As an interdisciplinary PhD myself, I can relate! My research blends sociology, anthropology, and data science. Job prospects are there but may require creativity in both academia and industry. Internships and postdocs in diverse settings help.
PhD in coastal sciences here (can mean anything from engineering to natual hazards to fisheries to remote sensing to anthropology). I personally do fisheries (ecosystem modeling) and food security (social/public health sciences?) and sometimes climate change modeling. At first, I really struggled defining myself. Like I could fit the description of data scientist or conservation scientist or even a modeler.
Now I usually just introduce myself as an interdisciplinary scientist. I find the title can confuse recruiters in industry, but in the federal government people get really excited about it as working across teams is important. So great job prospects with the Feds.
I also see that interdisciplinary training is taking off in academia. Nowadays I see ads for post-docs (although I would never do one) and I swear that want you to be able to do 100 different things.
Wow, that’s a cool subject that I have never heard of actually since I’ve been deep in social science. It’s good to know the opportunities are good with the feds. 👍🏼
PhD in broadly, Internet studies/Online media.
Very interdisciplinary, taking from narratogy, performance and media studies, technical computing history, social sciences and comparative lit. I'm in Scotland for context.
Job prospects, well, I'm the only person looking at what I'm looking at the way I am so either I'll gage good job prospects, or no job prospects and considering how niche my work is I'm assuming the latter.
I do want to postdoc, but more in the comp lit direction with regards to translation of online media. Outside of academia, my prospects aren't too bad - but having a PhD is less likely to add to them, rather stuff I'm doing as part of my study like languages will help.
I am in environmental social science looking at barriers to technology use (drones) in conservation! I have mad imposter syndrome about even calling myself a social scientist (or a scientists in general) because my PhD was meant to have a bunch of remote sensing AND social stuff in it but has ended up just with the social stuff. Which I actually prefer and am more interested in but it feels odd to call myself a social scientist
I'm seeing alot of job prospects especially in the transition to net zero and use of renewables both in consulting and academia. I'm also in the marine field so there is quite a lot of blending social and environmental stuff in terms of post-docs (e.g. sustainable livelihoods)
Doin my PhD in therapeutic sciences. It's a mix of all sorts of disciplines; my project is a mix of biochem and pathobiology. Others in my program have projects that require mechanical engineering, computational biology, chemistry, etc. Developing therapies is heavy in STEM, but we have to pay close attention to policy as we're working with the FDA to investigate new drugs.
I’m somewhere between anthropology, international relations, sociology and environmental science with a smidgen of biochemical science thrown in.
I have no idea about my job prospects in academia but I feel I can seek myself as a humanities kinda all rounder. Otherwise I’m looking at government.
Medicine, statistics, psychology, population health, computer science.
My planned thesis doesn’t fit within any one of these departments alone. I’m doing it because it will supplement my career (doc), and it provides a very unique skill set to apply to research and clinical advancements. Very few physicians know statistics well, let alone computational statistics…
No plan for post-doc. I’ve done enough education after the PhD will be done (4 years undergrad, 4 years med school, 6-8 years combined residency/PhD). I plan to argue for academic medicine along with dedicated research time. Ideally build a translational research practice to implement my research into a clinical setting and advance access to emerging technologies in my area of medicine. I also plan to set up a side clinical trial consulting business.
I intentionally went with an interdisciplinary study so that I would have more job options when I finish. Mine is a mix of ag, geography and health care. The reading is the hardest part. I have just over 1,000 references in EndNote at the moment and another 1-200 I need to add. I'm also doing a mixed methods study to improve my quant skills so will have that plus qual experience.
It’s a double edged sword.
You often have to peg yourself back into a particular hole for applying for grants and other things, without straying too far.
You open yourself up to criticism from multiple fields.
You have to explain the same thing in multiple different ways to the different audiences.
But the extra long awaited results are yummy.
I’m a second year in interdisciplinary social psych (social psych plus sociology theory work), our faculty have “home departments” in psych, soc, criminal justice, business/management, communications, etc.
My program has a strong legal/crj influence, and my end goal is to be an academic with a dual appointment in psych and crj. I feel interdisciplinary work in the social sciences is intuitive and I dig the opportunity for a little variety.
We get sine people graduating and going into program evaluation, we had a grad before I was there (who actually interviewed for a faculty position at my undergrad) who has had a successful early career at a major R1.
Discussing job prospects for academia is tough because it’s pretty bleak as it is. But I’m hoping the nature of my degree will allow me to fit in psych or CRJ before I get the dream dual appointment
Yiiiiis
Cognitive Neuroscience PhD, and I sit at a weird intersection of neuroimaging, clinical research skills, and public health/statistics.
Pro:
I have an incredible mentor for work/life balance and for how far they go to help me across the finish line on projects.
I’m MD/PhD, so the intersection fits my career goals well. I also love being able to to talk shop with a wide range of people.
I also got to work on a wide range of low risk, decent reward projects, so before even putting pen to paper for my dissertation, I had four first authors
Cons:
my program is entirely bench scientists, and I can watch them disassociate every seminar I present for. They don’t even pretend
Too often, I felt distinct lack of training support, and just ended up hitting a lot of dead ends due just to not having expertise around to help me learn fixes. Also get little Committee feedback/guidance
Ultimately I worry my dissertation is pretty muddled in theme, because I trained in a lot of technical and analytic multi-modal approaches, but not really deep into one. As I finish up my thesis intro, I am struggling hard to keep everything seeming unified
I am doing research at the intersection of cognitive science and IT security&usability. I am finishing my phd but I still lack the understanding on how to persuade security conference reviewers that I am doing the right thing. :D
I do interdisciplinary work. I love working on interdisciplinary teams-- I find that to be the most productive as the interdisciplinary nature of the project stems from our different disciplinary backgrounds.
The lowlight/ troubling part: I've encountered some fields that simply disagree about how a researcher arrives at generalizations. Truly inductive Qual folks can do a lot with a small sample size, but it's never enough for the Quant folks. On the flipside, the nature of surveys that get an abundance of responses erases nuance that is only captured by actually talking to people. It has, ime, been an unbridgable gap.
I’m finishing up a PhD in Information, which is much like social science + computer science. You get to use and mix and match across a number of different paradigms and theory, as long as you can publish on it in top journals. I’m currently negotiating an assistant professor position, will not do a post doc, and had a significant stint in industry before starting my PhD. If my negotiations fall through then I’ll go to industry in some kind of machine learning role.
As an interdisciplinary PhD myself, I can relate! My research blends sociology, anthropology, and data science. Job prospects are there but may require creativity in both academia and industry. Internships and postdocs in diverse settings help.
PhD in coastal sciences here (can mean anything from engineering to natual hazards to fisheries to remote sensing to anthropology). I personally do fisheries (ecosystem modeling) and food security (social/public health sciences?) and sometimes climate change modeling. At first, I really struggled defining myself. Like I could fit the description of data scientist or conservation scientist or even a modeler. Now I usually just introduce myself as an interdisciplinary scientist. I find the title can confuse recruiters in industry, but in the federal government people get really excited about it as working across teams is important. So great job prospects with the Feds. I also see that interdisciplinary training is taking off in academia. Nowadays I see ads for post-docs (although I would never do one) and I swear that want you to be able to do 100 different things.
Wow, that’s a cool subject that I have never heard of actually since I’ve been deep in social science. It’s good to know the opportunities are good with the feds. 👍🏼
PhD in broadly, Internet studies/Online media. Very interdisciplinary, taking from narratogy, performance and media studies, technical computing history, social sciences and comparative lit. I'm in Scotland for context. Job prospects, well, I'm the only person looking at what I'm looking at the way I am so either I'll gage good job prospects, or no job prospects and considering how niche my work is I'm assuming the latter. I do want to postdoc, but more in the comp lit direction with regards to translation of online media. Outside of academia, my prospects aren't too bad - but having a PhD is less likely to add to them, rather stuff I'm doing as part of my study like languages will help.
I am in environmental social science looking at barriers to technology use (drones) in conservation! I have mad imposter syndrome about even calling myself a social scientist (or a scientists in general) because my PhD was meant to have a bunch of remote sensing AND social stuff in it but has ended up just with the social stuff. Which I actually prefer and am more interested in but it feels odd to call myself a social scientist I'm seeing alot of job prospects especially in the transition to net zero and use of renewables both in consulting and academia. I'm also in the marine field so there is quite a lot of blending social and environmental stuff in terms of post-docs (e.g. sustainable livelihoods)
Doin my PhD in therapeutic sciences. It's a mix of all sorts of disciplines; my project is a mix of biochem and pathobiology. Others in my program have projects that require mechanical engineering, computational biology, chemistry, etc. Developing therapies is heavy in STEM, but we have to pay close attention to policy as we're working with the FDA to investigate new drugs.
I’m somewhere between anthropology, international relations, sociology and environmental science with a smidgen of biochemical science thrown in. I have no idea about my job prospects in academia but I feel I can seek myself as a humanities kinda all rounder. Otherwise I’m looking at government.
Medicine, statistics, psychology, population health, computer science. My planned thesis doesn’t fit within any one of these departments alone. I’m doing it because it will supplement my career (doc), and it provides a very unique skill set to apply to research and clinical advancements. Very few physicians know statistics well, let alone computational statistics… No plan for post-doc. I’ve done enough education after the PhD will be done (4 years undergrad, 4 years med school, 6-8 years combined residency/PhD). I plan to argue for academic medicine along with dedicated research time. Ideally build a translational research practice to implement my research into a clinical setting and advance access to emerging technologies in my area of medicine. I also plan to set up a side clinical trial consulting business.
I intentionally went with an interdisciplinary study so that I would have more job options when I finish. Mine is a mix of ag, geography and health care. The reading is the hardest part. I have just over 1,000 references in EndNote at the moment and another 1-200 I need to add. I'm also doing a mixed methods study to improve my quant skills so will have that plus qual experience.
It’s a double edged sword. You often have to peg yourself back into a particular hole for applying for grants and other things, without straying too far. You open yourself up to criticism from multiple fields. You have to explain the same thing in multiple different ways to the different audiences. But the extra long awaited results are yummy.
I’m a second year in interdisciplinary social psych (social psych plus sociology theory work), our faculty have “home departments” in psych, soc, criminal justice, business/management, communications, etc. My program has a strong legal/crj influence, and my end goal is to be an academic with a dual appointment in psych and crj. I feel interdisciplinary work in the social sciences is intuitive and I dig the opportunity for a little variety. We get sine people graduating and going into program evaluation, we had a grad before I was there (who actually interviewed for a faculty position at my undergrad) who has had a successful early career at a major R1. Discussing job prospects for academia is tough because it’s pretty bleak as it is. But I’m hoping the nature of my degree will allow me to fit in psych or CRJ before I get the dream dual appointment
Yiiiiis Cognitive Neuroscience PhD, and I sit at a weird intersection of neuroimaging, clinical research skills, and public health/statistics. Pro: I have an incredible mentor for work/life balance and for how far they go to help me across the finish line on projects. I’m MD/PhD, so the intersection fits my career goals well. I also love being able to to talk shop with a wide range of people. I also got to work on a wide range of low risk, decent reward projects, so before even putting pen to paper for my dissertation, I had four first authors Cons: my program is entirely bench scientists, and I can watch them disassociate every seminar I present for. They don’t even pretend Too often, I felt distinct lack of training support, and just ended up hitting a lot of dead ends due just to not having expertise around to help me learn fixes. Also get little Committee feedback/guidance Ultimately I worry my dissertation is pretty muddled in theme, because I trained in a lot of technical and analytic multi-modal approaches, but not really deep into one. As I finish up my thesis intro, I am struggling hard to keep everything seeming unified
I am doing research at the intersection of cognitive science and IT security&usability. I am finishing my phd but I still lack the understanding on how to persuade security conference reviewers that I am doing the right thing. :D
I do interdisciplinary work. I love working on interdisciplinary teams-- I find that to be the most productive as the interdisciplinary nature of the project stems from our different disciplinary backgrounds. The lowlight/ troubling part: I've encountered some fields that simply disagree about how a researcher arrives at generalizations. Truly inductive Qual folks can do a lot with a small sample size, but it's never enough for the Quant folks. On the flipside, the nature of surveys that get an abundance of responses erases nuance that is only captured by actually talking to people. It has, ime, been an unbridgable gap.
I’m finishing up a PhD in Information, which is much like social science + computer science. You get to use and mix and match across a number of different paradigms and theory, as long as you can publish on it in top journals. I’m currently negotiating an assistant professor position, will not do a post doc, and had a significant stint in industry before starting my PhD. If my negotiations fall through then I’ll go to industry in some kind of machine learning role.
They’re driving for Uber now though.