Jobs in Philosophy
Sources and Resources


Note: This page is mostly from 1996/1997 and now [10 years later] updated only very occasionally.

The idea of this service is just to provide the technical means for efficient job advertisement in philosophy. So, if your department has a job or you learned about one at some other place, post it on these pages! The vast majority of jobs are still advertised in printed newspapers, bits of paper on noticeboards, etc. - sometimes deliberately reducing the amount of people who will learn about the job. Here, only a larger number of individuals from all places can help. Thank you!

The sources listed below are searched for job adverts whenever I find the time - not too frequently at present. If you happen to know of a further source of relevant job ads on the internet, please tell us about it! (There must be things going on in French, Spanish, Italian etc. that we don't yet know about.) We are looking for regular contributors from all over the world - if you have a little time to spare, let us know!

We will list any kind of job opportunities for philosophers, academic and non-academic, short term postgrad jobs just as well as tenured professorships. At present, grants, scholarships, prizes, bursaries etc. that are awarded regularly throughout the years are only listed if they are advertised each time they come up. We are unable to track the considerable amount of such potential non-job funding for philosophers.

Sources

  • A US-based philosophy newsgroup has a fair number of ads and other information.
  • The main source in the UK is the new (5/99) www.jobs.ac.uk, offered by a consortium of universities in Britain.
  • The best source in Germany is Die Zeit, not only the main paper for academic job ads, but also operating a search robot for ads online, in German. (You can search for parts of words here, such as "philos".)
    You can get a selection of their printed ads via E-mail as well - unfortunately trunkated to the bare minimum, forcing you to get the printed paper if you want to consider applying.

  • The German "Arbeitsamt" (Federal Job Agency) has their jobs on the net. Search for "Professor" (8711), "Wiss. Assistent" (8712) or stright for "Philosoph" (8824)! Strangely, they do have jobs from time to time.

  • At present, the Chronicle of Higher Education is the main source for jobs in the USA.

  • The Academic Position Network at Midwest University has a large amout of ads that can be searched for "philosophy", giving you lots of jobs with a "management philosophy", etc. - as well as some real philosophy jobs, primarily in the US.

  • Huw Price has a useful list of jobs in Australasia within the Australian Philosophy Net.

  • One major source for the UK is Jobs.ac.uk, which includes an e-mail alerting service.

  • The Times Higher Education Supplement is the main source for academic jobs in the UK. It can be searched for the word philosophy here. Try things like "fellowship" as well. (Even when their system is up and running, you can only search for complete words.)

  • The weekly Oxford University Gazette has occasional jobs and fellowships, as well as a comprehensive list of scholarships at Oxford. (There can be delays in the issues appearing on the net.)

  • The Guardian has a fair amount of relvant job ads that can be searched comfortably in one's "personal folder" - provided you are willing to tell them everything about your life. (Server is very unreliable.)

  • The main mailing list for philosophy, philos-l has a few jobs, amongst many other things. To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@liverpool.ac.uk with the text "subscribe philos-l". (750 subscribers in Dec. '96.)

  • A number of universities run a page where they advertise jobs within the institution - by now (2007), this should be nearly all universities do. You need to look at the relevant institutions themselves to find these ads.

    • Some APA politics:

    We have approached the American Philosophical Association about the possibility of publishing ads from their newsletter "Jobs for Philosophers" on the Web. The executive director, Mr. Hoffman, informed us [e-mail 17.12.96 & 3.1.97] that their job ads are not going to be published on the (dormant) APA web site in the near future but still demanded that we do not publish ads from their publication. They are concerned that PhilNet may be "simply reprinting material we provide only to our members without authorization from advertisers or the APA" (as if the APA had copyright on the material and as if the advertisers had any interest in limiting the spread of their advert). Mr Hoffman demanded "that you agree not to post any ads from JFP [their newsletter] unless approached directly by the person responsible for filling the position."

    The APA are thus deliberately limiting the accessibility of those ads, which is against in the interest of philosophy in the USA. We think that, ultimately, the APA is afraid that a web service that is widely used would harm their publication - in particular, it could reduce the substantial amount of money they are making from it (both from advertisers and from subscribers). A free web service, widely known and accessible to all makes the APA newsletter superflous.

    Contrast this with the attitude of the Chronicle of Higher Education who tells us [Mail, May 6th, 1997] that they are happy with our practise to publish their ads on our site given that we acknowledge the source of the information.

    N. B.: In July 1997, the APA has started announcing some of the ads from the summer jfp on the web. This information is used here as well (the ads often appear on our "Jobs in Philosophy" earlier anyway).

    Rough technical note:

    These pages consist of a main page (in English, German, French and Spanish) that links to a CGI-script. Depending on the continent you choose and on the language you started off with, the script collects the ads currently in the relevant directory, puts them in chronological order, adds a header and footer in the right language and displays the whole thing in html - all this inside a frame. (This is why you can't easily bookmark straight to one job list.) The posting form composes one entry, formats it in html, puts it in the right directory and then goes to the relevant list (in the right language) to show you the result of your posting. The script also displays outdated ads on demand (at the end of each list). It may be used for an E-mail list with job adverts if there is an interest in such a thing.

    In September 97, the job lists were produced about 220 times a day (80% in English). Have a look at the detailed statistics for the whole of PhilNet. -- Three years later, at the end of 2000 we have around 300 visitors per day.

    We are grateful to Reinhild Fritz and Jaques Poucet for help with the French version. Josep Macia Fabrega (Barcelona) and Antje Ritter (Hamburg) kindly helped with the Spanish version.

    Information about Departments

    Some indications about the quality of departments and particular courses in the USA as well as information about recent and future (!) staff changes etc. can be found in Brian Leiter's intriguing Philosophical Gourmet Report. The Chronicle of Higher Education also has general statistics about academia in the US (from Sept. 1996). The Voice of the Shuttle has lots of information about grants as well as other useful data about academia in the US.

    If you want to know something about the quality of a department in Britain, you may wish to have a look at the frequent research assessment exercises (RAE). Some information about grants etc. can be found at the British Academy

    The student representatives within the departments of philosophy in Germany compile a useful survey on the departments every year. A main part of the 1996 edition has been put on the Net in Düsseldorf.

    Links to home pages of individual departments around the world can be found on Dieter Köhler's list, for example.

    Links to places for sabbaticals can be found on sabbaticalhomes.com.

    A list of lists with announcements of philosophy conferences is here in Evansville and Dey Alexander also has a comprehensive list. ESAP is very useful for Europe.

    This service is brought to you by PhilNet in Hamburg, an association of philosophy students, providing internet services for philosophers. We have lots of useful resources, such as "Ariadne", a keyword-searchable collection of links in philosophy, etc. etc. VCM is teaching philosophy at the American College of Thessaloniki in Greece.
    PhilNet went online in December 1995, the job pages were opened on 6th of December 1996. (Originally called "Jobs for Philosophers" but renamedin May '97, to avoid confusion with an APA publication and to avoid decision on the gender of "philosophers" - in the gender-marked languages.)

    PhilNet was a member of Deutscher Philosophie-Knoten, where we were trying to join the forces of philosophy on the internet in German for a better service than what a single site could give at present - a project abandoned in the late 1990ies.

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