Career conversations – Navigating Careers Beyond Academia: What Researchers’ Stories Can Teach Us

Career Conversations is a monthly online lunchtime panel series delivered by Manchester Met, University of Manchester and University of Salford as part of the Greater Manchester Researcher Development Partnership (GMResDev). 

The series invites panellists who are former doctoral students/ECRs and now work in a variety of roles and sectors beyond academic research to talk about how they used their researcher skills and experience to get their current role, and how their research background has helped them in their career.

This months theme is: Navigating Careers Beyond Academia: What Researchers’ Stories Can Teach Us

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What is it really like to build a career beyond academia? In this session, Dr Holly Prescott draws on the experiences of PhDs and postdocs who provided case studies for her recent book Navigating Careers Beyond Academia: A Practical Handbook for Doctoral & Postdoctoral Researchers to explore some of the themes that emerged from their career journeys.

We’ll look at navigating feelings of uncertainty and ‘failure’, moving beyond the reductive binary of ‘staying in’ or ‘leaving’ academia, and how people used their early experiences beyond academia to learn more about themselves and the wider world of work, refine what they wanted, and make their next moves.

Along the way, we’ll consider what their experiences might mean for you as you think about your own career, wherever you currently are in that process.