EQUS seminar series: Inger Mewburn

Speaker: Inger Mewburn

Title: So, you’re graduating your PhD in a pandemic.  What next?

Abstract: COVID-19 presents a massive disruption to the academic workforce.  PhD students and early-career researchers are worried about their future career prospects in academia and confused about their options outside the university walls.  In this one hour lecture, I will use our team’s research on the post-PhD job market to:

• Enhance your understanding of the changed academic job market, analysing the effects of hiring freezes and travel restrictions
• Increase awareness of career opportunities in industry; which sectors are looking for research talent?
• Help you approach the non-academic job market with more confidence

Bio: Inger Mewburn is a research educator who has been working with PhD students for over a decade.  She started her academic career as an architecture lecturer in 2001, following a decade in architecture practice with leading design firms.  She took up the position of Director of Research Training at ANU in 2013, after working as a research fellow in the School of Graduate Research at RMIT University since 2006.

Inger created the famous Thesis Whisperer blog, which has had 4.3 million hits in the past five years and 60,000 followers on email and social media.  The blog is the most popular source of advice and a leading influencer for research supervisors and students in the world because it is grounded in Inger's scholarly practice in higher-education research.   She is known in her field as an innovative and creative scholar, publishing in high-impact journals and a range of other media outlets.  She actively creates research collaborations to further her research agenda.

She is a passionate educator and have been recognised for her work, both online and in the classroom, with membership as a senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy.  She is known internationally for her expertise in research and education, which has resulted in frequent appearances as an expert keynote speaker at conferences, locally and internationally.  Inger comments in the mainstream media, locally and internationally, on research culture and education issues.

Recordings of past seminars are available to EQUS members via the Hub (requires login).