In our December "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:
Question on doing interdisciplinary work. I've done empirically inspired philosophical work before, but am now taking on a postdoc in a non-philosophy project. This leads me to wondering how to ensure that I remain a competitive candidate within Philosophy. I assume I need to make sure I also publish my own, solo, philosophical work — but I can't realistically do as much of it as someone doing a philosophy postdoc. Are there ways to help make the non-philosophical research help and not hinder future hires? Also, will recommendation letters from my non-philosopher supervisors in that postdoc count for anything? A further concern is that this is a research only position, which means it doesn't enable expanding my meager teaching portfolio. Should I try to adjunct a class or two on the side to make up for that?
These are interesting questions. This appears to me to be a serious issue for postdocs in Europe. In the United States, postdocs aren't hired to complete a particular project. But from what I can tell, in at least some places in Europe, that's exactly what postdocs are: one is hired (it seems) into a position funded by a particular grant or whatever, and your activities in the postdoc are supposed to be on the funded project, whatever it is. Assuming this is right, it seems to me to place postdocs in a terrible position in multiple respects. First, the postdoc may have to more or less give up on their own research program in favor of the grant-funded project. And second, as we see in the OP, the project may be largely empirical or not even in philosophy.
What should postdocs in this kind of position do? I think the OP is right that they should try to continue publishing solo philosophy work on the side. But aside from that, I'm not sure. I don't know how useful recommendation letters from non-philosophers will be for applying for jobs in philosophy. And given that postdocs like the one the OP described don't have teaching, the OP is in a triple-bind: they need to somehow spend most of their time working on their postdoc project, while also publishing solo work in philosophy and (ideally) getting some teaching experience. All things being equal, I think seeking out adjunct work would be a good idea–but, as we see here, all things aren't equal. I don't know how someone in their position can realistically do all of the above. So unfortunately, I have to confess that I don't know what to say here. It seems to me that postdoc practices like these place recent PhDs in an extremely difficult position, one that I don't have any clear views on how to best navigate (in large part because I've never been in the situation myself).
Do any readers out there have any better answers? Have any of you been in a similar position? If so, what would you suggest the OP do? If not, what do you think the OP should do, looking at it from an outside perspective?
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