Enhancing the Employability of Humanities Postgraduates: a Students as Academic Partners Project Report

In an increasingly competitive employment market, postgraduates need to demonstrate more than the ‘skills,
knowledge, attitudes and experiences that are closely
associated with the research process’ (Golovushkina &
Milligan, 2013: 199). Yet results indicate that Worcester
postgraduate students remain unaware of the full range of
opportunities that exist alongside postgraduate study, and
how this affects their subsequent employability. This
research, undertaken with humanities post-graduate
students at University of Worcester, aims to contribute to
discussions about how to enhance the employability of
humanities postgraduates through extra-curricular
activities. The project was implemented as a Students
-As-Partners-in-Learning-Project, using action research; the issue was identified, base-line data collected and this resulted in the creation of a postgraduate blog incorporating suggestions of possible opportunitie
s and links to relevant websites for further information. Informed by this research, the student partners then took active roles in the organization of the Women’s History Network National Conference, ‘Home Fronts: Gender, War and Conflict’, hosted at the University of Worcester in September 2014, to broaden their existing skills base and then to connect this involvement to their professional development through a group CV review. The participants’ own experiences of wider engagement can therefore illuminat
e new ways for understanding employability in relation to humanities postgraduate students.