October 2023

Finding Academic Community

I was speaking with a PhD student in my department this morning. I referenced a colleague and good friend of mine at a university across the country and they asked, “Wait, how did you meet this person?”

The question caused me pause and I began talking through how I knew anyone during my time as a student, and now candidate. Here are a few reflections I have had:

Inheritance

First things first, a “community” and a network are two different, but often overlapping things. I will mostly be agnostic to those differences in my answers, so take that as you will.

Inheritance is often the most important set of connections that you will have. What do I mean by inheritance? When you enter a working or personal relationship with someone, you gain access to their network of relationships. Whether a person chooses to share those connections is up to them. However, when you begin a PhD program and build out your committee, the breadth of their networks should be something on your mind.

Having spent years or decades in your academic field, the connections of your committee should define in large part your collaboration potential, support for grant and fellowship applications, internship applications, and, of course, your career prospects. And, you shouldn’t have to try to get these. A good committee will be strategic in the way they connect you to vital resources for a variety of tasks and goals. However, it is surprising how often that isn’t the case. I remember vividly in my second year applying for industry internships for the first time and realizing after I applied that my chair knew a research who graduated from my university in the group I was applying to work with. I was stunned.

It is valuable to close and loose ties. It is a necessity to have a diversity of support (mentors, champions, advocates, etc). Remember that inheritance works at every level and with every person (including yourself). You will also find that many people are “hubs” of connection. Those niche famous academics with 10K followers on *whoops* X.com.

External Work

The PhD shouldn’t be your entire life. Though, for many it does feel that way. For example, if you volunteer, engage in activism, join a hobby group, or take on an outside job, you will be exposed to new relationships.

I would also count things like internships. Which, I have also written about networking there.

Conferences

Ah yes, the place where you are supposed to make all of those connections, right? To be honest, I have found little success as an attendee at conferences. Perhaps a surprise to those close to me, but I struggle to enter new situations and strike up conversation with strangers or break into cliques. So, I have spent many conferences with folks at my institution or alone.

My success at conferences has primarily come from speaking (more below) and inheritance. The latter meaning, another person (usually from a different university) introduces me to their network of friends and colleagues at the conference. This spurs a kind of speed-meeting approach, which usually leads to LinkedIn requests and, if you are lucky, collaborations or friendships.

Speaking

I specifically separate conferences and speaking intentionally. I do this because the visibility and power relationship in these two roles are completely different. Attending a conference, especially as a PhD student, can feel alienating, clique-y, and difficult to engage in. When you are speaking, in any capacity, you have a captive audience, are seen as an expert, and become part of a discourse. Put pragmatically, when you speak there is already a grounding reason why and how people can come talk to you.

Speaking on academic topics is also a proxy for your values, interests, and goals. All of which signal effectively who you will likely get on with at the end of the day. I have met so many wonderful people because presenting my research in a public setting (or even having my abstract on a conference website) gave them an easy way to approach and engage in conversation.

Public Writing

This blog. Medium posts. Op-Eds. Social media. All are equally viable ways to express thoughts and ideas not suitable for academic publication.

The way I approach my blog post is inspired by writer/activist Cory Doctorow who said something along the lines of Don’t write to build a brand, write to attract like-minded people. I write what I want to write, and what I need to write. Similarly, I write when want/have time to. There is no regular cadence in them or output. But the content is intentionally representative of me and my values.

I have had numerous moments where I will meet someone and the first thing they say is “Wow, and I really liked your blog post on [topic].” While it doesn’t happen often, it is always a pleasant surprise. This creates a self-selection effect which usually pans out well!

I also place a public call on the front page of my website to help with PhD applications. So, it goes both ways.

Cold Emailing

This one is tough. To be honest, I have spent more than my fair share of time sending emails to strangers. From my time as a non-profit intern to ramping up to PhD applications to internships and research collaborations. I have spent hundreds of hours reaching out to perfect strangers simply hoping for a response.

Overall, this has been the least effective method of finding lasting and/or useful working relationships.

While a perfectly viable starting point, my success with cold outreach has primarily been making the first good connection and then having that connection link me to other folks.