Daughter doing modern history and loving it . How does she get to teaching at uni level ?

[Molly333]

As above my daughter's at UEA doing modern history loving it . She's saying she wants to teach at uni but what is the progression stages for this ? Can anyone advise ? Thank you so much

@CostanzaG fellow academic here. You are so lucky.

sosig I've been working in academia for 5 years. I'm in my mid 30's. I've also worked outside of HE for a few years and was working in a non-academic role in a university prior to becoming a lecturer.

I had no post docs or publications.

I agree, you are astoundingly lucky. You basically won the lottery! But yours is not the usual experience and I don’t think anyone should go into academia expecting to win the jackpot like you did.

baked I know. I do realise that. But i wanted to point out that there is no standard route and universities can have very different criteria and expectations.

It wasn't all luck though. I've worked bloody hard for it too.

Every wannabe lecturer works hard. You won the lottery by actually getting a job, especially considering that it didn’t have a mile long list of requirements. Those jobs literally don’t exist any more, they’re like unicorns. Most jobs nowadays require a PhD, a couple of post docs and several recent publications.

sosig I know every wannabe lecturer works hard but saying 'i won the lottery' does suggest I won something rather than worked for something.

I had a Pg dip and MA plus years of HE teaching experience ( most of which I did on a voluntary basis)
I'd also made a name for myself in my sector. I was lacking the research credentials but I soon made that up. I did my PhD while working full time ( with a young family) and wrote papers and presented on an international level almost immediately.
It does help that I teach a niche subject... My university nearly closed the course but took a chance on me as I promised to increase applications and I've delivered.....I've gone from 10 to over 100 students in 4 years. Some luck played a part but I didn't win anything. I earned it.

Nobody is denying that you deserve your success, Costanza, but that doesn't change the fact that your route in is basically a unicorn one. There was room for precisely one person to do it that way and you already did, so nobody else can. It is not one that is going to be open to OP's daughter in Modern History.

Are you familiar with the recruitment practices of every university sosig?
I'm not denying my route is rare and certainly unlikely for a for a subject like history but I'm not the only person to have entered academia this way I won't be the last.
We will be recruiting later this year and we will probably struggle to get someone the route you describe.... We will have to recruit someone who can demonstrate a commitment to teaching excellence and research another way.

Sorry didn't mean to tag you in that last post sosig

I'm not sure how helpful this all is to the OP, who had a very specific question about the trajectory into teaching in a History department. For that specific discipline, then what SosigDog describes in her post at 15.32 is the norm, though I would expect more than 50-60 applications for a lectureship. Certainly, the last time I was aware of someone getting a job in a History department without a PhD was in 1997 (and they were a couple of months off finishing their PhD).

The last time I applied there were roughly 50-60 applicants for every position

When I've been on appointments committees for Lectureships in History it's usual to get around 100 applications (I work at a very desirable RG university) and for English Literature, it's possible to receive up to 200 applications, depending on specialist area.

Although at least half of most applications we receive are immediately not suitable - they don't have a PhD, or they're not REFable, or they have no teaching experience.

Costanza in my field - Humanities, cognate with History/English - at the leading research-intensive universities (that's all I can comment on as I've only ever worked at RG universities), no-one would make the long list without a PhD. And we are no longer looking just for "research potential" - to be interview for a permanent lectureship, you'd need to be publishing already - maybe only a couple of articles, but they'd need to be in influential journals. And we increasingly look for at least a book contract in hand.

The process that NeedMoreSleep outlines is a good guide, and reasonably applicable to a high-demand area such as History.

I understand that's how it works for mainstream subjects where there are those number of applicants. I teach a very niche subject which is only offered at 6 universities across the whole of the UK. If we asked for all of that we'd be lucky to get anybody applying for the job.

If you are appointed you are expected to contribute like every other academic which means getting your PhD in a specified number of years, publishing regularly etc.....no excuses. Within my first 6 months I'd submitted my PhD research proposal, written a book chapter and submitted a conference paper. I wasn't treated any differently .

What is interesting though is that i've been promoted very quickly and have been told my non-academic experience contributed to that. I've a more rounded understanding of the university and the sector as a whole because I've worked in non - academic roles.

However, the OP asked about the best ways for her DD to start to think about a career as an academic in History.

While History is taught at most universities (bar some ex-polys which really haven't lifted their game), it's also a hugely popular subject for post-grad students, and then into PhDs.

The good news, OP is that History graduates - at BA, MA, ad PhD - are very employable in areas outside of academia. Their skills as knowledge & information seekers-out - research skills broadly applied - and in analysing and drawing pertinent data out of the information are very desirable in a knowledge-based economy.

Yes but other people read the thread. I've agreed that to get a lectureship in History you'd be looking at taking the route described by previous posters. I was simply pointing out that for some subjects that might not be the only way in as it can be very individual depending on subject or institution.

It does depend on the subject and university, and also some luck in having the right specialism, in the right place, and the right time.

For a Lecturership in my department (Social Science, RG university), the essential criteria include:

• A PhD
• Experience of supervising 2 PhD students to completion (as a first or second supervisor)
• At least 4 x 4 and 4 x 3 journal articles, including 18 points across a maximum of five articles obtained in this REF cycle
• Grant income as a PI or Co-I of £30K on average per year, sustained for at least 3 years
• Teaching experience as a module leader or course co-ordinator

It's definitely not a first job after PhD, although we are thinking of introducing a fixed-term early career lectureship scheme that would be a grade lower than a normal lectureship, so an equivalent level to a postdoc, to improve routes in to the profession.

Just for a postdoc, our essential criteria are a PhD and 4 x 3* articles in this REF period, and our desirable criteria include PhD supervision, grant income as a PI or Co-I, and routine teaching experience. In the past 10 years I can only recall us appointing one person as a postdoc who didn't already have previous postdoc experience.

We usually get around 50 applicants for a Lectureship, but very many of them are not appointable. We get around 80 applicants for a postdoc.

Although it is difficult to get a foot on the ladder, once you have a lecturing job, if circumstances are in your favour and you are willing to move around to trade up, it can be possible to progress quite quickly though.

*For a Lecturership in my department (Social Science, RG university), the essential criteria include:

A PhD
Experience of supervising 2 PhD students to completion (as a first or second supervisor)
At least 4 x 4 and 4 x 3 journal articles, including 18 points across a maximum of five articles obtained in this REF cycle
Grant income as a PI or Co-I of £30K on average per year, sustained for at least 3 years
Teaching experience as a module leader or course co-ordinator*

This is not a generic RG department. There is no way that you can demand all of this from a starting lecturer. Most universities ask for 1-2 PhD students completed as a criterion for promotion to senior lecturer.

Leaving aside the fact that REF grading is highly subjective, it simply can't be the case that everyone coming in has had so many 4 star papers... this just doesn't match the actual REF grades. The grant income looks high also - relative to the actual averages per staff member in social sciences department.

I certainly agree that the threshold for hiring is way beyond PhD + good papers in many areas - in certain areas you really do need to bring an ERC or equivalent to get a job - but as pp have written one can't just look at the extremes.