Independent Advice for Academic Careers 

A successful academic career involves much more than doing good research. 

Decisions about research direction, publications, jobs, promotion, teaching, and academic leadership can have consequences for many years. Yet the advice available within universities is not always independent: supervisors, mentors, and line managers inevitably have their own perspectives and institutional responsibilities.

Old Rectory Academic offers confidential, independent advice to academics at every stage of their careers.

Whether you are completing a PhD, working as a postdoctoral researcher, establishing yourself as an early-career academic, or are already an experienced professor, I offer an outside perspective to help you think through the choices you face.

Universities provide many forms of mentoring and career support. Often these can be extremely valuable. In some institutions they have however intermingled with human resources processes and in so doing they have lost the independence from promotion and progression which is indispensable from a completely honest assessment.

Thus sometimes you need to talk to someone who is outside your institution and you know will have no role in your appointment, promotion, or management. Even a colleague with no institutional role may not be able to be fully objective in advising, for example, to accept an outside offer, as they may feel that this would weaken their school, or vice versa, see your resignation as enhancing their chance of promotion.

You may need, that is, to talk to someone whom you are certain has no personal preferences, and so can see your situation from a fully neutral different perspective, challenge your assumptions where they need to be challenged, and help you think through the alternatives without an institutional agenda.

That is the purpose of Old Rectory Academic.