The Early Career Teaching Fellowship (ECTF). It’s a fantastic opportunity to gain interdisciplinary teaching experience. It’s an opportunity to develop your teaching philosophy. It’s an opportunity to learn what innovative teaching looks like, and to take creative risks in your teaching. The Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL) is unlike any other department at Warwick. Modules are open to students from all disciplines, and the style of teaching is more active and innovative than conventional lectures, which focus on the dissemination of information. There is a real focus on student-led learning and group discussions, and the forms of assessment are, for many students,more engaging and inclusive than your typical essay or presentation. The student-devised assessment (SDA), IATL’s signature form of assessment, empowers students to submit any medium they wish: poems, plays, paintings, essays, presentations, and so on.

All of this came as quite a shock to me when I joined the department back in October. I had two immediate questions: first, how can poems and paintings be assessed alongside conventional essays? I soon learned that we aren’t assessing assignments in terms of their poetic or aesthetic quality; we are assessing interdisciplinary skills, such as critical thinking and communication. Additionally, students submit an accompanying reflective piece with their SDA (i.e., the poem or painting) which makes explicit their interdisciplinary skills. My second question was: aren’t university students paying money to receive information, in lectures, rather than lead seminars themselves? However, I realised that IATL does not flip convention entirely on its head: it does not abandon conventional lectures altogether – indeed, these were still a key feature of Navigating Psychopathology, a module that I helped teach with Dr Vivian Joseph in my first term. There is still an important role for the dissemination of information by experts in a given field, depending on the module; but IATL also makes space for teaching practices that prioritise student engagement. Over time, I found myself drawn more and more to IATL’s teaching approach. It seemed more considered, flexible, and natural compared to teaching in other departments: my colleagues in IATL were constantly reflecting on what (interdisciplinary) teaching entails, whereas other departments often seem to passively internalise and reproduce their “signature pedagogies”.

My ECTF was a chance to engage with the literature on interdisciplinarity. I had a basic understanding of interdisciplinarity from my research background, having studied politics before transitioning to philosophy, but as an ECTF I was enrolled on the ‘Postgraduate Award in Interdisciplinary Pedagogy’ module, which involves close engagement with theoretical literature. This was a highlight for me. I built up a clearer picture of interdisciplinarity, and how it differs from transdisciplinarity, and came to develop my own conception: spontaneous interdisciplinarity, where the “integration” of disciplinary knowledge and methods occurs extemporaneously, more by accident than through active deliberation and foresight. This conception emerged out of my doctoral research on honesty, my growing interest in free writing, and my encounter with a paper by Midgelow on the transdisciplinary potential of improvisation.

Another highlight was my teaching project. In May, I facilitated three free writing workshops for undergraduate students and (post-)doctoral researchers. I organised one workshop through IATL, which was the culmination of my new reflections on interdisciplinary pedagogy. It took place in person and involved seven participants, myself included: four undergraduate students and three postdoctoral researchers from the social sciences, humanities, and arts. I decided what took place, as well as where, when, how, and why it took place. My primary teaching aim was to facilitate free writing, and my secondary aim was to facilitate critical discussions about our conceptions and experiences of free writing. Participants found my workshop therapeutic and, as a self-understanding exercise, both surprising and positive.

On the whole, the teaching (IATL) side of the ECTF had the perfect balance between guidance and independence. I had plenty of opportunities to learn from others, whether through feedback on my teaching practices or shadowing module convenors. But I also had enough space and time to develop my own research, and even to work on a collaborative paper with colleagues. I got stuck into marking, moderating, and reviewing undergraduate abstract submissions to ICUR, the International Conference of Undergraduate Research. There was always something to do, but never so much that I was inundated.

IATL also stood out to me as an especially collegial department. We would meet regularly as a team, and there was no sense of hierarchy: everyone spoke to everyone else as equals. Straight away I had opportunities to inform the direction of the department during our weekly meetings. Again, this took some getting used to, but I genuinely felt like a valued member of the department whose views were being considered rather than ignored. I also felt comfortable asking clarificatory questions at any time, and everyone was happy to explain jargon, acronyms, and the like.

I had the chance to co-organise a workshop on the ECTF for prospective applicants. This was another great experience for me because I have always been somewhat apprehensive about chairing events: for some reason I had built up the idea in my head that I would make a terrible host. This proved not to be the case, and it was yet another occasion during the ECTF where I tried something new and went out of my comfort zone. Another first for me was co-hosting two podcasts, one on my experience of the ECTF, the other on the topic of interdisciplinarity.

So far I have talked about only one half of the ECTF. The other half took place in the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS). The focus was to develop my research portfolio by converting my PhD thesis into publications; and to partake in weekly “Accolade” seminars, which covered everything from postdoc applications to interview techniques. I have only good things to say about the IAS. It’s fantastic to be part of an interdisciplinary research community: you are regularly interacting with postdocs from different departments and learning each week about disciplines and topics outside of your area of expertise. You are all in the same boat, too, having recently finished your PhD and wondering where on earth life will take you. The transition from PhD to employment is daunting, but it does wonders for your wellbeing to know people who can relate to your struggles as well as people who support countless PhD students year to year.

As part of the Accolade programme, I regularly presented my research to postdocs from all disciplines. This taught me how to communicate in clear, accessible language – a key interdisciplinary skill. The feedback I received helped me learn how people from other disciplines view my research. I remember presenting my ideas on honesty for fifteen minutes, thinking I had explained myself clearly to everyone, only to be asked later by a STEM student, what is the benefit of analysing concepts, such as honesty, in the first place? In other words, why should we philosophise about honesty? This taught me that disciplines, including philosophy, begin with certain assumptions, such as the value of philosophising, that are often taken for granted. It might take someone outside of our discipline to reveal them to us.

I think I made good use of my time in the IAS, managing to convert two chapters of my thesis into publications. I also managed to get some of my aphorisms published in a forthcoming book titled Philosophy of the Final Words. I tried to get my PhD published as a monograph, and my book of aphorisms published, but I’ve had no luck so far. I’m now a Teaching Fellow of IATL and an Associate Fellow of the IAS, and I’m grateful that I can stay involved in both. They are wonderful institutes, and I strongly encourage everyone to apply to the ECTF: you’ll be surrounded by the most supportive colleagues, making your transition from the PhD to whatever comes next far less daunting and more manageable.