There are two readings for this week. Phil (from 2016) suggested the first:
Ivancheva, M. P. (2015). The age of precarity and the new challenges to the academic profession. Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai-Studia Europaea, (1), 39-48.
I want to use this prompt to connect to the theme we will develop in this block, that of networking and the associated skills of searching, tracking and mapping fields.
What I did was to paste the title of the paper into Google and up came three hits, one from Academia, one from a server in Ireland, probably the university where the author works and one from the journal itself. I opted for the Academia site. One of the things to do this week, if you have not done so already is to sign onto Academia and ResearchGate.
These sites are not wonderful but offer two things, being able to locate folk with interests close to yours and signalling to others your research agenda.
Now, if I was interested in the notion of precarity in the academy, the focus of that paper, I can check to see what else she has written, who is following her and what her particular interests are. I might find a category that is more useful the precarity. I would also likely follow her if she is doing work that looks closish to mine. She lists 55 interests (a lot) and higher education policy is among them which probably connects to her interest in precarity. There are a few thousand users who list precarity as an interest. This will be the term broadly, not just as it might apply in Higher Education.
The 2nd reading, probably should have come first up but allowing for some of the disciplinary differences is worth a read.
12 Things You Should Know Before You Start A PhD
The main thing for the week is taking some time to explore and begin to use the two sites, Academia and ResearchGate1.