By about the mid-point of your
PhD journey, it becomes apparent that getting a successful completion signals
not the end per se, but the end of the beginning. For some, the PhD is the summation of their academic
endeavours, allowing you to retire undefeated from the world of education
bearing its highest accolade. For others, especially those aspiring to an
academic career, PhDs are the entry ticket to a world where reputation is
all. So how do you build your academic
reputation?
Pick an area and stick to
it … academia is characterized by demarcation
into specialist areas. Few would be able to straddle mathematics, physics,
chemistry and alchemy in the manner of Isaac Newton. He, like many of our other
great thinkers, might not have been REF-returnable. Indeed, his probationary
mentor would no doubt have encouraged him to be more focused. Modern academia
is a terrain is marked out in specialist territories where people will spend
entire careers. These days, skimming the
surface of many territories lowers the likelihood of you establishing a strong
reputation in the medium term. Of course you might window shop for a while, but
don’t procrastinate too long. Choose one
area and stick with your choice.
Identify
the right space … specialist areas, such as the one you’ve chosen, tend to have
support structures that emerge over time. Typically there will be a membership
organization, annual conferences and some house journals. Stump up the membership fees, find your way
into their conference and be sure that you read the house journal
religiously. Attending a new conference for
the first time can be bewildering, and even lonely. Expect to go multiple times
before you get to know who the key players are and find some friends from
beyond your own institution.
Choose a tribe … academics spend a significant portion of their time marking. This
produces a tendency to enjoy offering, if not necessarily receiving,
criticism. Hence, even our neatly
delineated interest areas are factionalised.
This may manifest itself as new ideas versus classical ones or revolve
around some other perceived slight, injustice or other form of misapprehension. Your big decision is choose the tribe that
you will join. This key decision will lead you to identify some scholars as
part of your tribe whilst others will become forbidden, ostracized and will
only be cited in order to demonstrate the flaws in their arguments. Remember, a
tribe is for life not just for Christmas.
Befriend a local chieftain
… Having chosen a tribe, you’ll probably find a
collection of village elders, local warlords and chieftains who represent the
key voices in your field. These individuals will have established a hierarchy
for themselves based on their H-index or some other proxy. The harsh reality is that you probably won’t
be able to access the Great Om directly in the early part of your career. Pick
a local chieftain and engage in a charm offensive by reading their work, citing
it heavily and demonstrating that you see them as the next President-elect of
the tribe.
Build your brand … faced with fierce competition for airspace you’ll need to have
something distinctive to say if you want to be heard and remembered. Try to
find an angle; perhaps a new theory applied to an age-old problem, perhaps some
other distinguishing feature, idea or methodological approach. Consciously promote the idea that you are
intrinsically linked with this angle and make it part of your own
branding. The sign of a glowing academic
reputation is that your peer group acknowledges you as the leading light in
relation to “X”. In part that’s why
everyone will feel compelled to cite you whenever they mention “X” in their own
work.
Volunteer often and early … as a PhD student it is important to know your place in the world.
In relation to students on taught programmes you are an elite athlete. You have
already excelled in every exam you’ve ever taken and such tawdry things as
written exams are but a memory. Sadly,
in the academic world, you are somewhat closer to the bottom of the food chain. To ingratiate yourself you’ll probably need
to volunteer to do the tasks that those higher up the food chain used to do,
now resent and definitely see as beneath them.
Act as a reviewer for conference streams and take the time to do it well,
offering careful, informative and developmental feedback. It will get
noticed. Offer to chair conference
sessions, run workshops, sort logistics, organize a dinner venue, book taxis,
organize to see the local sights, etc. Nothing should be too much trouble. Make yourself indispensable.
Keep your promises …. the mark of a successful career is that you become very busy. Invited hither and thon, speaking at this and
that, guest editing here and there. The very people you are trying to impress will
appreciate you all the more if you appear to be the sort of person on whom they
can rely. Build a reputation as someone who does what they say. All the better
if in doing so, work is also done on time and to a high standard. Chieftans have long since earned the right to
be flaky, idiosyncratic and unreliable.
It is unlikely that you’ll achieve such a lofty reputational position if
you start out in that mode.
Build your portfolio … every aspiring academic
imagines a future state in they can eventually claim that there is an extensive
secondary literature based around their seminal works. Even the largest oak
trees start with small acorns however. From the outset think of your portfolio
of public domain work. Your papers, book chapters, conference presentations,
etc. need to be curated. Aim to publish
in the right places (see hint 2 above). Manage your profile on ResearchGate,
Academia.edu, LinkedIn, GoogleScholar, Twitter and the various other places
that researchers will look for your work.
But remember that if you want to have a serious, academic, game face and
a more carefree or irreverent online identity, it may be helpful to keep them
separate.
Hit the right tone … In the early stages of your academic career, much rests on your
ability to build relationships. Think of
two parallel universes. In one you are a
shrinking violet, too modest to promote yourself, your work or your angle you
may find yourself overlooked and ignored. Your PhD findings will be forgotten
before they’ve even been finished. This
is clearly not a good world for you to inhabit. Meanwhile, in a second parallel
universe you are a shameless self-publicist, talking up the global significance
of your pilot study and trumpeting the all to obvious flaws in the work of
every chieftan you’ve cited. Senior academics place restraining orders on you
and you quickly develop a reputation for over promising and under
delivering. Clearly, this too, is not a
good world for you to inhabit. The trick is to strike the right tone. Be
respectful of established figures, understand the social graces of the
conversations that you’re joining but do have something suitably provocative to
say. Above all, be good company. Nobody likes a non-talker or a stalker. Charm, wit, a good memory for details of
biography and circumstance help a great deal.
Be Patient … items 1 to 9 are a tall
order and, in the meantime, you also need to keep one eye on the PhD
completion. A salutary exercise is to
remind yourself that those great figures in your chosen field were themselves,
not so well known. Reputations take time to build as do the relationships,
social networks, connectivity and credibility one which those reputations
rest. Aim high, or you’ll never get
there but don’t beat yourself up too much if you have won best paper of the
decade with your first forays into publication.
very informative blog.
ReplyDeletethanks,
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