Building Your Online Academic Presence

Lightly edited from Zoom’s automatic transcript, so expect some transcription errors. Speaker labels come from Zoom, and […] marks a passage that was cut.

Elisa D’Amico Alright, so, I've begun recording, I'm going to… Katie and Kasia, I can share… Yeah, I'll share the slides if you just want to… kind of talk over them, let me see. Can you see slides? Or do you see… yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kasia Houghton I know.

Elisa D’Amico Okay. Alright, I am gonna hand it off to Katie, then.

Katie Nutley Perfect. Right, so, first and foremost, welcome, and like, thanks for coming, guys. So, in building your… I guess, like, social media platform, it's hugely important, especially when you're an early career researcher, right? And I think, first and foremost, you should always have a LinkedIn. You're taught, sort of, after you finish your bachelor's that you need to be on LinkedIn, and actually, that still stands. So I have a few, sort of, do's and don'ts for LinkedIn. The first is that it's meant to be sort of an access… like, an accessible page that's more accessible, I think, than traditional university pages. And academia sort of, like, is ultimately a workplace, and regardless, I think, of its sort of little quirks, you do have to maintain you know, a sort of front-facing image. And usually university pages, I find that they tend to be sort of these big behemoths, they're not really updated that frequently. So the first thing that you can do is make sure that effectively your stuff is visible, it's available, and you should always do this. So, your profile should serve as sort of a living CV in lieu of an actual website that recruiters and collaborators can check.

Katie Nutley And Kasia's going to talk more about, like, websites in general, but prior to actually getting a website, which tends to be sort of a late PhD thing, early postdoc thing. this is what you should be doing. So, first and foremost, some key elements to maintain as a professional headshot. So, this is hugely important, and it's actually, like, never been more accessible now that we have AI. So you can go to Google Gemini and have it do this for you, and I remain pretty agnostic about banners, that are sort of above… your little image. But I think that it should be cohesive if possible. I'm going to show you a picture of Elisa's. she actually uses the Liffey, the River Liffey, and it heralds her connection to UCD, right? But I've also seen environmental politics people use landscapes, to sort of signal their interest, and I've also seen migration people use bridges.

Katie Nutley But ultimately, you should always keep it appropriate. I also think it's really important to have this sort of, like, clear headline that follows just below your headshot. You should identify, like, sort of what your current affiliations are, and even perhaps your sub-disciplines. So in… in my… In my, LinkedIn, I actually have, PolMeth, right? So, political methods. And I always think that that's hugely helpful, because ultimately, and I'm going to get into this, it makes a searchable record for you. And then lastly, you should have your research interests, your publications, and your event interests. I know that it always feels a little bit like shouting into the void when you sort of update your social media. I've never actually gotten over that feeling. But it is a necessary evil, ultimately, so whenever you go to conference, whenever you go to events, it's important to sort of You know, shout them out on your social media. Because, you know, it creates this… It does drive clicks, but it also creates this searchable record, meaning that people that have seen you present or are interested in what you're doing can find you. It additionally signals productivity, which I think for early career researchers, because you're not yet publishing normally, is hugely important, right? People want to see that you're doing the things that academics do. And then lastly, I also think that it ultimately invites serendipity.

Katie Nutley I've met people… on LinkedIn who've reached out and said, you know, oh, I do the same thing, I'd be curious to hear about your thing, do you want to get a coffee? And I think you should always be open to these opportunities insofo- sorry, insofar as you're able. So, can we click to the next one? So, here's… here's a LinkedIn of, Elisa. I didn't think it was appropriate to use mine, so… as you can see, she's got, like, a professional headshot. Again, if you don't have the ability to sort of… have somebody take a photo of you. I know that ISA does theirs. Sometimes they'll have, like, these little professionalization meetings in which they'll give you free headshots. Again, alternatively, Google Gemini, hugely helpful. And then, again, a cohesive, sort of, front-facing image. I then also have a little bit of social etiquette for LinkedIn, because I think that… I mean, you guys are probably also chronically online in the same way I am. I think that all of these, these platforms have different vibes, right? So, what you would post on Instagram is not necessarily what you would post on LinkedIn, and you need to be mindful of that.

Katie Nutley So, first and foremost, whenever you're on LinkedIn, I think it tends to be, like, quite positive, very sort of productive-facing, outward-facing. So, I always try and engage meaningfully. And by that, I mean you should always share your work when you can, comment on others' research, and then celebrate milestones. So, I have found that academia is, as I mentioned previously, ultimately a workplace. So regardless of its, like, weird little esoteric quirks, I think people want to work with people they like. And remaining visible and positive is hugely important. And I've been given opportunities in life simply because people thought of me, and I hope, like, thought positively of me, right? And I think that this is a really, really small thing you can do on LinkedIn. I also think it's important to sort of create opportunities if you're on LinkedIn. So if you see a post, and you're like, oh, you know, that reminds me of Kasia's work, send it to them, tag them.

Katie Nutley I get that this is a little bit… it's harder to create opportunities when you're sort of on the lowest rung, or you're on the bottom of the pecking order, which PhD students are, but if you find something that reminds you of your colleagues, you can… you hand tag or sort of send it to them. It's worth noting, I recently went to a networking event, and I met a professor at the University of Edinburgh in public health. And then later, I came across this call, and I sent it to her, and she ultimately got the research funding. And now she's gone out of her way to try and leverage her network to help me. And ultimately, you know, nothing may come of it, but also, who knows? Right? And then the last thing is, you should always know what's for institutional emails and what's for LinkedIn. So… with regards to, I think, professional networking, you should always err on the side of caution, when at all possible. So LinkedIn, and for that matter, I think… Blue Sky or Twitter should always be used for lateral networking. So that's not to say that you can't follow people whose work you find interesting or react to their, you know, their publications or whatever, but if you're going to actively reach out to people on it, I suggest you reach out to people that are sort of laterally in the same tier as you. So, like, I would reach out to other PhDs and postdocs, but I would rather email a professor, right?

Katie Nutley So… I also think it's important to mention, because we're all applying for jobs at this point, I have seen this happen. I think it's important not to use LinkedIn in a sort of targeted fashion post-application. So having fielded job advertisements and then also applied for them, I've seen candidates sort of connect and engage on LinkedIn with the people that are fielding the job adverts, right? And I know that what you want to sort of convey is that you're… you're interested, and you're enthusiastic, and you're a real go-getter, but I find, usually, that it comes off as, like, quite coercive, right? So, again, I think LinkedIn can be a huge tool, it's, I think, hugely beneficial, but you should always be mindful of how you use it. So then, on to the next one. So… Blue sky.

Katie Nutley To be clear, if you don't have a blue sky, you need to get one. So… About 5 years ago, Twitter was sort of, I think, where academics tend to collect. But since then, I think Blue Sky has emerged as the successor of Twitter. Ultimately, it means there's less algorithmic noise, and there tends to be more scholarly conversation. The migration from Twitter, or X, has been significant in academic circles, sort of particularly in the social sciences and humanities. But Blue Sky's chronological feed and decentralized structure appeal to researchers who want discourse without the platform chaos. And that's hugely important, but… You also sort of need… sorry, one second. You also sort of need to understand a few things about blue sky, so… Personally, if you already have a Twitter, I don't think it's worth… getting rid of it. I tend to update Blue Sky more frequently, but I've kept my Twitter just because I'm a person who likes to cover all my bases. I have alternatively heard some people ask me, or some people say, like, why are you on Twitter?

Katie Nutley So I think that the exodus has been massive, but it's not been complete, is my point. Whether or not you want to, sort of. move from Twitter over to Blue Sky is entirely up to you. Again, personally, I'm quite agnostic about it. And then sort of moving forward, I think it's where informal academic culture now lives, so you'll find papers, threads, conference live tweeting, job postings, and sometimes even disciplinary gossip. And this is the, I think, hidden curriculum of academia, sort of made more visible. So you learn, ultimately, by sort of I think keeping tabs on Blue Sky of your academics in your field, you find out what conferences matter, which journals are more respected, and what debates are sort of live and important and topical, and who the key voices are, actually. So, for early career researchers, especially, this sort of ambient knowledge is hugely important. So, I don't know if you guys are sort of computational political scientists, but take, for example, the recent, European political social science drama.

Katie Nutley If you're a computational or empirical social scientist or political scientist, you are migrating to EPSS over EPSA due to signaling from elite academics, right? You should be moving. And then, with regards to, like, a few key elements to maintain in your blue sky, I really think that you always need to have a recognizable handle and display name. Sort of building off the fact that you should also have, ideally, a nice headshot, people should be able to recognize you by name. Cryptic ones tend to make you harder to find and tag. And you should be searchable. You always want to be searchable. Again, you should have a clear bio with institutional affiliation. you have limited characters, so it's best you are sort of precise. And then lastly. Blue Sky operates a little bit different than Twitter, so Twitter sort of had this, like, this trolling algorithm that it pulled things in for you. Whereas, Blue Sky, there's a little bit more user input, right? So what you need to do is sort of join the relevant feeds and starter packs.

Katie Nutley So Blue Sky's custom feeds are pretty genuinely useful. You can find or create ones for your own subfield if it doesn't already exist, which would also sort of… that is an added level of legitimacy and interest. And then starter packs are these sort of curated follow lists that help you build a network pretty quickly, and get your name included when others are sort of looking for people in your area or subfield. Right, so that's me.

Elisa D’Amico Okay, sorry, it took me a second to find my mute button. Thank you, Katie. Yeah, I echo a lot of what Katie said. It's tricky. with Blue Sky and Twitter, I think LinkedIn is definitely the absolute safest. I think that academic Twitter was amazing. And I personally got, like, a huge consultancy with the World Wildlife Fund on Twitter, like, these things were great. I think that LinkedIn seems to be replacing that side of things a little bit more than Blue Sky is. Katie's right about the sort of… disciplinary gossip that that blue sky tends to provide. I haven't been as good about posting on Blue Sky as I have about LinkedIn lately. I used to just make it a goal to post on all of these. Yeah. You can deal with Blue Sky and… Twitter, how you see fit, but I think that Blue Sky, or that, LinkedIn is probably a good one to retain and keep sort of cultivated.

Elisa D’Amico Plus, you can put more of your own academic things on your LinkedIn platform more neatly anyway, with your publications and stuff. Okay, So, just a few other little places online that your presence may pop up. So, it's definitely worth going and creating your Google Scholar profile even before you're super published, because I think most, even, like, master's theses will come up here. Different, like, blog posts and policy reports, if you have any of this online, also might come into Google Scholar, so just claiming your profile right away. Is useful, because if people are looking you up, it looks quite official, and then it also can start, like. you can start capturing your citations in this way. Additionally, for blogs and public writing, like I said, some of these do link to your Google Scholar, but you should be linking these to your… you should be advertising them on your social medias and, like, permanently linking them on your LinkedIns, or your… websites as well. Like, in my personal website, I have this whole area that's, like, blog posts and op-eds, and it just, like, hyperlinks to all of my non-academic publications. And then, Yeah, Katie mentioned this, but your institutional website often feels like a ginormous pain to, like, update and keep, like, nicely updated. I think it's… it can be worth doing. I think the more useful thing is to have a really strong bio, where if somebody's looking you up, they can read your bio quickly, they can get a sense of, like.

Elisa D’Amico what kind of scholar you are in, like, a nutshell, and what you do. And so, these bios end up going everywhere. They go on to publications, they go on to, like. affiliationships, they go onto your university website, like, they go everywhere. So having a really co… they go on your personal website. So having a cohesive bio, I think, is… Really, really important, and if and when we ever talk about, like, job market materials and cover letters and things like this, we'll talk about this a little bit more as well. This ORCID, or O-R-C-I-D, identifier, definitely claim this super early, because this also links to a million places on your university websites, publications, everywhere. Similar to Google Scholar, it can, like, track your work that is, like, like, more standard, like. journal publications, and then also far beyond. It also can trace where you're at, like, in your career, and where you've been, and, like, it has a variety of manual things you can enter to it as well to track these as well.

Elisa D’Amico And then if you do some technical stuff, it's good to… I'm honestly kind of a hypocrite saying this, but it's good to keep your GitHub clean. I definitely put everything… everything on there, but it is… I can't really say it's… it's, the most clean thing in the whole world. I'll probably have to use, like, Claude Code and go back and clean that up someday. But… Highly recommend keeping that clean, and then Harvard Dataverse is really nice, like, if you make any sort of database for your PhD, for a paper, for a professor, for whoever, you can hyperlink this in your CV on your personal website. different places, it looks, like, kind of official and fancy, so I would recommend doing this as well. It gets its own little, like, DOI for the database, or the data set that you've created.

Elisa D’Amico So yeah, that can just be, like, an added, like, value to any of these other places where you centralize your professional information. Okay. I'm gonna hand this off to Kasia, and then Kasia, just tell me when to stop sharing, and then you can share your own thing as well.

Kasia Houghton Yeah, sure, and before you mute yourself, Elisa, is it okay if I also show your website as, like, a… as an example of, like, a CV website, rather than, like, a company website.

Elisa D’Amico Yeah, you could… yeah, please go ahead. I haven't updated in a while, but…

Kasia Houghton Just… just for the… just to see what it looks like. Perfect, yeah. And the other thing that I also wanted to add from what Elisa was saying is that I think a lot of universities now have migrated to a kind of cloud system where you can update your bios, and they should update on the institutional website kind of in real time. Like, it might be checked over by somebody, but I know that, at St. Andrews, they use the Pure system, so… and I think at other universities, there might be a couple of different other ones, but, at least there, you can log into your Pure account, and then if you have an update, you can add that manually, or if you wanted to change your biography, you could do that as well. Just something to bear in mind. But again, it's hard to keep tabs on every single little thing, when it comes to your online presence, but it's really good to have things that are up-to-date, especially as an early career researcher.

Kasia Houghton So, yeah, I'll talk a little bit about personal and professional websites. So, I think that these can be a really, really great way to highlight your professional profile online, in addition to having social media presence and also a presence on your institutional website. So what they can do is they act as an online CV, so especially if you do have a lot of publications from across academia, maybe policy, maybe practice, media as well, it's nice to aggregate them all in one place, because online, other than, of course, LinkedIn, you can have these listed. But on a professional website, or a personal website, you can have these really cleanly, outlined. Also, depending on how good you are with your SEO skills, sometimes these can pop up… your personal and professional website can pop up kind of above your institution's website. So, again, it's really good, especially if you have… if you're trying to make a name for yourself, which I know we all are.

Kasia Houghton As early career researchers, if you're trying to make a name for yourself within a specific field, it's really good to have you know, your name pop up early on on Google, when somebody types in, you know, specific keywords. And also, it clearly states the type of work that you're interested in obtaining, so if you are an academic and you also would like to work as a consultant on the side, or let's say you're on the job market and you're looking for a lectureship or a professorship. or even a postdoc. Having a personal and professional website can really help with that, because it kind of shows others who you are. And of course, your social media presence can do the same thing, but this is something that you own, you can control, you can update in real time.

Kasia Houghton And… yeah, you can say kind of whatever you want on there. You can also use that as a… as a blog, so I know that the website that I have and that Elisa has, we have kind of this blog, mechanism on there, or a feature, rather. So anything that you… any kind of work that you've done that is… you know, maybe not very academic, but you would still like to publish on there, and let's say you haven't been able to get it published by, sort of a media, publication or an outlet, this is a really good way of, kind of, having, an outlet for yourself. So, this can also be What you write about can be really, really varied, but also very related and relevant to academia, so you could talk about methods, policy-relevant insights related to your research, tips about teaching, any sort of career advice that you might have.

Kasia Houghton So, yeah, I think it's also a good place where you can kind of just… highlight some of your work that is adjacent to your academic work. And it also, you can write blogs about your academic writing as well, like actual academic, journal articles and books and things like that, if you want to give somebody a flavor of the work that you've been doing. And also, it's really useful for expanding your network. So, with the… I basically, personally, I started a company, a consulting company, and it's extremely tiny. However, it's a really… it's been a really good way to try and kind of reach out to other people. Consultants, practitioners, and academics to try to create a network that is relevant and related to peacebuilding and human security, which is the areas that I work in. But you can use this, even if you don't have a company, you can use this to network as well. So, you know, you can give people your business card, and it'll have your website on there, and, you know, you can have it that way. So, I'll show… is it okay, Elisa, if I share my screen?

Kasia Houghton No. Okay, so apparently… Apparently, attendee, screen sharing is disabled. Can you… do you think you can…

Elisa D’Amico Can you…

Kasia Houghton Do you have the settings?

Elisa D’Amico I just made you a co-host?

Kasia Houghton Oh, nice, yes, I can do it. Can you see… can you see the screen?

Elisa D’Amico Yes, yes.

Kasia Houghton Yeah, okay, and it's not your faces, your lovely faces, it's the website.

Elisa D’Amico Track.

Kasia Houghton Okay, good, sorry, because I have two screens. Okay, awesome. So, this is… this is my website. It's kind of cringey, but anyway, this is my website. essentially, what this is, is that it's a company website, but as I was mentioning before, it's a really good place to kind of highlight the work that you do and the work that you're interested in, in completing for either as a consultant or, collaborations or anything like that. So, it has… You know, key areas that are, you know, areas of expertise or interests, highlighted at the very beginning, what it is that you offer, loud and proud at the very beginning. On the first page as well, if you have, like, anything that you've done that you really are proud of, you can obviously highlight this here, on the first page.

Kasia Houghton The other thing that is really useful to have is… like a… again, an online CV, essentially, so this is kind of like a prosaic way of putting up your CV, online, but essentially you can have, like, your headshot, and then a little bit like on LinkedIn, you can have, a bio. highlighting your key, achievements and your expertise, and then also select publications, and I know Elisa mentioned having… it's really nice to have your academic publications alongside some of your policy or media, outputs. In a list, so you can, you know, highlight your… the things that you… are proud of. And then also this is the blog that's associated with the website. So here. You can put, you know, again, your, blog pieces that you've written, so this is an op-ed that I… that I wrote earlier, or late last year.

Kasia Houghton And then, you know, you can post this on LinkedIn or Blue Sky as well to promote, you know, your blog and, try and gain, members of your, you know, try and expand your network that way as well. And then I just… Elisa, I'm sorry, I'm gonna show you… So, that's… that's like a company website, which anybody is able to start. And also, if you ever want to have any advice on how to start a company, it's arduous, but I can help with some things, at least in the UK. I have experience in that. But, So, a lot of the time, a professional, personal, professional website looks a lot like this. So this is… but this is a very developed one, I would say, Elisa. So, basically, it's a really nice way, again, to have A lovely biography, the things that you particularly want to highlight about yourself, the methods that you use as well as the, areas of expertise that you have, also highlighting the work that you, you know, you're very proud to share.

Kasia Houghton And then… Elisa has at the top here really nicely, concisely, different areas that would be relevant for an academic career, so a teaching, mentoring, page. So this is like a portfolio. This is so cool. And also any syllabi that you've developed as well. And then… Again, research publications. And because Elisa is a data scientist, data science work, so you get the, you get the picture, so it's kind of like an extended, nice, interactive CV and blog posts. As well and again, these are things that have been… Published by others, as in other outlets as well, so you can have this on your… On your website as well. It's nice to create, you know, more connections that way as well. Okay, I'm all done. Thank you.

Elisa D’Amico Thank you, Kasia. So, we can talk if there are any questions. I don't know if there will be many. We can also potentially… I could stop recording as well, if we want to talk more freely. But I was just gonna actually ask… a first question to Kasia, which is, what did you use to create your website? Was it free? Was it easy? How did you get your domain? Things like this.

Kasia Houghton Okay, I was gonna talk about this, but I felt like I was… going on for so long, but I guess, like, there are so many ways that you can make a website very much dependent on your skills, and I have some skills. There are not many skills on that domain, so I used Wix, which I think is, like, the kind of most common, like, non-programming website designer. And it's super, super, super easy to use, and it can be really, really slick. for the website that I have, it is like a… it is a subscription-based thing, but it's because I want to have, like, things that are very bespoke and have my own domain as well. So, I did pay for the domain separately on Ionos, which is, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, which is, like, a domain manager.

Kasia Houghton But if you use Wix, you can buy your domain via Wix anyway. So, yeah. basically, there are, like, different packages without having… without becoming, like, a representative of Wix. They have very, like, loads of different packages, depending on what kind of thing you want to do, but when it comes to a simple professional website, you can have a free version, but then you will have, a kind of… a Wix advertisement within your domain, if you know what I mean. And if you want to have, like, a completely, you know, professional, personal domain, then you'll have to pay, something, but it's not too bad. I did try to make a website, but Elisa, yours is… yours is using… is it HubSpot? That you used, so HubSpot, which I think you do need to have a little bit more handle of, sort of, skills, programming skills, or website design skills, but you could make one on there for free, I presume.

Kasia Houghton And it's basically like a landing page that you can customize if you know how to. And then there's also, like, WordPress as well, which I think a lot of people have used as well in the past, and that, I think, is a little bit cheaper than, Wix. You can have paid versions, and you can have free versions as well, so… Yeah, there are loads of different options. I'm not mentioning them all, but there are loads of options, depending on how skilled you are at making websites, and I think you could probably use GitHub as well. In certain ways.

Elisa D’Amico Yeah, I would… I would… just, like… coming off of that, I used HubSpot, because I created my website when I was, like, quite young in my PhD career. Now I would probably do it on GitHub. Especially now with AI, you could probably create a pretty simple even, like, one page, like, landing page website on GitHub pretty easily, and this is free. The domain cost, because I just paid for my domain, like, standalone to just get, like, myname.net. as a website that I own and can use, and this, I think for me, costs, like. 10 US dollars a year, or something like that, it's really cheap. I bought mine on Google Domains, which I think has now shifted over… to, like, Squarespace or something like this? But yeah, there's a million domain different websites, but they should be pretty cheap.

Elisa D’Amico And just, like, renew annually, which you'll probably need no matter what you do. You can do a GitHub website for free and have it end in .io, if you so wish. But… I kind of like having, like, a .NET, or, like, something that looks slightly more official, but it really doesn't matter. It's, like, all of these options are really common. Okay. I'm gonna stop… recording for now, and just open it up to see if there are any other questions.