When the graduate director in my department requested that I speak to graduate students about “professionalization,” my mind started racing through all the things I wish somebody would have told me. Having just landed a tenure-track job in an interdisciplinary department, I realized that I had a lot to say. I felt the conflicted duty of having to demystify the professionalization process without taking the magic out of it; meanwhile, to be honest, much of the process remains opaque to me still. The more pressing concern was what to tell graduate students getting interdisciplinary degrees when most of the job market is organized around traditional disciplines?
Networking, I began by telling them, is the key to making the academic system work for you. If academia is a complex social world and scholars are trained to makes sense of such worlds elsewhere, when it is considered “research,” then why not use those analytical skills to understand our profession? Networking is one conceptual tool that can be used for this purpose, and it can also be put into practice even when one is unaware of it. For instance, I related how someone I did not know previously saw one of my conference presentations and invited me to give a lecture at his university, and then how this lecture evolved into a publication. Or how I was short-listed for a job, in part, because several faculty members in the department knew one of my committee members. In this second case, I was embedded in networks that I didn’t even know about.
Once one begins to see networks not just as serendipitous occurrences but as ubiquitous operations, one can intentionally cultivate them. Networking in this sense should not be perceived as instrumental or base, because it is, in fact, what drives intellectual endeavors and research programs. After all, we want to talk to and learn from people who are working in our fields; we want to contribute to ongoing conversations about what is important to us. Even job interviewing can be – and I think should be – seen as a chance to meet new colleagues and have new conversations, regardless of whether or not a job is the immediate outcome of that experience.
What are some strategies for networking wisely? First, read widely and generously to forge connections across literatures and fields. This is especially true for interdisciplinary scholars, because it is what they’ll be good at and what they’ll be valued for. Disciplinary traditions generally inculcate biases that can be side-stepped by making connections across literatures and making colleagues across disciplines. It is an asset for all of us to be able to think outside of our specialty areas, because this enables us to talk well with others who don’t do what we do and to see where our work fits into the larger intellectual terrain.
Second, write often and publish what you write. As a graduate student, I frequently marveled that almost every improvised theoretical insight made by my advisor during our conversations would somehow find its way into print. But isn’t this what the profession is about: being an active part of an intellectual community and contributing to it? From this perspective, every seminar paper should be viewed as a publication opportunity, an invitation to write for a wider audience, to submit articles for publication, to improve upon them with reviews, and to use them as occasions to get to know others.
For instance, one of my qualifying exams was a review of literature on Los Angeles. I then published that piece as a book review essay, sent it to several of the authors I reviewed, and they have since contacted me about conference panels and other publications. I see this as good networking, and this conclusion is supported by the fact that several of the authors I reviewed have since sent me some of their works-in-progress for commentary (or just for my general awareness about what they’re up to). Because we can help those around us to do better work too, and they can help us, the relationship becomes a reciprocal one, an almost karmic loop, returning back to us with good things.
Third, develop an Internet presence. In order to be a resource for others, our ideas must be easily accessible and we should be receptive to unsolicited contact from strangers. Maintaining a web site with articles, works-in-progress, research interests, and contact information is one excellent way to achieve this. Because of my web site, I’ve had many people contact me wanting advice about graduate programs, about reading suggestions for their research, about student projects, and even about non-scholarly needs such as which educational technologies I thought their children should use. While this may sound like a lot of extra labor, it’s really not, when you consider that I’ve also had people contact me with invitations for publications, for conference panels, for technical consulting, and so on. Making yourself and your work available for others is good scholarly practice with great rewards.
Fourth, and last for now, participate in conferences, workshops, and colloquia. Too often I hear graduate students say that they have nothing to contribute yet, and so they’d rather not involve themselves in these professional events. This perception is only accurate when scholarship is viewed through the myopic lens of formal information dissemination. As networking events, however, conferences and the like are opportunities to meet people, to listen to academic discourses, to observe how people ask and answer questions, to see what others find interesting or important, and to begin to figure out where we can contribute to ongoing conversations that interest us rather than pretending that we must invent something from scratch.
One should begin networking while still in graduate school, and the earlier the better – afterwards, it will likely be too late. Lest this narrative sound too pollyannaish, let me say that not only is networking a lot of work, but it won’t always get you what you want either. Some of my colleagues from graduate school who are much better networkers that I am haven’t secured academic positions, so chance, fashion, and power play roles in success. What is clear to me, nonetheless, is that one’s chances can be improved by networking well. It’s not just about who you know, although – as far as I can tell – old boys’ and elite university networks do persist, but more about actively building and/or contributing to research programs.
These suggestions may seem entirely self-evident, and they may be! That said, I hope that this articulation alone has helped. As with research methods, topics, and theories, it’s important to be selective about what works best for you and to be selective about which conversations you want to be a part of. As interdisciplinary scholars, the communities that we involve ourselves with have disparate compositions and orientations, and our strength rests in our ability to link people and ideas, regardless of (and sometimes in spite of ) disciplinary boundaries and conventions.
Acknowledgments: Much of what I’ve said here was gleaned not just through experience, but through conversations with others and through the incredibly helpful writings of Philip E. Agre and David J. Hess.
[Citation: Monahan, Torin. 2004. "Professional Advice for the Interdisciplinary Student." Technoscience 20 (3): 5-6.]