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How should you present yourself as an academic on the internet? It\u2019s a vexed question. There are just so many options for making a \u2018place\u2019 where people can find out more about you that it can be hard to make a decision. I\u2019ve been thinking about this since Blair wrote to me with a question:<\/p>\n
I am in the final six months of my PhD and am currently starting to look for academic jobs. I have noticed that a lot of near PhD graduates have their own personal websites that showcase them, their research and experiences.\u00a0I was wondering if you have written anything on creating one of these and what is the best way to do so and what to include?<\/em><\/p>\n Good question Blair \u2013 I\u2019ve been so focussed on helping people negotiate the demands of social media and blogging I\u2019ve neglected the good old, stand alone \u2018home page\u2019. Remember those? Just a simple page where you put a picture of yourself and some information, maybe some links. You make a home page out of code, or a simple editor link it to a domain you actually own. The idea seems curiously retro in this age of platforms and channels, but since I started to look into it in an attempt to answer Blair\u2019s question, I\u2019m starting to wonder: is the humble academic homepage making a comeback?<\/p>\n Image search for \u2018home pages of the 90s\u2019. Takes me back!<\/p><\/div>\n The idea of the home page that you edit yourself makes me nostalgic. I was born in 1970, so I remember a world before the internet \u2013 even before computers. My first memory of the internet is a friend showing me the text based browser \u2018Lynx\u2019 in 1993: we spent a fun afternoon doing this new thing called \u2018surfing\u2019. I used a dialup modem to connect to the university internet service in 1994, much to the annoyance of housemates who couldn\u2019t receive incoming calls. If you can believe it,\u00a0I still have a home-brewed home page<\/a>, which I only just realised was\u00a0last updated over ten years ago! I edited the code on this page by hand \u2013 which is why it\u2019s nothing fancy. Interestingly, it doesn\u2019t turn up in searches, perhaps because I have so much out there now (I guess I should update it, given that I haven\u2019t worked at RMIT since 2012\u2026).<\/p>\n Webpage aesthetics have changed so much over the decades. The first pages I saw were just green text on a black background. Then came visual browsers, Mosaic and Netscape, allowing pictures and even movement. This led to some truly horrible looking webpages, as most people do not have design training\u2026 Academics have always been early adopters of trends in self presentation on the internet.\u00a0I remember academics making their own \u2018home brewed\u2019 webpages in the late 1990s; most were in maths, computer science or physics. You could tell they were Hard Core Scientists who didn\u2019t need no\u00a0Dreamweaver<\/a>. Their pages have a recognisable aesthetic that is informed by simple implementation of html: plain white backgrounds, blue text for links and, if you were feeling fancy, perhaps a line break or two.<\/p>\n Non-sciencey academics didn\u2019t seem to bother so much with having a webpage in the 90s, but by the early 00\u2019s, even architecture academics were starting to put up custom built webpages to advertise their research. It made sense back then because University websites did not have content management systems, so getting your details up on the web was a painful process. But the so called \u2018Web 2.0\u2019 revolution happened, which signalled a decline in the webpage cottage industry. Suddenly there was things like LiveJournal, then Blogging platforms, later came Facebook and Linkedin and all the rest. Now academics have lots of options for sharing information about themselves and their research, including Academia.edu and ResearchGate, who are both hopeful start ups who want you to spend time making their platform look lively.<\/p>\n As someone said: \u201cIf it\u2019s free, YOU are the product\u201d. The problem with so many of these platforms is that you don\u2019t own the data you put on them. Nor can you control what the data you enter into these sites is used for and how much it will generate annoying advertising directed at you (if I see another menopause cure\u2026!). Although I love the convenience of large platforms, and the immediate networks they open up, I think the humble, stand alone webpage has a lot to offer your average academic in terms of self presentation. I asked on Twitter and people sent me a broad range of examples that demonstrated the contemporary,\u00a0stand alone academic homepage comes in many shapes and sizes.<\/p>\n The home page of\u00a0David Stern at the Crawford School at ANU<\/a>\u00a0is pleasingly simple and shows you don\u2019t have to really push the boat out, design wise, to communicate effectively who you are and what you are about. Likewise\u00a0Seamus Albion<\/a>\u00a0has a charmingly 90\u2019s style page that projects \u2018serious academic\u2019 as well as anything.\u00a0Michael Bulmer<\/a>\u00a0sticks with a simple aesthetic, but through his placement of texts and images gives us a hint of his personality too.\u00a0Ben Swift<\/a>, a design academic at ANU, had one of the more sophisticated \u2018home-brew\u2019 pages I looked at. Interestingly, Ben\u2019s first picture is of his back \u2013 which works really well. Most of us would not make such a brave design choice, but you would expect that from a design academic!\u00a0Alexandra Hogan<\/a>\u00a0has a very neatly organised and approachable page, that I quite envy. I also really likedLaura Portwood\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0page for the same reason. Both these pages made me reflect on how important the photo of the person is to a page design and how a different emphasis on the portrait can create a very different sense of who the person is.<\/p>\n I asked a few people about what they thought the value of a self owned, self managed webpage was for academics. Most said they liked the simplicity and control the humble homepage offers to \u2018package\u2019 their academic identity. As\u00a0Andrew Glassner<\/a>\u00a0put it:\u00a0\u201cI hope it offers people a sense of the work I do and the things I\u2019m interested in, and it lets me keep these projects organized and in one place. It\u2019s also a single resource to point people to for a CV, or article, book summary, artwork, etc.\u201d<\/em>. Of course, having a place for people to find out more about you is not a bad idea when you are job hunting,\u00a0Cadace Lapan<\/a>\u00a0put one up and noticed \u201cbumps in page views\u201d when she was looking, although no employer ever mentioned they looked at it. I guess the key advantage of a simple home page is there are no comments to manage!<\/p>\n In my Twitter conversations, some academics, unsurprisingly all women, told me that their decision to maintain their own presence online had raised eyebrows around the workplace. One told me:\u00a0\u201cI have been questioned at work why I would want one separate to my standard university-provided page, but I strongly feel that building an independent academic online presence is important.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>She noted that lab heads in science disciplines will often have one. Perhaps, if you are seen to be coping the \u2018higher ups\u2019, you can be perceived as an upstart? Or perhaps it\u2019s just mundane patriarchal crap: policing women\u2019s behaviour is as rampant in academia as it is everywhere.<\/p>\n To get back to Blair\u2019s question, if you are to make a home page, what should you include? Start with a simple picture and bio, written in the first person. This is enough for a useful placeholder and you can use the rest of the space to direct people to other sites, such as your research page at the uni, Linkedin, or your blog. If you\u2019re enthusiastic, you could set up a couple of linked pages to showcase your research and projects, but bear in mind you\u2019ll have to do some routine maintenance to keep it up to date. Don\u2019t forget contact details! I think you should give some serious thought to the images you use, especially if you plan to include a photo. I don\u2019t think you need to have a serious professional portrait taken: you might have one on your phone that better represents your personality and approach to life and work. A little bit of simple fiddling with the photo editor on the phone can make it look nicer (I use\u00a0SnapSeed<\/a>\u00a0on the iPhone). If in doubt, turn the picture black and white \u2013 a trick I learned in design school to make it look like you made an effort.<\/p>\n Check out what other people in your discipline are doing, but be bold. Express yourself! If you\u2019re keen to make your own, home-brew, artisanal homepage, there\u2019s some tools that make it much easier.\u00a0Squarespace<\/a>\u00a0is a service where you can pay to craft and host extremely professional looking sites. My friend Narelle Lemon uses this for her\u00a0Explore and Create Co<\/a>\u00a0project, which looks very fancy. When I questioned the cost (it\u2019s not inexpensive) she wisely pointed out that it was the same amount of money as a nice new pair of jeans \u2013 and at least as useful.\u00a0My sister Anitra Nottingham uses Wix<\/a>, which is a similar product to Squarespace \u2013 no doubt there are more. If you\u2019re looking for something cheaper, a few people pointed me at\u00a0Carrd<\/a>\u00a0seems to be a good option, or you can use a free service like\u00a0WordPress<\/a>, my preferred blogging platform.<\/p>\n I\u2019m inspired to go back and fix my old home page now! I\u2019d love to hear your experience of making your own home page \u2013 and see some examples in the comments<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/homepage60s.png\")