What We Offer
VH@Duke Internship Program
Secure a competitive, paid semester-long or summer internship that will give you new perspective on research interests, or enable you to explore a potential career avenue.
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Doctoral Innovation Grants
Collaborate with your department’s leadership to secure special grants to enhance academic training in your areas of focus.
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Customized, One-on-One Advising
Reach out to Dr. Maria LaMonaca Wisdom, Director for Graduate Student Advising, for support in navigating academic and professional trajectories.
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Collaborative Research
Find teams, partners and resources for your scholarly pursuits, including Bass Connections, Story+, writing support and research funding.
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Professional Development
Learn about key resources at Duke and beyond that can help you cultivate versatility and launch your career.
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Insight, Advice & Stories
See the VH@Duke blog for perspectives from the community of versatile humanists at Duke.
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Mentors and Networks
Connect with Duke alumni, current students, faculty, and others to support your academic and professional growth.
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About VH@Duke
In 2016, Duke University received an NEH NextGen PhD implementation grant to enrich humanities doctoral training. The resulting program, Versatile Humanists at Duke (VH@Duke) was a collaboration between the Office of the Provost and Duke Graduate School. The program's mission was to help doctoral students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences thrive while in graduate school, and to help prepare them for a variety of roles—in higher education, government, business, the non-profit sector, or wherever their talents and inclinations might lead.
This website documents the work of the project (concluded in 2019), which served as a catalyst for PhD program innovation at Duke on a much greater scale. Current Duke doctoral students in humanities and humanistic social sciences may continue to reach out to Dr. Maria LaMonaca Wisdom for advising and coaching support. Anyone interested in learning more about this project (especially after perusing the documents below) is welcome to reach out to Dr. Wisdom, or to Dr. Edward Balleisen, faculty PI and Duke's Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies.
Read about VH@Duke in Change: The Magazine of HIgher Learning
Blog
Team-Teaching the Humanities at a Community College
The opportunity to team-teach with a Durham Tech faculty member provided doctoral student Maggie McDowell with unusually rich and multifaceted pedagogical training.
Navigating Hierarchical Relationships in Graduate School
Not sure how to ask your advisor for something you need? Some tips on managing up and showing up.
Reflections on My Summer Internship at UNC Press
History PhD student Siobhan Barco reflects on how a self-designed summer internship with UNC Press broadened both her academic and professional horizons.
Four Reasons to Read the Final NEH Report for Versatile Humanists at Duke
Do you really want to know how the NEH sausage was made? You just might.
Eating, Moving, Resting: Elements of Self-Care
Sustained, deep intellectual work can be rough on your body and spirit. A few ideas to counteract “brain in a bottle” syndrome.
What Are Dissertations Made Of? My Summer with Artworks
PhD student Alex Strecker knew he wanted a summer internship in Greece, but didn’t anticipate where else that experience would lead.
Against Overwhelm: Keeping Sight of the Big Picture
The group coaching format provides powerful tools with which to confront the issue of grad student overwhelm.
Career Diversity is Not Plan B: Thoughts from a PhD Candidate on the Nonfaculty Job Market
Not every humanities PhD candidate aspires to be a tenure-track professor. What’s the way forward for these students?
What Are You Waiting For?
Are there things you’re not letting yourself do or have until you finish the PhD?
The Big Picture Faculty Job Search
The big picture job application is less about writing to rules or processes and more about writing towards a desired outcome.