The Philosophers' Cocoon

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I wanted to ask for any advice on how to design a personal academic website. I will soon have my first publication out and thought it would be a good idea to have a web page for people to find out who I am. However, I am not sure what makes for a 'good' academic webpage. For example, should one have one's photograph featured prominently on the front page, as some philosophers do? Is the 'Papers' page simply a list of all publications, or is it helpful to e.g. include abstracts and context, to group papers together in subjects, etc.? Is it good to include personal details about e.g. hobbies, or does this detract from the main goal? I am not aware of any discussions on this topic, and would appreciate any advice people have, or indeed examples of 'good' academic webpages.

Really good questions! What does everyone think? I think it would good to hear what people think in response to the reader's various questions, as well as for readers to link in the comment section below to webpages they think think are particularly good! Here are a few brief thoughts of my own.

The first thing I want to say about webpages is that I think the most important thing may be something this reader didn't mention: how well-designed the webpage looks. For example, I've seen really minimal webpages using outdated platforms that look like they are out of the 1990's. I suspect this does not come across too well. Now, you ask, why does this matter? Why should anyone care whether a webpage looks good? Well, as I've mentioned before, one of the things that I think search committees are looking to figure out is a candidate's personal qualities–for example, how conscientious a person is. This is actually no small thing, as conscientiousness is known empirically to be an especially good predictor of academic and workplace performance (my spouse specializes in the science of this stuff). I'm sure most of us have known otherwise brilliant people who never get things done or done on time–and, as it turns out, these are both related to low conscientiousness (which is strongly related to procrastination). My experience is that search committees know this, at least at a very implicit level: we've all worked with people who are conscientious, do things right, follow university policies, show up to meetings prepared, get their administrative work done, and so on, as well as people who don't. Now, you might think, how good a website looks may not be a very good reflection of how conscientious someone is–and, to be frank, I don't know the answer to this one way or the other. Nevertheless, my sense is that search committee members tend to, at least at a very implicit level, be constantly on the lookout for 'clues' (good or bad). So, I would say, make sure your website looks well-organized and well-designed. There are plenty of good website hosters (Wix, Squarespace, etc.) that make it really easy to make a nice-looking website–and my experience is that they aren't too expensive.

Other than that, here are some brief thoughts in response to the reader's particular questions. Most of the webpages I've come across seem to have photos, but some do not. I'm not sure how much it matters either way–though I suspect people who specialize in advertising might disagree (I don't know the research here). I think it probably does help to group papers by area, and to have abstracts for them (this is something I've found helpful when visiting other people's websites). I don't do this on my website, but now that I come to think of it, I think I probably should! As for hobbies, I'm really not sure. I've seen websites with them and without them, and suspect they might make some modest difference in some cases (if, for instance, a search committee has similar hobbies). Still, I'm not sure.

Finally, one other thing that just occurred to me is how well your website matches you to the kinds of jobs you are most likely to be competitive for. As I've suggested on several occasions, I think a fair amount of job-candidates may adopt a sub-optimal job-market strategy: specifically, candidates coming out of lower or unranked PhD programs (in the Leiter report) trying to compete for research jobs. As I suggested (and the hiring data seems to suggest), the problem here is that graduates of top-ranked programs are most likely going to be the most competitive for those programs–whereas graduates of lower-ranked or unranked programs are more likely to be competitive for 'teaching jobs' (at non-elite SLACs, etc.). Consequently, I think it may make a great deal of sense for candidates to be sensitive to these possibilities when composing a website. If you're the kind of candidate who is otherwise more likely to be competitive for teaching jobs rather than research jobs, then I think it could be bad for your website to focus primarily on your research rather than your teaching–as this might convey to search committees at teaching schools that you see yourself more as a researcher than as someone who fits their school.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? How would you answer the reader's questions? Also, please feel free to post links to philosophers' websites you think are good!