Your Academic Job Talk Must Include an Epilogue

This chapter details additional considerations regarding academic job talks not discussed previously in the book. Previous chapters of The Early Career Researcher’s Toolbox detailed the principles for selecting and describing scholarship in an academic job talk. In particular, these chapters conceptualized the job talk as a story of the speaker’s research program. Constructing this story involves strategically selecting three pieces of scholarship to discuss during the talk and in a way that is informed by principles of storytelling in film, namely, the concept of the film trilogy. Building off of Chaps. 13 , 14 , and 15 , this chapter argues that, in addition to fusing pieces of scholarship to form a trilogy of research stories, a well-constructed job talk must provide an audience with a sense that the speaker’s research program has “fuel” for more research. As such, this chapter details the core features of the epilogue of the job talk and its utility for letting the audience know about not only the “next steps” in the speaker’s career but also the potential for forming collaborative ties with colleagues in the audience.