The academic CV is the one document where the usual advice about brevity is wrong. It is a complete record, not a marketing summary, and shortlisting panels expect to find publications, funding, teaching, supervision, peer review and service all present and all verifiable. A two-page academic CV signals that the applicant does not know the conventions.
The ordering is also different. Publications come early, often immediately after education, because they are the primary currency. Funding follows, because it demonstrates independence. Everything else supports those two.
Publications should be listed in full, in a consistent citation style, with your position in the author list intact. Panels read author order carefully, and reordering names or omitting co-authors to make a contribution look larger is a serious integrity problem rather than a presentational choice.
This example is written for a postdoctoral researcher applying for a lectureship or a fellowship.
Opens in the editor with this content already filled in, so you can replace it with your own.
Ananya Menon
Postdoctoral Research Associate · Environmental Data Science
a.menon@example.ac.uk+44 7700 900751Norwich, United KingdomORCID: 0000-0002-0000-0000 (example identifier)
Research Profile
Postdoctoral research associate in environmental data science with 11 peer-reviewed publications, 5 as first author, and co-investigator experience on a £480,000 council-funded project. Research focuses on quantifying uncertainty in satellite-derived land surface estimates and communicating that uncertainty to land management practitioners. Co-supervised two doctoral students to completion and convene a master’s module of 60 students.
Education
October 2017 – March 2021
PhD Environmental Science
University of East Anglia · Norwich, United Kingdom
•Thesis: "Propagating observational uncertainty through land surface classification at regional scale".
•Examined without corrections. Funded by a competitive doctoral training partnership studentship.
September 2016 – September 2017
MSc Applied Statistics (Distinction)
University of Sheffield · Sheffield, United Kingdom
Distinction
July 2013 – May 2016
BSc (Hons) Geography
University of Delhi · Delhi, India
First Class
Academic Appointments
April 2021 – Present
Postdoctoral Research Associate
University of East Anglia, School of Environmental Sciences · Norwich, United Kingdom
•Lead the uncertainty quantification workstream of a multi-institution project on land use change detection, working with two partner universities and a national agency.
•Developed an open Bayesian hierarchical framework for propagating sensor uncertainty into classification outputs, released as an R package with documentation and test data.
•Initiated a collaboration with a hydrology group at a partner institution that has produced two co-authored papers outside the original project scope.
•Contributed the methods section and data management plan to a successful £480,000 council grant application, and am named co-investigator.
•Review for three journals in the field, typically eight to ten manuscripts a year.
October 2018 – March 2021
Graduate Teaching Assistant
University of East Anglia · Norwich, United Kingdom
•Led practical classes in spatial analysis and statistical computing for undergraduate cohorts of 40 to 70.
•Marked coursework and examinations across three modules, with moderation responsibilities in the final year.
Publications
June 2024
Propagating sensor uncertainty into regional land cover classification: a hierarchical approach
Menon, A., Whitmore, G., and Carter, E. · Journal of Environmental Informatics
DOI 10.0000/example.2024.001
November 2023
Comparing uncertainty representations for practitioner decision support in land management
Menon, A., and Bennett, O. · Environmental Modelling & Decision Science
DOI 10.0000/example.2023.014
April 2023
Sensitivity of hydrological model outputs to land cover classification error
Reed, T., Menon, A., Iyer, K., and Whitmore, G. · Hydrological Processes Letters
DOI 10.0000/example.2023.007
September 2022
An open R implementation of hierarchical classification uncertainty
Menon, A. · Journal of Open Research Software
DOI 10.0000/example.2022.031
February 2022
Regional trends in land surface change detection accuracy, 2005 to 2020
Menon, A., Carter, E., and Rao, A. · International Journal of Remote Sensing Applications
DOI 10.0000/example.2022.004
January 2025
Practitioner interpretation of probabilistic land cover maps: a mixed-methods study
Bennett, O., Menon, A., and Brooks, A. · Environmental Science & Policy Studies
Accepted, in press.
Research Projects & Funding
September 2022 – Present
Uncertainty-aware land use change detection (council-funded)
Named co-investigator
•£480,000 over three years, funded by a national research council; three partner institutions.
•Contributed the methods section and data management plan to the successful application.
•Lead the uncertainty quantification workstream and line-manage one research assistant.
January 2023 – March 2024
Practitioner decision support pilot (internal seed funding)
Principal investigator
•£18,000 internal seed award to test how land managers interpret probabilistic maps.
•Wrote the application, obtained ethics approval and ran the study; produced one accepted publication.
Conference Presentations
September 2024
International Symposium on Environmental Data Science
Invited speaker · Vienna, Austria
Invited talk on communicating classification uncertainty to non-specialists.
April 2023
European Geosciences Union General Assembly
Oral presentation · Vienna, Austria
Session on remote sensing uncertainty.
August 2022
Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference
Oral presentation · London, United Kingdom
June 2023
UK Spatial Statistics Workshop
Invited speaker · Lancaster, United Kingdom
Invited methods tutorial on hierarchical models.
Teaching & Supervision
September 2022 – Present
Module Convenor, Spatial Data Analysis (MSc)
University of East Anglia · Norwich, United Kingdom
•Convene and teach a master’s module of approximately 60 students, including lecture design, assessment and moderation.
•Redesigned the assessment from a written examination to a reproducible analysis portfolio, which raised submission of working code from around half the cohort to almost all of it.
September 2021 – Present
Research Supervision
University of East Anglia · Norwich, United Kingdom
•Co-supervised two doctoral students to completion, both examined without major corrections.
•Primary supervisor for nine master’s dissertations across three cohorts; two were developed into conference papers.
Awards & Fellowships
October 2017
Doctoral Training Partnership Studentship
National research council
Competitive fully funded studentship covering fees and stipend.
Named referees, which are conventional rather than optional in academia.
Recommended CV structure
This is the running order the example uses. It is a starting point rather than a rule, but the order reflects what tends to be read first in this profession.
Research Profile — Three or four lines positioning you for the role.
Education — Degrees, diplomas and school-leaving qualifications.
Academic Appointments — Paid roles, in reverse chronological order.
Publications — Papers, articles and posters, in your citation style.
Research Projects & Funding — Research projects, studies and audits.
Conference Presentations — Talks given and conferences attended.
Teaching & Supervision — Lecturing, demonstrating and supervision.
Awards & Fellowships — Prizes, scholarships and distinctions.
Research Skills — Grouped skills, for example "Languages" and "Tooling".
Professional Memberships & Service — Bodies you belong to, with membership numbers where relevant.
Languages — Spoken languages with CEFR levels.
References — Referees, or a line saying they are available on request.
Sections worth adding
Software & Data Outputs — Increasingly expected in computational fields; cite repositories and datasets as research outputs.
Public Engagement — Relevant for funders and institutions that assess impact and outreach.
Skills worth including
Grouped rather than listed in one block. Grouping makes a long list readable and shows that you can tell the difference between the things you use daily and the things you have touched.
Methods
Bayesian hierarchical modelling · Spatial statistics · Time series analysis · Remote sensing analysis · Uncertainty quantification
Computational
R · Python · Stan · Google Earth Engine · High-performance computing (SLURM) · Git
Data
Satellite imagery processing · Sensor network data · Reproducible pipelines · FAIR data practice · Open data publication
Research Practice
Grant writing · Peer review · Preregistration · Research ethics applications · Collaborative fieldwork
Beyond the technical list: Supervising doctoral students, Managing collaborations across institutions, Writing to a funding deadline, Responding constructively to reviewer comments. These belong inside your experience bullets, demonstrated, rather than in a list of adjectives.
Example professional summary
Three or four lines, positioned for the role rather than describing your personality. Two versions you can adapt:
Postdoctoral research associate in environmental data science with 11 peer-reviewed publications, 5 as first author, and co-investigator experience on a £480,000 council-funded project. Research focuses on quantifying uncertainty in satellite-derived land surface estimates. Co-supervised two doctoral students to completion and convene a master’s module of 60 students.
Early-career researcher with a completed PhD and two years of postdoctoral experience, building an independent line of work on spatial uncertainty. Six first-author publications, one fellowship application under review, and regular peer review for three journals in the field.
Writing your experience
The difference between a CV that gets a call and one that does not is almost always in the bullet points. Each pair below shows a real rewrite of the kind of line that appears on most CVs in this field.
Weak
Published several papers in good journals.
Stronger
11 peer-reviewed publications, 5 as first author, including two in journals with a strong disciplinary standing; h-index 7 (Scopus, 2025).
Countable, verifiable, and it makes author position explicit without overclaiming.
Weak
Worked on funded research projects.
Stronger
Named researcher co-investigator on a £480,000 three-year council-funded project, contributing the methods section and the data management plan to the successful application.
Names the amount and the specific contribution to the bid, which is what distinguishes a co-investigator from a hired hand.
Weak
Supervised students.
Stronger
Co-supervised two doctoral students to completion and primary supervisor for nine master’s dissertations across three cohorts, with two dissertations subsequently developed into conference papers.
Levels, numbers and an outcome, all of which are assessed for supervisory capability.
Weak
Presented at conferences.
Stronger
Invited speaker at two international workshops and contributed 7 conference presentations including 3 oral presentations at the main disciplinary conference.
Separates invited from contributed talks, which is the distinction panels are looking for.
Taken from the example
The sample CV for this profession is fully written. A few sections from it, so you can see the level of specificity that works:
Experience
Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of East Anglia, School of Environmental Sciences
Lead the uncertainty quantification workstream of a multi-institution project on land use change detection, working with two partner universities and a national agency.
Developed an open Bayesian hierarchical framework for propagating sensor uncertainty into classification outputs, released as an R package with documentation and test data.
Initiated a collaboration with a hydrology group at a partner institution that has produced two co-authored papers outside the original project scope.
Contributed the methods section and data management plan to a successful £480,000 council grant application, and am named co-investigator.
Audit and research
Uncertainty-aware land use change detection (council-funded) — £480,000 over three years, funded by a national research council; three partner institutions.
Practitioner decision support pilot (internal seed funding) — £18,000 internal seed award to test how land managers interpret probabilistic maps.
Education
PhD Environmental Science, University of East Anglia
MSc Applied Statistics (Distinction), University of Sheffield — Distinction
BSc (Hons) Geography, University of Delhi — First Class
Common mistakes
Applying commercial CV advice
Compressing an academic CV to two pages removes the material being assessed. Length is expected; padding is not.
Altering author order or omitting co-authors
Author position is meaningful and checkable. Presenting a middle-author paper as if it were first-author work is a research integrity issue.
Listing papers "in preparation" alongside published work
Separate published, accepted, under review and in preparation into clearly labelled groups. Mixing them is treated as inflation.
No funding detail
Even small internal grants demonstrate the ability to write a successful application. Give the funder, the amount and your role.
Teaching reduced to a single line
For lectureship applications teaching carries real weight. Give the modules, the level, the cohort size and any curriculum development.
ATS considerations
Applicant tracking systems behave differently by sector, and generic advice is often wrong for a given field. These points are specific to academic researcher applications:
Academic recruitment is usually reviewed by panels rather than parsers, but many institutions still route applications through a system. Keep the CV single column and avoid text boxes.
Include your ORCID identifier - it is the most reliable way for a panel to verify your publication record.
Spell out funder names in full alongside abbreviations on first use.
Use a single, consistent citation style throughout. Inconsistency reads as carelessness to an academic reader.
The Minimal ATS layout is built for this, and the ATS guide covers what parsers do to a file in more detail.
Questions about academic researcher CVs
How long should an academic CV be?
As long as the record requires. Four to eight pages is normal for an early-career researcher, and considerably longer for established academics. Some funders specify a maximum, in which case follow it exactly.
How should I list publications under review?
In a separate, clearly labelled group after published work. Give the journal only if it is genuinely under review there, and never list a manuscript as under review when it has not been submitted.
Should I include metrics such as h-index?
Conventions vary by discipline and some institutions discourage them. If you include them, state the source and the date, and be aware that some panels regard them as a weak proxy.
How do I show independence as a postdoc?
First or last author papers, work you initiated outside your supervisor’s programme, collaborations you set up, grants where you wrote sections, and invited talks. Panels are looking specifically for these.
Do I need to include a teaching philosophy?
Not on the CV. It is usually requested as a separate document for teaching-focused posts. Keep the CV to what you have taught and to what effect.