On Wednesday I was invited to participate in a Webinar entitled “Getting your first lecturship”. This was organised by Cardiff University’s graduate college (UGC). The format included an overview of recent findings from a survey conducted by the Association of Careers Advisory Services and then a discussion including Dr Sophie Coulombeau and Dr Claire Shaw.

You can see the recording below:

Here is the UGC page which includes a pdf with a variety of hopefully useful resources.

Sophie and Claire had some excellent advice and I would really recommend watching the video if you are at a stage of your academic career (PhD, postdoc…) and thinking of getting a lectureship in the United Kingdom (it’s probably useful in other countries also, but we concentrated on particularities of the UK).

Some of the particular points that stayed with me:

  • Self care: it’s very easy to let academia do a lot of damage. This is not something I’m particularly good at myself but stress and mental health is something that you should always keep an eye on: at whatever stage of your career you are.
  • Selling the whole narrative: at interview it’s important to find a way to think about what a particular post is looking for and how/why you fit that particular role.

What was also interesting was that we all seemed to agree that we were lucky. This was certainly the case with me, circumstances were just right and I was very lucky to have leadership that gave me a wealth of opportunities.

On a slightly related note, as I was writing this post, I thought about Tim Hopper’s great resource shouldigetaphd.com/. If you are thinking about doing a PhD at all, perhaps take a look at the awesome case stories there…