisciplinary, plan how to position yourself disciplinarily in terms of both publishing and teaching. Think about how your interdisciplinary research fits in terms of degree programmes, and ensure that you can teach the core subjects of a particular discipline.
Administrative potential
You will also be evaluated on showing your ability to engage in service to your institution and the academic community more broadly. Develop an academic service profile (both ‘to the profession’ and ‘to the institution’) through running seminars/workshop organising, committee involvement, admissions interviewing, peer reviewing for journals, and public engagement/outreach.
Network
Start to build relationships in order to develop your other activities (research, teaching and impact). As your work develops, networking becomes a way of ensuring your academic profile is known outside of your immediate department. Attend conferences if possible, and speak to other academics.
Funding
Looking forward to a lectureship application, you will most likely be asked about your funding plans and will need to demonstrate your ability to secure funding and your ‘grant capture’. If you’ve already been able to gain even small amounts of funding, showcase your ability to do this. Gaining a fellowship after your PhD (a JRF or other post-PhD fellowship) gives you valuable protected time to focus on research and develop your academic profile.
