Careers in academia

Careers in academia is a highly successful one-day event, presenting postgraduate researchers with an opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the roles and responsibilities integral to an academic career. The programme is now freely available for use by UK higher education institutions.

For further information about our Careers in academia event for postgraduate researchers please visit our event overview page

Programme aims

Like most careers, there are many elements that make up a career in academia, and specific skills are required to succeed in what can be a very competitive environment.

During the event, participants have the opportunity to:

• meet with current academics from a range of disciplines and hear about their experiences
• explore how to market themselves for a career in academia, both within their department, and at interview
• look at how to write successful grant/paper applications
• discover what life is like as an early career researcher
• work with fellow researchers and share experiences with other participants.

Overview

Around half of all postgraduate researchers take up jobs within the education sector immediately after graduation but not all of those are in research positions.

In this one-day programme, participants are given the chance to find out what life as an academic is really like, what is involved and what skills and strengths it will take to succeed, in order to help them decide if this is a career they would like to pursue and be in a better position to d so if they choose.

The programme has been running nationally since 2005 under the UK GRAD banner, and is now freely available for use by UK higher education institutions.

Programme delivery 

The programme has been developed to ensure that it has the flexibility to be delivered to researchers from a mixture of disciplines.

Manuals with all the information needed to organise and deliver the programme can be downloaded by higher education institutions.

Please contact us if you would like to discuss the programme in more detail.

Supporting videos

To support the delivery of the programme sessions you can access videos of the presentations from one of the Vitae national events.