19. Academic and parallel trackways
SIGNPOST: Discussion of academic trackways is relevant to those seeking academic posts; discussion of parallel career trackways is relevant to all researchers.
The multifarious trackways open to historians, whose skills and knowledge last a lifetime.
At the end of a doctorate or any extended research project, individual researchers know their own topics – however large or small – better than anyone. It took time in the UK and elsewhere for this qualification to become fully appreciated.1 Yet it is now an unquestioned scholarly accolade. All successful candidates have become world experts in their fields. And with that expertise has come an enviable range of additional skills. Organizing data, writing clearly and accurately, turning complexity into sense, knowing how to manage a project that takes years to complete: these are capacities that are in perennial demand in all walks of life.
19.1 Academic trackways
Many researchers begin a history doctorate with the assumption that it will lead to an academic career. But frequently this outcome is not realized. In part, it is the natural corollary of the difficult truth that many more people gain doctorates in history every year than there are lectureships in the field. And that proposition holds true even before the presence of international candidates is factored into the equation.
All good supervisors will have sought to make prospective students aware of just how difficult the academic job market can be before they commit to four or more years of further study. However, in the excitement of beginning, this frank advice is not always fully registered.
As a result, many excellent scholars find themselves, after completing the degree, applying unsuccessfully for post-doctoral positions or undertaking temporary teaching contracts. Many experience the real frustrations of ‘precarity’.2 This state of affairs does not reflect the quality of their work. The standard for a doctorate is an ‘original contribution to knowledge’, and that accolade is about as high as it gets. Yet the hard reality is that many more people wish to work as university lecturers than there are positions to fill.
There are also issues beyond any individual’s control which ensure that there is no straightforward path to an academic career. Areas of study fall into and out of fashion; and the curriculum changes in complex ways, following both academic fashions and also in response to the demands and expectations of wider society. As a result, job descriptions change; and great research projects don’t always fit.
Moreover, while a doctorate these days is a necessary requirement for employment as a university lecturer, it is not a sufficient one. Most university jobs are built around teaching, and involve a large component of administration, as well as research and writing. There have also been deplorable forms of discrimination at times in the past against specific candidates, whether in terms of religion, gender, sexuality or ethnic heritage. Any traditional prejudices should be fast disappearing, but it is incumbent upon all historians, as all good citizens, to encourage a spirit of openness and egalitarian welcome, and to combat systematic discrimination, whenever and wherever detected.
Such considerations should not discourage anyone from undertaking a research degree. Yet (to repeat) it is essential to realize from the outset that it provides no guarantee of an academic career. It’s best to regard the experience of advanced research as a good in itself. Successfully undertaken, it provides the highest academic qualification attainable – which constitutes a standout feature on any CV.
Gaining a history doctorate thus supplies the basis for a possible academic career.3 And it simultaneously opens doors to many parallel forms of employment, given a readiness to embrace flexibility. In sum, while a doctorate confers no entitlement, it carries with it immense potential.
19.2 Parallel trackways
It’s never a surprise, therefore, to find advanced history graduates in even the most recondite and amazing occupations. They find jobs everywhere: in the army; the navy; the police; sports; nursing; catering; all the creative arts; journalism; social media; film-making; publishing; business; finance; marketing; consultancy; the trade unions; social work; computing; the intelligence services; law; politics; administration and the churches.
Systematic studies of the employment trackways of all history graduates, among whom postgraduates form an advanced sub-set, have confirmed the immense diversity of their careers.4 Today, advice networks provide encouragement in the same vein. They urge all humanities researchers with doctorates to aim high but also to cast their nets widely.5
Meanwhile, significant instances of people with history doctorates can be found working in administration (including university management); the intelligence services; politics;6 political consultancies; TV and radio; libraries; museums; archives; teaching at all levels; and freelance writing.
One graduate with a PhD in art history is the American Allison Harbin. After a spell in academe, she turned to high-school teaching plus freelance writing and civic campaigning, challenging corruption and racism in education. Her time in grad school, she muses, provided excellent preparation for her multi-track working life in a precarious world.7
This specific trackway is far from a typical one, except in its versatility. Yet that key quality is entirely compatible with an apprenticeship as a historian. It points not just to one career destination but, on the contrary, opens doors to the world.
19.3 Summary: trained historians’ knowledge and skills
Collectively, people trained as historians have skills and knowledge. Or the point can be put the other way round. Historians have deep knowledge which is based upon deep skills. They know about the past and its links to the present. They can think both micro and macro. They understand the benefits of comparative approaches.
Above all, they are not worried by complexity but rather expect to assess its intricacies. Historians therefore have reservoirs of understanding, and do not immediately rush to explain things in the light of the latest bright idea or intellectual fashion. They understand the uses of empathy for people in the past and how that differs from – though it may overlap with – sympathy. And then they are trained to find and assess large quantities of data; to organize the material into coherent arguments, complete with full referencing; and to locate their interpretations within a bigger picture.
In sum, those who have become historians have gained multiple skills plus deep knowledge: great human attributes which are readily applicable in many different contexts – and which last a lifetime.
1 R. Simpson, How the PhD Came to Britain: a Century of Struggle for Postgraduate Education (Guildford, 1983).
2 G. Standing, The Precariat: the New Dangerous Class (London, 2016); J.-A. Johannessen, The Workplace of the Future: the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Precariat and the Death of Hierarchies (London, 2018); T. Zaniello, The Cinema of the Precariat: the Exploited, Underemployed and Temp Workers of the World (New York, 2020).
3 Books don’t sell by setting their claims too low: see I. Hay, How to Be an Academic Superhero: Establishing and Sustaining a Successful Career in the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities (Cheltenham, 2017).
4 D. Nicholls, The Employment of History Graduates: a Report for the Higher Education Authority Subject Centre for History, Classics, Archaeology (London, 2005): <https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/employment-history-graduates> [accessed 30 April 2021]; D. Nicholls, The Employment of History Graduates: Update (London, 2011): <https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/heahistory/research/gwi/emp_report> [accessed 30 April 2021]; and spin-off in D. Nicholls, ‘Famous history graduates’, History Today, lii (2002), 49–51.
5 See ‘Ten career opportunities for Humanities PhDs’: <https://cheekyscientist.com/career-opportunities-for-humanities-phds> [accessed 30 April 2021].
6 Three eminent politicians with history doctorates are the USA’s State Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (senator for New York, 1977–2001); the UK’s Gordon Brown (prime minister, 2007–10); and Iceland’s Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson (president, 2016–).
7 A. Harbin, ‘It gets better: PhD to freelance writer’: <https://www.allisonharbin.com/post-phd/it-gets-better> [accessed 3 April 2021].