How To Be An Academic

"Welcome to the world of university academics, where the Academic Hunger Games, fuelled by precarious employment conditions, is the new reality - a perpetual jostle for short-term contracts and the occasional plum job. But Inger Mewburn is here to tell you that life needn't be so grim. A veteran of the university 'gig economy', Mewburn - aka The Thesis Whisperer - is perfectly placed to reflect on her experience and offer a wealth of practical strategies to survive and thrive. Here, she deftly navigates the world of the working academic, from thesis and article writing and keeping motivation alive, to time management, research strategies, new technologies, applying for promotion, sexism in the workplace, writing grant applications, and deciding what to wear to give a keynote address. Constructive, inclusive, hands-on, and gloves-off, How to be an Academic is a survival manual for aspiring and practising academics that will confirm that no matter what your experience in academia, you are not alone."

Want to be an effective, successful and happy academic? This book helps you hone your skills, showcase your strengths, and manage all the professional aspects of academic life. With their focus on life-long learning and positive reflection, Alex and Bailey encourage you to focus on your own behaviours and personal challenges and help you to find real world solutions to your problems or concerns. Weaving inspirational stories, the best of research and theory, along with pragmatic advice from successful academics, this book provides step-by-step guidance and simple tools to help you better meet the demands of modern academia, including: Optimising your effectiveness, priorities & strategy Workflow & managing workload Interpersonal relationships, and how to influence Developing your writing, presenting and teaching skills Getting your work/life balance right. Clear, practical and refreshingly positive this book inspires you to build the career you want in academia.

The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.

This book is about how to be a design academic. In another words, how to manage the various challenges, requirements, and processes that come with both the everyday and extra-ordinary parts of an academic role in design fields (from architecture, urban design, interior design and landscape architecture, to fashion, industrial, interaction and graphic design). The book is organised in two parts – Part 1, Starting out and Part 2, Becoming a Leader. It includes real-life experiences of actual academics and offers a wide range of experiences of authors from early career researchers to full professors and heads of schools. It contains all aspects of academic life, including the highs and lows of teaching, research, leadership, and managing your working life and your career. This book is perfect for academics, aspiring academics, and research students in a wide range of design fields.

How to be a Researcher provides a strategic guide to the conduct of a successful research career within a university environment. Based on the author’s extensive personal experience, it offers down-to-earth advice, philosophical guidance, and discussions of the political context of academic research. This is not a research methods book, and the topics it covers are rarely discussed elsewhere. The bulk of the book provides practical advice on the development of essential skills and strategic approaches, covering questions such as: how to decide which topics to work on how to read and review literature how to develop theory how to integrate research and teaching activity how to approach research design how to obtain and manage research funding how to collaborate and supervise effectively how to write up your research, and how to secure the best sources of publication. The final part of the book considers the philosophy and psychology of research work and includes an exploration of the cognitive biases which may affect researchers. How to be a Researcher will be particularly useful for masters and doctoral students in the behavioral and social sciences, and also for early career academics developing research within a university career.

This thoroughly revised second edition draws on the author’s decades of observations and experiences in academia, Written in a clear and concise style, the book provides fully updated, forthright and practical counsel on achieving and maintaining a successful, balanced career from PhD to retirement.

This book brings together reflections from seventy academics – everyone from doctoral students to a retired provost – who share their lived experiences in graduate school and beyond. Career seekers, adjunct professors, those in or considering graduate school, and tenure-track professors alike will find truths revealed through these shared experiences of struggle, triumph, loss and hope.

And finally, readers who are simply curious about what deans do will find pointed analysis about what works and what doesn't.