Resources & Links

• Grants and Fellowships
  
• Articles, Advice, and Resources
  
• Alt-Ac Programs at Other Universities
  
• Reports and Conferences

University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign plus 14 other research universities, Humanities Without Walls Consortium, Alternative Academic Career Summer Workshops for Pre-doctoral Students in the Humanities (Chicago, July-August). "This project aims to help prepare doctoral students for careers both within and outside the academy through a series of summer workshops. Graduate students selected for this program will engage in intensive discussions with organizers of public humanities projects, leaders of university presses and learned societies, experts in the various domains of the digital humanities, representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations, and holders of important non-faculty positions in colleges and universities."

American Council of Learned Societies Public Fellows program, 2-year staff position placements for recent PhDs in the humanities. “This program, made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, aims to expand the reach of doctoral education in the U.S. by demonstrating that the capacities developed in the advanced study of the humanities have wide application, both within and beyond the academy.”

Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.

Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship, Museum of the City of New York (PDF).

Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

• #Alt-Academy. Invaluable, expanding collection of articles, research reports, data, etc. on alternative careers for PhD students. “The #Alt-Academy project features contributions by and for people with deep training and experience in the humanities, who are working or are seeking employment — generally off the tenure track, but within the academic orbit — in universities and colleges, or allied knowledge and cultural heritage institutions such as museums, libraries, academic presses, historical societies, and governmental humanities organizations.”

• Bethany Nowviskie, “Introduction: Two Tramps in Mud Time,” #Alt-Academy, June 2011.

• Versatile PhD: (access provided by the Graduate School for UMiami graduate students and alumni through this link). “Helping graduate students and PhDs envision, prepare for, and excel in non-academic careers since 1999.”

• Modern Language Association, Connected Academics: Preparing Doctoral Students of Language and Literature for a Variety of Careers. “Connected Academics will help prepare doctoral students—already well trained for postsecondary faculty positions—to use their humanistic training in a broader range of occupations than doctoral programs have, up to now, characteristically acknowledged and honored.”

• Anthony Grafton and James Grossman, “No More Plan B: A Very Modest Proposal for Graduate Programs in History,” Perspectives on History, American Historical Association, October 2011.

• Elizabeth Segran, “What Can You Do with a Humanities PhD Anyway?”, The Atlantic, March 2014. “There is no question that humanities doctorates have struggled with their employment prospects, but what is less widely known is between a fifth and a quarter of them go on to work in well-paying jobs in media, corporate America, non-profits, and government.” 

• Brenda Bethman and C. Shaun Longstreet, “The Alt-Ac Track” series of articles, Inside Higher Ed, May 2013: 1. “Defining Terms.” 2. “Sharing Success in New Ways.” 3. “How to Do the Search.”

• Katie Shives and Ashley Sanders, “Intro to Resumes for CV-Minded Academics,” Inside Higher Ed, October 2013.

• Miriam Posner (UCLA), “Grad Students and ‘Alternative Academic’ Jobs” (scroll down). Excellent list of resources and job boards.

• How to Leave Academia: Peer to Peer Postacademic Support.

•  “‘Stories from the Field’ Offer Many Paths to PhD Success,” UC Davis Humanities Institute. (Includes video of alumni presentations.)

• “Ph.D. Programs Get a Lot More Practical,” US News & World Report, March 2014. “A new focus on preparing doctoral students for careers outside the academy is helping them land jobs.”

• Jennifer Polk, “Next Steps after Your Postdoc or PhD: Nonacademic Careers” (PDF).

• Sabine Hikel, “The Bridge to Somewhere,” Inside Higher Ed, April 2010. “There are some ways that you can move gingerly towards a nonacademic career, steps you can take that will bridge your academic and post-academic life.”

• Emily Mace, “Alt-Ac or Bust,” Chronicle Vitae, Feb. 24, 2015.

• “The Repurposed Ph.D.: Finding Life After Academia — and Not Feeling Bad About It,” New York Times, Nov. 2013.

• “The Alt-Ac Job Search 101: Figuring Out What Else to Do,” Hook & Eye. “Today, we're starting from the beginning: once you decide not to go on the tenure-track (or not to finish the PhD, or to look for both academic and non-academic jobs), how do you figure out what the heck to do next?”

• Jessica Collier, “Jailbreaking My Academic Career,” Medium, April 23, 2013.

• American Historical Association Career Contacts. “AHA Career Contacts is a new service that matches history PhDs employed beyond the professoriate with graduate students and recent PhDs who are interested in broadening their career horizons”

• Beyond Academe. “Seeks to educate historians about their options outside of academe. Beyond Academe also provides detailed assistance to historians who are looking for jobs outside of the academy and it seeks to encourage all historians to participate in the public sphere.”

University of Michigan, The Humanities PhD Project. "The Humanities PhD Project supports doctoral students and faculty in the humanities as they imagine, plan for, and pursue multiple career paths as humanists in the world, in the academy and beyond. Funded by the Andrew S. Mellon Foundation and the Rackham Graduate School, this project broadens the career paths of humanities doctoral students and considers new ways doctoral programs can support these efforts."

University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign plus 14 other research universities, Humanities Without Walls Consortium, Alternative Academic Career Summer Workshops for Pre-doctoral Students in the Humanities (Chicago, July-August). "This project aims to help prepare doctoral students for careers both within and outside the academy through a series of summer workshops. Graduate students selected for this program will engage in intensive discussions with organizers of public humanities projects, leaders of university presses and learned societies, experts in the various domains of the digital humanities, representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations, and holders of important non-faculty positions in colleges and universities."

University of British Columbia, English Department PhD Co-op Program. “Allows PhD students to widen their range of professional skills through paid work experience in fields such as academic administration, communications, project management, and archival, government, and NGO research.”

University of California Humanities Research Institute, Humanists@Work. “Humanists@Work is a UC-wide initiative geared towards UC Humanities and humanistic Social Science MAs and PhDs interested in careers outside/alongside the academy.”

Penn State University, Graduate Internship Program (GRIP). “Recognizing that graduate students in the humanities and social sciences have highly sought-after writing, communication, and quantitative skills that can enrich the operations of units across the university, the Liberal Arts Graduate Internship Program (GRIP) is designed to connect graduate students in the liberal arts with those university units that can most benefit from their expertise.”

American Historical Association-Mellon Foundation Career Diversity Pilot Programs: 1. University of Chicago. 2. University of New Mexico. 3. UCLA. 4. Columbia University. (For more on this initiative, see Scott Jaschik, “A Broader History Ph.D.,” Inside Higher Ed, March 2014, and the AHA site, Career Diversity for Historians.)

University of California Davis Humanities Institute, PhD Unlimited project. “PhD Unlimited is a series of speakers, workshops, and other events focused on the growing need for career training for PhDs that goes beyond the expectation of tenure-track academia.”

• “Where Are They Now?” Inside Higher Ed, Feb. 18, 2015. “Through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the MLA used publicly available information to determine the employment status in 2013-14 for 2,214 people who earned Ph.D.s from 1996-2011 … About 11 percent of the MLA sample is self-employed, and about 8 percent work in business, government or nonprofit work. Some 3 percent work in K-12 education and about 8 percent work in academe as staff or administrators.”

• Report of the Scholarly Communication Institute on career preparation in humanities graduate programs, including recommendation by report author Katina Rogers (U of Virginia), 2013. Text of report is here (PDF: “Humanities Unbound: Supporting Careers and Scholarship Beyond the Tenure Track”).

• Future Humanities: Transforming Graduate Studies for the Future of Canada, May 21-22, 2015, McGill University.