Beyond The Academy? Raising Awareness Of Different Career Trajectories After Your PhD

This workshop has been organised by the Civil Society, Development and Democracy (CDD) Pathway and is open to all ESRC and non-ESRC funded PhD and MA Social Research students within the WRDTP’s seven partner universities.

What possible career pathways are you considering once you’ve been awarded your doctorate degree? Do you hope to stay within academia perhaps, or set sail for a future career that takes you beyond the academy? This online interdisciplinary workshop takes these questions and scenarios to heart, aiming to offer something of real value here by drawing on the first-hand experiences and critical reflections of our guest speakers.

We hope that in attending this workshop this will help

Raise your awareness of, and attention toward, a number of different career pathways and horizons.
Generate some (new) career ideas and options that will help you proactively prepare for life after your doctoral studies.
Learn more about the ‘real-life’ challenges and opportunities that individuals have experienced in their own careers post-PhD.
You benefit from the sharing of good practice and strategies on “how to” successfully addressing any challenges, and maximise any opportunities that might be relevant across different career pathways.
Creating a meaningful space to share your ideas and thoughts with other attendees, the external speakers and the CDD Pathway team.

Aimee Ambrose
Professor of Energy Policy
Aimee Ambrose is Professor of Energy Policy at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR) at Sheffield Hallam University, where she has worked for longer than she ever intended to (16 years). Her research interests are broadly concerned with environmental social science and coalesce around understanding the lived experiences that result from domestic energy policy and how policy ‘lands’ differentially across social groups, places and even within households. She favours interdisciplinary methods to explore this, working with historians, fine artists, architects, and political scientists and applying methods such as oral histories, embodiment and film making to the study of domestic energy. Aimee originally worked in town planning practice and has followed a non-traditional route into academia, completing her PhD at the age of 35 on non-technical aspects of domestic energy efficiency.
Kurt Borth
Senior Behaviour Change Consultant
Kurt is currently leading Plymouth's Net Zero Partnership. He was recently the Senior Behavioural Consultant for Changeworks in Scotland where he integrated behavioural concepts into all aspects of residential energy efficiency advice and programme delivery for Scotland's largest energy charity. He was formerly an environmental project manager managing residential energy efficiency programs for Plymouth City Council and leading commercial energy efficiency programmes for the City of Edmonton in Canada. He was also an assistant lecturer teaching courses focused on environmental history, sustainable decision making and urban planning. Kurt's own research concentrated on household decision making and energy use.
Gary Preece
Head of the Systems Research Programme in DEFRA.
Dr. Gary Preece is Head of the Systems Research Programme in the UK Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). He is also an analyst in the Government Operational Research Service with experience working for a range of government departments in the UK and abroad. Prior to working in government, Gary worked in academia researching systems thinking approaches to support information management and disaster response. Gary holds a PhD in systems thinking from Aston Business School and is a Fellow of the Operational Research Society.
Charlotte Starkey
Senior Statistical Officer, Department for Education
I gained my PhD in Psychology this year from the University of Dundee for a mixed methods thesis titled “Masculine gender role norm adherence as a psychosocial predictor of suicidal behaviour”. I began this project in 2015 and joined the Civil Service in 2018, finishing up my thesis alongside working full time. I am a Government Statistical Service badged statistician working in a multidisciplinary team containing statisticians, social researchers, economists, operational researchers, policy advisors and data developers. I initially joined the Civil Service working at the Department for Health and Social Care in Leeds, moved to the Department for Education in Sheffield in 2019 and will be heading to work at the Home Office (also in Sheffield) at the start of next year.