Researcher destinations

What do researchers do?

The survey of first destinations of PhD graduates demonstrates that doctoral graduates continue to be highly employable across the economy in a wide range of occupations. The Vitae website publishes data about the destinations of researchers.

Trends

Vitae also reports on trends in work destinations entered by doctoral researchers from UK universities between 2003 and 2007. An interesting range and variety of sectors are represented.

Case studies

Case studies in the publication What do researchers Do? describe the career stories of doctoral researchers sorted by discipline. It makes interesting reading, while generating ideas about opportunities or investigating other options. The publication includes 40 career profiles and around 1000 first destination job titles of doctoral graduates. You can read about transitions made into work, including management consultancy, research administration, freelance writing, government research, and research consultancy among many more.

The voices of individuals telling their own stories can be heard on Vitae's database of career stories.

Arts and humanities PhDs, their career progression into research, academia and other wide ranging opportunities are covered by case studies on the Beyond the phd website.

Pathways of Research Staff

Career paths of 20 academic research staff from four different UK universities have been collected and collated by the University of Bath. The data can be found at: www.bath.ac.uk/research/researchers/case%20studies.html.