What are career stories?
Careers stories are personal narratives and are focused on the experiences and decisions that the story tellers found significant. They offer real insight into the lives of the story tellers, illustrating what they consider important and providing an opportunity to learn about the decisions they have made and why they made them.
This portal provides a wide range of researchers' career stories told in their own words. The stories illustrate the skills and knowledge of these talented and well-qualified people.
Through these career stories we aim to demonstrate how the story tellers have applied their doctoral training in a wide range of personal and professional contexts.
Some of the story tellers completed their doctorate early on in their career, while for others it was undertaken mid or even late career. These stories explore the influence of the doctorate on the journeys that follow.
Career stories collected by Vitae include:
What do researchers do? Career profiles of doctoral graduates
The 40 career stories in the ‘What do researchers do? Career Profiles of doctoral graduates' publication provides an insight into the relationship between researchers' doctorates and the career journey that they have taken.
A series of films which illustrate the range and variety of careers that people with a research training go on to do, both within and outside HE, in order to highlight turning and tipping points and inspire current researchers in HE about their own careers and decisions.
This online database of career stories enables researchers to search for researcher career stories for different sectors, disciplines of study etc. It will soon be possible to upload your own story or collection of stories to this database.
Other collections of stories you may find interesting
This is a collection of careers stories which may include (but not solely focus on) researchers in HE (postgraduate researchers and research staff), and where the focus may not be directly on the impact of their research experience on career choices. The stories will be of broader interest to researchers and career professionals.