Exploring Careers

The Bridges Initiative serves all scholars trained in French history and Francophone studies, no matter your stage or station: graduate student, postdoc, early- or mid-career professionals. You will find options, resources, and most of all, a community. We want to help make the career exploration process more energizing and motivating, and offer a range of resources below. In addition, you can easily connect with people to help with our Bridges Database.

AHA Career Contacts
(how to become a Junior Contact)

An AHA networking building tool for finding trained historians who now work in non-academic fields

“Trailblazers Beyond the Tenure Track” is an interview series hosted by Grad Futures Professional Development at Princeton University, in which graduate students interview graduate school alumni pursuing exciting careers outside of academia.

“Reimagining the PhD” is a brief TEDx talk by Nadia Jaber. Although the talk is given from the perspective of someone who pursued a PhD in the natural sciences, some of her insights may be of interest to PhD students in History who love the subject matter, but would prefer to crossover into non-academic careers.

Imagine PhD is a free online tool for researching and planning careers with a PhD in fields associated with humanities and social sciences.

Whether in the professional world or inside the academy, PhDs often seek to continue their research. This page lists possible funding sources for PhDs or PhD students who work in career paths beyond colleges or universities. While the list below is not exhaustive, it's a great place to start. If you are aware of additional sources of external funding available to scholars who work in careers beyond the academy, please get in touch.

Graduate Student Public Humanities Fellowships in Partnership with Humanities New York are available to enrolled graduate students at the City University of New York Graduate Center, Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Stony Brook, SUNY Binghamton, the University of Rochester or Syracuse University. 

National Park Service (NPS) Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship program, supported by NPF thanks due to a grant of the Mellon Foundation funds the work of annual cohorts of humanities scholars whose historical research in and around our national parks leads to further discovery of untold perspectives and voices. 

The National Coalition for Independent Scholars hosts a variety of resources and support, including external funding for independent scholars who work outside of the academy as well as contingent faculty, lectures, adjuncts, and contract workers. This Coalition offers quarterly grants to support research, conference travel, and other general expenses to anyone who has been a member for 12 to 18 months. Those who are leaving academy but may wish to continue their scholarship should therefore consider joining as soon as possible.

The Coordinating Council for Women in History is currently expanding its support—funding and otherwise--to women in the historical professions and to historians across fields and beyond academia. Among its current roster of activities is a series of professional workshops devoted to so-called “alt-ac” (alternative academic) and non-academic work.