Save the date and register today:

The Graduate Theatre Careers Symposium

  • A free symposium on alt-academic and non-academic careers, organized by current graduate students and recent grads for current and former graduate students

Saturday February 5th, 2022

Online via Zoom

Register by following the link below

Symposium sessions will take place from the early afternoon into evening EST, and from the morning to afternoon PST.

Aims: The goal of the symposium is to support graduate students in Theatre, Drama, and Performance studies to better be able to search for and secure alt-academic or non-academic positions—something that most will face regardless of career aspirations.

The symposium will include two practical workshops on resume development, job searching, networking, and translating skills gained in graduate education to the non-academic job market by Dr. Lisa Aikman and Dr. David Owen. There will also be an open long table event and a networking event where attendees will have a chance to make connections with former theatre and performance studies grads now working in alt-ac careers or outside the academy. More detailed information, including about the accessibility of each event, will be available on the conference website in the coming weeks.

About the organizers/context of the event: Signy Lynch, Hannah Rackow and Ben Gillespie are investigators of a two-year study for the Canadian Association of Theatre Research on graduate outcomes in Theatre and Performance Studies (link), which revealed a need for alternative-academic and non-academic professional development for graduate students. While studies (for example, this one) show that the vast majority of PhD grads (and MFAs) will not end up with tenured or tenured-track jobs, almost all professionalization projects for graduate students are geared towards making students more competitive for a limited number of tenure-track jobs. 

Let us know about your access needs and what you’re looking for from this symposium by filling out this form. You can also email Signy, Hannah, and Ben at graduatetheatrecareers@gmail.com to convey this information, if that works better for you. 

TO REGISTER FOR THE EVENT, PLEASE GO TO OUR EVENTBRITE PAGE HERE,

Note: if this registration page is not accessible for you, please contact graduatetheatrecareers@gmail.com

Sponsored by:

The Canadian Association for Theatre Research

The University of British Columbia Department of Theatre and Film

The University of Toronto Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies

The York University Department of Theatre

The York University Department of Theatre and Performance Studies

Special thanks to Mary Pecchia for administrative support.