Think Beyond the Dissertation

Faculty job, postdoc, alt-ac? Learn more about using your dissertation to move you forward in your career:

• Check out our podcast discussions with GC alum Kalle Westerling who used his digital project to move into an alt-ac job at the British Library!
• The Next-Generation Dissertations website is a broad reaching digital dissertations resource, including project examples, resources and guides, and future thinking (i.e.using your project to launch a career inside and beyond academia)
• There are number of relevant texts for thinking within but also beyond the academic job market–Christopher L. Caterine’s Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide (Princeton UP, 2020) and Katina Roger’s Putting the Humanities PhD to Work (Duke UP, 2020) are good places to start. Roger’s text is also fully available as an ebook via the Mina Rees Library.
• If you are set on an alt-ac career, Hannah Alpert-Abrams, a scholar who works in the DH office at the NEH, frequently writes/works in the leaving academic and thinking beyond the dissertation space. For example, if you are a student or contingent worker she offers mentorship in the form of an informational interviews to discuss alt-ac career trajectories. Her free Finding Your Purpose ebook and the work of the Visionary Futures Collective might also be of interest.
• Seeking T&P as a digital media/DH faculty member? Check out James Richardson’s article on reforming this process as well as our evaluating digital work page for existing formal guidelines that might be useful.