Your goal is to demonstrate the trajectory of your academic profile post-PhD through excellence in your research; teaching and administrative contributions. Practise articulating this as you’ll be doing it through job documents and interviews. You will also be shaping this to fit the particular department you are applying to.
After the PhD, a postdoc or fellowship (e.g. a JRF, BA, Leverhulme, ESRC new investigator) is the usual next step in the academic pathway in order to develop research into next project, advance your publication profile, develop some teaching experience as well as administrative and outreach experience. Arts and Humanities do not have as many postdoc positions as other areas. Social Sciences more.
Excellence in research activity – you will ultimately need to show you have an in-depth knowledge of your own 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 to your PhD and add a new dimension? 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 to teach. The extent of experience needed will differ among 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 may take your time and energy away from your research.
Collect student evaluations and think about successes in your teaching as demonstrating effectiveness will be important in a lectureship application. Universities think increasingly about how their new lecturers can contribute to their teaching profile as well as their 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 so you can see long term how to fit the two together and ensure you can teach the core subjects in 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 organising seminars/workshop; getting involved in committees or admissions interviewing; peer reviewing for journals; taking part in public engagement and outreach activities.
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, this will showcase your ability to do this Gaining a fellowship after your PhD (a JRF or other post-PhD fellowship) gives you valuable protected time for you to focus on research and develop your academic profile.
