What does career diversity look like for a humanities PhD? How do we empower ourselves now to make values-driven choices about careers? What communities and resources are out there to help students and faculty think about these questions? In this workshop, we will discuss career diversity as an approach that can transform your thinking about yourself and others as well as your research and project planning in the present and the future. We will consider career diversity very broadly, from non-profit and foundation work to public humanities to the private sector.

The workshop is also an invitation to learn about the Humanities Without Walls (HWW) organization, its programming, and its annual summer workshop that offers humanities PhD students unparalleled exposure to career diversity possibilities as well as a stipend to fund selected students’ participation. The application to this summer’s HWW workshop, which is scheduled to be held in person at the University of Michigan, is now open. More information about the call for applications is available on THI’s website.

The panel will be led by UC Santa Cruz and Marquette University Humanities Without Walls Fellows:

Margaret (Maggie) Nettesheim-Hoffmann is the Associate Director of Career Diversity for the Humanities Without Walls consortium based at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and is based at Marquette University. As a part of her work for the consortium, she is responsible for guiding HWW’s career diversity programming dedicated to transforming doctoral education for consortium partner schools and beyond. She is a co-PI on a $1.3M grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Marquette University in support of HWW’s career diversity work and is completing a PhD in American History in the history of American philanthropy, capitalism, and progressive era political discourses critical of private wealth giving to public institutions. She was a HWW Predoctoral Career Diversity Fellow in 2017.

Morgan Gates is a PhD student in the Literature Department, Humanities Without Walls alum, and THI Public Fellow. As a Public Fellow, she has explored working with non-profits as a dramaturg, museum curator and program manager, archivist, and is currently a member of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History Publications Committee at work on an exciting new history publication for children. HWW has helped her imagine even more career possibilities and helped her learn to merge these experiences with her field research.

Aaron Aruck is a PhD Candidate in the History Department at UC Santa Cruz, where he studies how sexuality broadly defined became a critical organizing principle for public health programs, immigration enforcement, and border making at the midcentury US-Mexico border. He was also a THI Public Fellow at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco and remains interested in public history. A HWW fellow in 2017, Aaron enjoyed learning how his research and skills could be employed in various jobs in the non-profit and legal worlds.

This workshop is co-presented by The Humanities Institute (THI) at UC Santa Cruz and Humanities Without Walls national consortium based at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and is open to University of California faculty, staff, and students.

About the PhD+ Workshop Series
Join us for the sixth year of The Humanities Institute’s PhD+ Workshops. We meet monthly to discuss possible career paths for PhDs, internship possibilities, grants/fellowships, work/life balance, elements of style, online identity issues, and much, much more.