Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide

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Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide

Transforming academic lives through helping you juggle your myriad responsibilities and prioritizing meaningful work.

The core of my business is the Academic Writing Studio which provides resources and community to support the development and maintenance of an effective writing practice. I also offer coaching services for those at all stages of an academic career, from finishing up a PhD to contemplating retirement.

05/09/2026

It’s not surprising if your writing gets set aside as you transition into the first semester of a new academic teaching year.

Registering for my next Planning Class, means you have a date in the calendar to take a breath and think about how you’re going to pick the writing back up, as well as what kind of work you’ll do on your writing projects for the rest of the semester.

The dedicated 2-hour live session of the class is happening on Friday 18 September and includes coaching for participants on their challenges this coming semester..

There are self-paced resources to help you prepare, and to figure out how writing, teaching, and getting enough rest all fit together. You choose how much of those you use based on your needs and the time available.

Just attending that session *will* make a difference. Registering now will ease your anticipatory anxiety.

Registration is open now and it's only £40!

03/09/2026

Your research matters.
I know there are a lot of very loud voices saying it doesn’t. But they are wrong.

You don’t need to write to convince the nay-sayers.

You can write to communicate with the other people who are interested in what you are interested in.

To say: “Look what I’ve figured out! Isn’t this interesting? I hope it helps you figure out something you’ve been trying to figure out.”

Because that’s what scholarly communication is about.

Whether it’s conference papers or articles or monographs or edited collections. Or policy briefings, op-eds, or some other way of communicating to people who aren’t scholars themselves.

Finding time to work on your research and writing is difficult.

But it’s even harder, when you’re wondering whether it’s even worth it, or are trying to write for readers you don’t care about that much because you think you have to.

What would happen if you give yourself permission to write the things you want to write for the people you most want to communicate with?

You might not know the answer to that until you try it. Do you want to try it and see?

What would be the smallest useful amount of time you could give this kind of writing? As an experiment.

How can you remind yourself who you’re writing for, so you don’t get distracted by those loud voices?

Who would support you, even if only with gentle encouragement to keep going?

28/08/2026

We’re at the beginning of a new budget year in most northern hemisphere institutions. I know many Associate Deans and Heads of Departments are also thinking about how they can support their colleagues at this point in the REF cycle.

Did you know that you can purchase a block of Academic Writing Studio memberships to give to your colleagues?

If you ask researchers what they need most to get articles written they will often say TIME. An Academic Writing Studio membership allows your colleagues to attend A Meeting With Your Writing regularly.

Not only that, it sends a strong signal that you fully support them in blocking out time every week to attend those co-working sessions and work on their writing *during working hours*.

Academics time is squeezed even more than your budget these days.

Restructuring, voluntary and compulsory redundancies, increasing student numbers and reduced module offerings … All of those lead to higher demands on academics time.

You can remind them that they are allowed to spend X% of their time on research, but most of them struggle. For good reason.

Paying for them to attend coworking sessions once or twice a week during normal working hours sends a powerful signal about your support for them doing that.

If that sounds like a good use of your budget, contact me by DM or book a free consultation to discuss your options and budget.

Free consult with Jo: https://tidycal.com/1r8pxo2/free-consult

19/08/2026

Are you, like one of my clients, dreading “getting sucked into things” when the new semester starts?

Are you, like that client, also resistant to making decisions in advance, blocking time for the things that are important to you, and other things that would make it easier NOT to get sucked into things?

The phrase “getting sucked in” is a warning light.

It’s warning you that you often feel out of control over your work *and* that you don’t like that feeling.

I don’t blame you. Lack of control is a major contributor to stress. It activates cortisol and adrenaline, which make you feel physically uncomfortable.

Lack of control is also the exact opposite of one of the things you value about academic work: autonomy.

The solution for this problem is planning. Unfortunately, planning can also feel like the exact opposite of autonomy.

First, planning is not the opposite of autonomy.

Planning and scheduling are like gravity. The fact that gravity keeps you stuck to the earth, makes doing a whole bunch of other things easier.

I wrote about this several years ago when I saw something in the news about the Rosetta mission and how you design a robot to land on a comet.

TL:DR; Planning frees up cognitive resources.

It makes it easier to respond to requests and opportunities. It makes it easier to use the time you have available in a way that feels useful to you.

It gives you a certain amount of control over the things you are doing so you don’t feel “sucked in”.

Too much gravity makes it really hard to do simple things. Too much planning is the same.

In my 21 August newsletter, I share 3 ideas that you could implement right away to get yourself used to the idea that planning might be a useful thing to do.

14/08/2026

It’s not surprising if your writing gets set aside as you transition into the first semester of a new academic teaching year.

Registering for my next Planning Class means you have a date in the calendar to take a breath and think about how you’re going to pick the writing back up, as well as give you space to consider what kind of work you’ll do on your writing projects for the rest of the semester.

The dedicated 2-hour live session of the class is happening on Friday 18 September and includes coaching for participants on their challenges this coming semester.

There are self-paced resources to help you prepare, and to figure out how writing, teaching, and getting enough rest all fit together. You choose how much of those you use based on your needs and the time available.

Just attending that session *will* make a difference. Registering now will ease your anticipatory anxiety too.

Registration is open now and it’s only £40!

11/08/2026

End of summer panic is real! As the new teaching year approaches, it’s normal to panic a bit.
* Have you done enough writing?
* Are you prepared to start teaching?

Furthermore the first couple of weeks of the new semester are often chaotic.
* Extra meetings with colleagues and new students
* Timetabling glitches
* Tech issues

In my newsletter email on 14 August I will share some tips on getting through this transition.
Are you on the list?

08/08/2026

It’s not easy creating a satisfying academic career in the current climate.

The latest episode of my podcast is an interview with Anna O. Law, Herbert Kurz Chair of Constitutional Rights at CUNY Brooklyn College and author of Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants (Oxford UP).

We discuss the challenges Professor Law faced securing a job that aligned with her values, maintaining motivation over the 16 years it took to do the research and write the book. We discuss strategic decisions about research, learning new fields and methods when your research question requires it, finding the community of scholars that support the work, and juggling personal crises that arise along the way.

There is a certain amount of luck involved, but also patience. Anna is very clear that this book would not have been possible without the security of tenure, something that is available for a decreasing number of scholars around the world.

While she wouldn’t necessarily advise following her trajectory, I would say that her story illustrates the importance of fully committing to the strategic decisions you do make.

Find the mentors that support that decision.

Do the work required by the decision you’ve made, and make the most of the opportunities that come your way.

You can listen to this episode wherever you get your podcasts, or read the full edited transcript on my website now.

07/08/2026

New podcast episode! An interview with Anna O. Law, Herbert Kurz Chair of Constitutional Rights at CUNY Brooklyn College and author of Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants (Oxford UP).

When I did my annual planning, I set an intention to publish at least 1 new podcast episode every calendar quarter. I got ahead of myself early in the year but then other things took priority in the spring and early summer. So it’s been a few months since the last episode. I think you’ll find this one interesting.

There are some reminders in this interview that there is only so much you can plan for.
Things take longer than you expect, especially books that you are researching from scratch.

Sometimes your book (or your podcast) really isn’t the most important thing and you have to set it aside temporarily. Sometimes “temporarily” is a whole year.

Sometimes getting a book out is the thing you need to do to secure the conditions in which you can do the research you really want to do. Sometimes you need to do the work the research questions require even if it means delaying your next promotion.

Listen to our conversation on your favourite podcast app, or read the full edited transcript on my website now!

16/07/2026

It feels awful when you drop a ball and let someone down who was counting on you.

How do you handle that without getting defensive, or getting derailed from the good work you are doing?

I’ve had a run of little mix ups that have affected my services recently, and I took the opportunity to write about how I deal with that in case it helps you.

Because we all f**k up sometimes.

We need to be able to deal with that in ways that help us keep doing good work.

02/07/2026

One of the barriers to *feeling* like you are making substantial progress on your writing projects is having too many projects on the go at once.

You got into this because you love writing, researching, meeting people in the same field with different insights.

You then find yourself saying yes to all the things because they all sound interesting, or you worry about letting someone down.

The extensions help but they don't solve the root issue.

You are writing, but it feels like you aren’t making progress.

Tomorrow's newsletter shares a couple of blog posts about how to manage all your multiple ongoing projects, and a FREE workbook to help you get some clarity and make decisions about what projects to prioritize this summer.

Are you on the list?

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High Peak

Opening Hours

9am - 5pm

Website

http://jovanevery.co.uk/, http://academicwritingstudio.co.uk/

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