Career Diversity at AHA 2015

The annual meeting offers many opportunities to explore career paths, hone your job search skills, and expand your professional network. Whatever the stage of your career search, there is a workshop, panel session or networking opportunity to aid you at AHA 2015.

Hone Your Skills

Kick off your AHA 2015 by attending Getting the Most Out of the Annual Meeting to get advice from veteran attendees.  Take a look at the AHA First-Time Attendee Guide for general tips on how to network, and attend Interviewing in the Job Market in the Twenty-First Century, a workshop organized annually by the AHA Professional Division, to discuss interview strategies with volunteers from the wide range of career paths open to history PhDs.

To broaden your skill set, attend the Media Training Workshop for Historians, designed to help historians develop the communication skills to connect with media.  To brush up on your digital skills, or to gain new ones, check out the AHA guide to all things digital at the annual meeting.

Meet New People

Drop by the second annual Career Fair on Sunday afternoon to talk to a variety of potential employers, including representatives from government, education, and non-profit organizations. Peruse the Guide to Receptions to identify likely places to find colleagues who share your interests or who work in various institutions.

To connect with others interested in what colleges and universities can do institutionally to support PhD students in a broad careers search, attend a pair of panels organized by the AHA Professional Division and jointly titled "From Problems to Solutions: Recruiting, Training, and Placing History PhDs in Non-Faculty Careers." Part I focuses on issues such as career advising and career placement, and Part II focuses on cultural questions associated with pursuing broad career paths.  To find colleagues concerned with  professional issues faced by women historians, attend the Brainstorming and Mentoring Session, organized by the Committee on Women Historians.

Explore Career Paths

There are a variety of sessions devoted to the diversity of careers held by historians.  Three panels offer the opportunity to hear from historians employed in a range of institutions, and there is a whole panel on historians in the federal government:

There are also two panels on historians writing fiction, one from inside the academy and one from outside the academy.  Finally, the presidential panel Historian-Administrators highlights another common career outcome for historians-higher education administration.

We look forward to welcoming you to the annual meeting, and we hope you'll take the time to reflect on, discuss, and hear panels about the broad range of careers held by historians.