Beyond the PhD

The Centre for Career Management Skills (CCMS) has launched a new online career resource tailored specifically for arts and humanities PhD researchers. Beyond the PhD brings together audio interviews, video discussions and articles aimed at making visible what happens to postgraduate researchers after they graduate.

Beyond the PhD offers a rare opportunity to listen to the experiences of people from the University of Reading and across the UK, at different ages and stages of life, who have been through the PhD in an arts and humanities discipline and made the transition into a variety of work beyond it. Their candid personal reflections on facing challenges, responding to opportunities and reaching decisions are captured in over three hundred searchable audio clips.

The site also features articles that offer personal perspectives on issues relating to PhD researchers and their career development, encompassing themes of post-doctoral work identities, making opportunities and the changing nature of postgraduate study.

Video clips of small group discussions form the third section of the site. In one group, careers advisers reflect on career guidance for PhD researchers; the range of work that arts and humanities postgraduates are drawn into; and how the PhD thesis can be reframed in applications for non-academic jobs. In another group, academic skills trainers discuss the government agenda for skills training for postgraduates in the arts and humanities and how this is being realised in universities.

To explore the site visit: www.beyondthephd.co.uk

For more details, please contact CCMS ccms@reading.ac.uk