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Hi all, I have just found this site. What a relief it is to read so many threads from people with similar neuroses to mine! I hope this is the correct section for the following enquiry:

I submitted my thesis in late December, and now await the dreaded viva with what I hope is a healthy mixture of trepidation and excitement. I haven't been told the date yet, so my mind has been mostly occupied by thoughts concerning my future employment. I regularly scour university jobs websites, and have spotted a couple of potential vacancies, for which I shall apply. So far so simple.

What I haven't quite grasped yet is the mystical world of the "post-doc". I am slightly embarrassed to admit it, at this rahter advanced stage, but I haven't really got a clue what this much-sought-after role entails (other than more research, which is what I'd ideally love to do, on a fixed contract), let alone how one applies for said vacancies. What is the "done thing" in this area? Speculative applications to every suitable department with proposals for 3-year research projects perhaps? (sounds rather familiar).

Any advice will be very gratefully received.

Hello & welcome to the forum!

Which subject area are you working in, as there seems to be quite a bit of variation between arts/sciences/social sciences as to the availability of formal 'postdoc' schemes/positions. I'll add my twopenneth for the social sciences - you could start by looking at the open schemes which are available, offered by the ESRC, Leverhulme Trust, British Academy (and probably tons of others - these are the major ones that spring to mind). To apply for these schemes you put together an application, identify a potential supervisor and if you are successful they give you money for a fixed period of time. There's some variation between the schemes, for example the ESRC postdoc fellowships don't allow you to do 'new' research - they are designed to help you get publications from your thesis. As such, they only last one year and your proposal needs to be based around what publications you intend to produce. Leverhulme and British Academy fund new research projects, usually 2-3 years. You identify a 'mentor' at a suitable university and outline your proposed project and the lucky few get funded. I won't go into any more detail in case you're not a social scientist and this is totally irrelevant :-)

There are also as you say vacancies on existing research projects for postdocs although I would have thought these would be advertised, rather than you needing to send speculative applications.

Good luck with your job search.

Thanks for the reply. This certainly gives me food for thought. My PhD is in Film Studies, with a bit of Cultural Studies, History, Politics and Italian thrown in for good measure. Both the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy ring bells in my head, since I think they do fund Arts projects.

Wow, the whole process sounds dauntingly (yet potentially excitingly) open-ended, like a second PhD but with better money. I'm beginning to see why such posts are so craved.

Have you looked at the AHRC website for funding opportunities? They fund individual research projects in the arts, including early career type things, so any ideas you've got might fit into a proposal for them.

Are there any research centres or projects in your current uni that you might link into, either as a postdoc research fellow for an existing centre, or maybe get yourself written into a funding proposal for a new project that an established researcher might be working on? Or do you know of any research centres at other unis where your research would develop whatever area they're interested in?

To be honest, it is all a bit mysterious as you say, and I'm in the arts and work in a research dept too, so it shouldn't be!! I haven't got a hope in hell of seeing any formal postdoc job advertised as my area's so obscure, so I'm assuming anything will happen largely through who I know. I'm submitting in the next month and I'm intending to get advice from my supervisors, both of whom are part of research centres and know what relevant collaborative research projects are in the planning stages that I might be part of, or what I should do otherwise. Also, I need to speak to our senior research people, as they allocate all research funds and work on large collaborative funding bids. And perhaps talk to people that run a couple of the research centres with small projects I'm interested in doing that fit their remit, in case funds are available. I think 'networking' is important for all this, at least in my area, so getting more teaching should be useful too, to see what else is going on and who's doing what.

That's probably all a bit woolly and informal, so possibly not very relevant for you though!! Have you asked your supervisors or research dept about this stuff? They should help you with postdoc opportunities to some extent, or at least advise what's possible.

Thank you. This all sounds like very good advice to me. I don't really have any advanced ideas for a postdoc project yet (I should probably make sure I get the PhD first!), so this is all looking into a crystal ball really. I'm just paranoid that I'll find myself out of academia for a long time and struggle to get back into it.

As you say, applying for teaching posts would be good idea as much for the networking opportunities as for the experience. Such vacancies are, however, few and far between in my discipline.

Ho hum. Who'd be a postgrad eh.