Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers

The main purpose of Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers is to give the Oxford researcher community (research staff including postdocs, research assistants and research technicians and DPhil students) an opportunity to discover and explore as broad a range of career alternatives beyond research within academia as possible.

We are always looking for employers who recruit staff with the technical and transferrable skills that our researchers offer to take part in these events, and for former researchers to share their knowledge and experience of moving beyond the academic sphere.

Employers

There are three ways to get involved in the conference as an employer:

1. Sponsorship: Sponsors benefit from a range of promotional opportunities, and directly meeting talented researchers through headline attendance at our Careers Fair for Researchers and options to participate in the event programme of panel sessions.
2. Careers Fair: exhibit your organisation at our Careers Fair for Researchers, your opportunity to meet highly skilled researchers from all disciplines.
3. Panel sessions: If you already have members of staff who left academic research (PhD or a postdoc/research assistant/technician role) within the last seven years, we may be able to include them as speakers for one of the conference panel sessions. Panel speakers typically give a short, informal talk (no slides needed) about their current role, experience of leaving academia/entering their current sector, tips on how to prepare for career transition etc., and take part in a Q&A session at the end of the panel. Do you have a staff member who could take part in this way? Our researchers really appreciate being able to hear from others who have taken the steps that they are contemplating.

For more information or to discuss your participation, please email chris.jeffs@careers.ox.ac.uk

Former researchers

If you have moved out of academia within the last seven years or so, enjoy sharing your experience of making that move with others and are willing to do so in a conference session, please get in touch with us. We’re always looking for panel speakers and are grateful to everyone who finds the time to share their knowledge in this way.

Please contact chris.jeffs@careers.ox.ac.uk to find out how you can be part of our next conference.

Conference brochures

The conference brochures contain details of all of the sessions taking place at each event. These include bios for speakers and workshop facilitators and an overview of employers who took part in the employer networking lunches.

We are proud to have worked with speakers with fantastically varied research backgrounds and from a wide range of sectors and companies to take part in the panel sessions at each of our previous conferences. Browsing through their bios is a great way to start thinking about potential routes beyond academia. Be open-minded as you look, and don’t read only the panels most closely aligned to your research area; many of these bios give evidence of inspiring degrees of career flexibility.

• 2023 conference brochure
• 2022 conference brochure
• 2021 conference brochure
• 2020 conference brochure
• 2019 conference brochure
• 2018 conference brochure

2023 Conference Schedule

2023 Sponsors

Ab Initio’s customers use their enterprise software platform to build applications that tackle the largest and most complex data processing challenges. These applications are some of the most complex operational and analytical systems in the world - mission critical applications with demanding performance requirements. Ab Initio are looking for Computer Science and STEM students who love to solve problems by really getting into detail, as well as having a desire for continual personal learning and development.

d-fine is a European consultancy firm with 1000 employees, distributed across ten offices in seven countries. Our London office in the heart of the City was established in 2005 and is focused on analytically challenging and quantitative projects, with the aim of designing and developing future-proof solutions for business problems. These solutions are based on extensive practical experience and highly qualified employees with a quantitative and technological background.

Jane Street is a global trading firm with offices in New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Amsterdam. Their approach is rooted in technology and rigorous quantitative analysis, but their success is driven by their people. 

Jane Street is looking for smart people with curious minds to fill a number of roles across its five offices. Think you might be the right fit? Explore Jane Street's open opportunities.

TNG Technology Consulting is a German value-based consulting partnership focused on solving hard IT problems with high end technology – from setting IT strategy to implementing practical solutions. We offer the right place for everybody who has an analytical mindset, already possesses some coding experience and wants to develop their skills. Find out about TNG’s employment opportunities and different locations.  

We are also grateful for support from the Oxford University Researcher Hub.