Placing into traditional department with interdisciplinary PhD?

[sentinell]

I’m about to enter an ethnic studies PhD program. The placement rate is good to very good, and I’ve seen a few alumni who have placed into history and English programs. I’m wondering how people do this? Say for history, I’m guessing having historians as advisors, presenting at history conferences, and taking history coursework? Do job search committees look at things like that? For those of you who’ve been on a search committee for a traditional dept , would you give an interdiscplinarity phd the time of day if they had these credentials or only on very rare occasions? 

[jujubea]

I want to comment on this post but don't have time right now. Just marking it like this for later!

[milara]

On 4/23/2020 at 9:27 PM, jujubea said:

I want to comment on this post but don't have time right now. Just marking it like this for later!

Hi @jujubea! I'm wondering if you have any insight to add.

Here's what I can say, in case @sentinell is still interested in an answer. I have an interdisciplinary doctorate in computer science/communication studies. My undergraduate degree was in Physics and my masters in Journalism. Although my program only required that I pass 3/4 of each qualifying exam, I sat the whole computer science qualifying exam and passed on my first try. All of my publications were in computer science venues, all but one class I TA'd were computer science classes, and my lab/advisor was populated completely with computer scientists. My advisor did not have an joint appointment -- his only appointment was in the Computer Science department.

I have landed interviews for postdocs in both disciplines. The postdoc I ended up accepting was in the area of online political communication, on a project that was heavily using computational methods. I chose it because I felt I wanted to improve social science skills that had been neglected as a doctoral student.

I have also managed to get a few interviews for assistant professorships in both disciplines. What I've found is that the communication studies people really value my computer science background. They see it as an asset. The computer scientists, on the other hand, only seem to invite me for interviews for appointments that are specifically interdisciplinary (such as in the area of Ethical AI). When they interview me, they ask a lot of questions that make it sound to me like they are trying to determine: am I really a CS person or a social science person? Despite the fact that my entire doctoral career was heavily skewed towards the computational, my years working as a journalist, the interdisciplinary nature of the program I chose, and the fact that I took a postdoc in a Comm Studies department seems to convince them that I am not One Of Them.

I would say that your own experience as an interdisciplinary researcher will depend on the disciplines you combined, and whether you published in all of your disciplines, or just one. But I think everyone's experience will be different.

[Quickmick]

This is a great topic. I earned my doctorate in a STEM field that is designed to be interdisciplinary; I have quant training (R), ArcGIS, policy, sustainability econ, etc. While this makes great thinkers, these qualifications are difficult to place squarely in one field. In this case, your path will be determined in many ways by what you focused most on, what you write papers about, and what you present. That being said, it feels like the tower understands the importance of well rounded thinkers,but isn't so sure what to do with them once they have been forged. The flip side, as @milara does a great job describing, is that you might be in position to make novel trans-disciplinary contributions to one or more fields, though it might be hard to get people to be willing to take the intellectual risk on the idea. For what its worth, the majority of people that have gone through my program end up doing agency/NGO/consulting/quant work or stay in the academy as career track researchers; but that is partly a function of individual choices and the difficult academic job market generally. For academic postings, I looked for positions that clearly valued the interdisciplinary approach but that had specificity aligned with my strongest suits.

I don't know if this adds much clarity to your situation, but I hope it illustrates that you are not alone and that there is hope!