Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about:

Why a humanities degree actually opens many career paths.

The importance of curiosity.

The contingency crisis in higher ed.

How we can re-evaluate “academic success.”

Advice for students and faculty.


Our guest is: Dr. Katina Rogers, the author of Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and beyond the Classroom (Duke University Press, 2020). In 2021, she founded Inkcap Consulting to help universities build more supportive and sustainable graduate programs. Her career has included work at The Graduate Center, CUNY, the Modern Language Association, the Scholarly Communication Institute, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She has two young kids and a deep frustration with higher education, that is inextricably bound up with hope. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who has effectively used her humanities degrees for interesting jobs both inside and outside the academy. She is the co-producer of the Academic Life.
Listeners to this episode may also be interested in:


The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing


Imagine PhD, created by the Graduate Career Consortium: 

Next Generation Dissertations


Inkcap and its resources


Get Sorted: How to Make the Most of Your Student Experience, by Jeff Gill and Will Medd


Where Research Begins: Choosing A Research Project that Matters to You, by Thomas Mullaney and Christopher Rea


Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers, by Kathryn Linder, Keven Kelly, and Thomas Tobin


The Employability Journal, by Barbara Bassot


Candid Advice for New Faculty Members, by Marybeth Gasman


You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Here on the Academic Life channel, we embrace a broad definition of what it means to be an academic and to lead an academic life. We view education as a transformative human endeavor and are inspired by today’s knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DMs us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN.
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