Post-PhD, my career as a sociologist has not been a conventional one. I’ve done much of what sociologists do on a daily basis: I’ve taught in universities, conducted research projects, published scholarly articles and books, applied (sometimes successful for grants), attended conferences, reviewed journal articles and examined PhDs. However, for various reasons, I have never held a full-time academic position, instead constructing a ‘portfolio’ career that is at its best exciting and flexible and at worst insecure and low-paid. Further, I also do a lot of work outside the academy, including writing for magazines and blogs and conducting research in the Jewish community.
When I try and articulate what it is that ties the disparate threads of my career together, the word ‘public intellectual’ often springs to mind. I resist it though: in the UK at least the term tends to be bestowed rather than claimed for oneself; we live in a society where to describe oneself as an intellectual risks hubris. In this country at least it is only those at the absolute pinnacle of academia – Richard Dawkins, John Grey and the like – that tend to be called public intellectuals.