Academia and the World Beyond: Navigating Life after a PhD

A common question posed to PhD students from friends and family is, “What will you do after?” But many students are too focused on the PhD itself and have not yet had a chance to sufficiently think about post-PhD life. This book is a collection of 22 interviews with those have completed a PhD and then are now in an academic position or another career path. In either case, they have all been successful and have a multitude of insights to share with those who are interested in considering a variety of careers. Academic careers share many commonalities with many non-academic careers, with skills learned within academia being valuable in other career paths as well. Nearly all the individuals interviewed here have been on the job market recently and understand today's job climate. No other book on the market includes the diversity of perspectives presented here. In particular, the focus on psychology and neuroscience draws from a variety of individuals that have similar training but havenonetheless taken divergent paths.

Dr. Christopher Madan is Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham. He studies memory using a combination of cognitive psychology, neuroimaging, and computational modeling methods, with a particular interest in what factors makes some experiences more memorable than others (such as emotion, reward, and motor processing) and how these influences can manifest in future behavior, such as decision making. He also specializes in characterizing inter-individual differences in brain morphology, particularly with respect to aging, dementia, and cognitive abilities. Dr. Madan received a 2021 Early Career Award from the Psychonomic Society and a 2017 Rising Star award from the Association for Psychological Science. Dr. Madan received a 2021 Early Career Award from the Psychonomic Society and a 2017 Rising Star award from the Association for Psychological Science. He is a Fellow of the Psychonomic Society and AdvanceHE and has been elected to the membership of the Memory Disorders Research Society.