- What is an academic CV?
- Academic CV vs resume
- The copy-ready academic CV template
- What each section includes
- Contact and research interests
- Education and qualifications
- Publications and conferences
- Teaching, grants and awards
- References and supporting detail
- PhD application example
- Faculty job example
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Related guides
- Frequently asked questions
What is an academic CV?
An academic curriculum vitae (CV) is a comprehensive document that records your entire scholarly career. Where a job applicant in industry trims everything down to a punchy one or two-page resume, an academic CV does the opposite: it lists, in full, every degree, publication, conference presentation, teaching role, grant and award you have earned. Search committees in the UK, US, Europe, Australia and the GCC use it to judge your fit for PhD programmes, postdoctoral posts, lectureships and competitive scholarships.
The logic is simple. In academia, your record is your argument. A reviewer wants to see evidence of research output, teaching capability and a trajectory that points towards independent scholarship. The CV is where you assemble that evidence in a scannable, standardised order. It can run to two pages for an early-career PhD applicant or fifteen-plus pages for a senior professor — length signals career stage, not padding.
Before you draft a single line, decide what the CV is for. A PhD application emphasises your dissertation, research interests and any early publications or conference posters. A faculty job CV leads with publications and funding. A teaching-focused post foregrounds modules taught and pedagogy. The template below covers every section; you reorder and prune depending on the target.
“An academic CV is not a highlight reel — it is a complete, verifiable record. Every line should be something a reviewer could check.”
Academic CV vs resume
Confusing the two is the single most common error. A resume is a marketing document optimised for a recruiter who spends seconds per applicant; an academic CV is an archival document read carefully by subject specialists. Knowing the difference stops you from cutting the very sections that matter.
| Feature | Academic CV | Resume |
|---|---|---|
| Length | No fixed limit (2–15+ pages) | 1–2 pages |
| Focus | Research, teaching, scholarship | Skills and work impact |
| Publications | Listed in full | Rarely included |
| Tailoring | Light reordering per post | Rewritten for each role |
| Tone | Factual, exhaustive | Persuasive, selective |
A useful rule of thumb: if an item demonstrates scholarly activity — a peer-reviewed paper, an invited talk, a grant — it belongs on an academic CV regardless of how old it is. On a resume you would drop anything older than a decade. The structures share DNA with other formal documents; if you have built a dissertation title page or a research proposal, you already know the value of a clean, predictable layout.
The copy-ready academic CV template
Copy the block below into your word processor, delete the guidance in brackets, and replace each placeholder with your own detail. Keep the headings; reorder the middle sections to suit the post you are targeting.
[City, Country] • [Email] • [Phone] • [ORCID iD] • [LinkedIn / academic profile]
RESEARCH INTERESTS
[Three to five themes or questions that define your work, e.g. “machine learning for clinical decision support; fairness in predictive models; health data governance.”]
EDUCATION
[Degree, Subject] — [Institution], [Country] — [Year or “expected Year”]
• Thesis: “[Title]”. Supervisor: [Name].
[Prior degree] — [Institution] — [Year] — [Classification / GPA]
PUBLICATIONS
Peer-reviewed journal articles
[Author(s)] ([Year]). [Title]. [Journal], [Vol(Issue)], [pages]. [DOI]
Book chapters / Conference papers
[Author(s)] ([Year]). [Title]. In [Editors], [Volume] (pp. [pages]). [Publisher].
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
[Author(s)] ([Year]). “[Title]” [Oral / Poster]. [Conference], [City], [Country].
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
[Role, e.g. Graduate Teaching Assistant] — [Module] — [Institution] — [Years]
• [One line on responsibilities or class size.]
GRANTS & FUNDING
[Funder] — [Scheme / title] — [Amount or “awarded”] — [Year]
AWARDS & HONOURS
[Award] — [Awarding body] — [Year]
SKILLS & AFFILIATIONS
[Methods, software, languages] • [Professional society memberships]
REFERENCES
[Name], [Title], [Institution] — [Email] (or “Available on request”)
What each section includes
The table below summarises what reviewers expect to find under each heading. Treat it as a checklist while you fill the template — an empty section is fine for an early-career applicant, but a mislabelled one signals carelessness.
| Section | What it includes |
|---|---|
| Contact | Name, location, email, phone, ORCID, profile link |
| Research interests | 3–5 themes or questions defining your agenda |
| Education | Degrees, institutions, dates, thesis, supervisor |
| Publications | Articles, chapters, papers in full citation format |
| Conferences | Talks and posters with venue, city, year |
| Teaching | Modules, roles, institutions, responsibilities |
| Grants | Funder, scheme, amount, year |
| Awards | Prizes, scholarships, honours and dates |
| References | 2–3 referees with titles and contact details |
Contact and research interests
Keep the header lean. Your name, location (city and country are enough — no full postal address), professional email, phone with international dialling code, and your ORCID iD. An ORCID is now expected across most disciplines and unambiguously links you to your outputs. Add a link to a Google Scholar, departmental or personal academic page if it is current.
The research interests block is the most-read part of a PhD or postdoc CV. Write three to five concrete themes, not vague fields. “Health economics” says little; “cost-effectiveness modelling of preventive interventions in low-resource settings” tells a committee exactly where you sit. If you are still shaping your focus, our guide on how to choose a dissertation topic will help you sharpen these lines.
Getting the header right
Use a professional email, ideally your institutional address while you still have it. Avoid photographs unless you are applying in a region where they are conventional — in the UK, US and Australia they are not. Do not include date of birth, marital status or nationality unless a specific application form requests it.
Education and qualifications
List degrees in reverse chronological order: most recent first. For each, give the qualification, subject, institution, country and year (or “expected 2027” for an in-progress PhD). Under your doctorate or master’s, add a sub-line for the thesis title and supervisor — reviewers genuinely read these to gauge fit and to recognise names in their network.
Include classifications where they help: a UK First, a distinction, or a strong GPA. If you are unsure how your result maps across systems, our UK degree classification calculator converts marks into the standard bands. Do not list secondary-school qualifications once you hold a degree — they add length without signal.
“Reverse chronological order is not a style choice — it is how committees read. Your newest, strongest work must be the first thing in every section.”
Publications and conferences
Publications are the spine of a research CV. Use one consistent citation style throughout — APA, Harvard, Vancouver or your field’s norm — and group entries by type: peer-reviewed journal articles first, then book chapters, then conference papers, then preprints or under-review work clearly labelled as such. Bold your own name in each citation so a skim-reader can find your contribution instantly. Never inflate the list with work that does not exist or papers that were rejected.
List conference presentations separately, distinguishing oral talks from posters and noting whether a contribution was invited. Each entry gives author(s), year, title, format, conference name, city and country. For PhD applicants with few or no publications, this section often carries the most weight, so present every poster and departmental seminar fully. If you need to strengthen the underlying work, our methodology chapter guide and literature review template are good starting points.
Formatting publication lists cleanly
Number the entries or use hanging indents — either is acceptable, but be consistent. Keep DOIs as plain text so they survive PDF conversion. If a paper is forthcoming, write “(in press)” or “(under review at Journal)” rather than guessing a year.
Teaching, grants and awards
Teaching experience matters for any post with an instructional component and increasingly for research roles too. For each entry, state your role (lecturer, graduate teaching assistant, demonstrator), the module, the institution and the years, plus one line on responsibilities — designing assessments, leading seminars, marking. Concrete detail beats job titles alone.
Grants and funding demonstrate that others have invested in your work. List the funder, the scheme or project title, the amount (or simply “awarded” if you prefer not to disclose figures) and the year. Even small travel bursaries belong here for early-career applicants. Awards and honours — prizes, competitive scholarships, best-paper recognitions — sit in their own section, again in reverse chronological order.
References and supporting detail
Most academic applications expect two or three referees who can speak to your research and teaching — typically your supervisor and one or two other academics familiar with your work. Give each referee’s name, title, institution and email. Always ask permission first, and brief them on the post so their letters land on target. If an application portal collects references separately, write “Available on request” and keep the details ready.
Round the CV out with a skills and affiliations block: research methods, statistical or laboratory software, languages, and memberships of professional societies. Keep it factual. If your application also requires a personal statement or research proposal, treat those as separate documents — the CV records facts, the statement makes the argument. Our personal statement writing service and research proposal writing services support those companion pieces.
PhD application example
A first-year applicant rarely has journal articles, so the CV leads with research interests and education, then foregrounds any posters, undergraduate dissertation, relevant modules and prizes. A worked outline:
- Research interests: three precise themes tied to the prospective supervisor’s lab.
- Education: master’s with thesis title and distinction, then bachelor’s with a First.
- Conferences: one departmental poster, fully cited.
- Awards: a faculty prize and a travel bursary.
- Skills: methods and software relevant to the project.
Two pages is plenty here. The message is potential, not volume. If your dissertation is the centrepiece, make sure its structure is sound — review our PhD thesis structure and word counts guide and the dissertation table of contents format before you cite it.
Faculty job example
An applicant for a lectureship or postdoc reorders the same template so publications and funding sit near the top, directly after research interests. The education section shrinks to a few lines while publications, grants and teaching expand. A senior candidate may add sections for editorial roles, peer-review service, doctoral supervision and media engagement. Length naturally grows to reflect a fuller career — ten pages is unremarkable for an established researcher.
Whatever the stage, tailor lightly: reorder to match what the post values, and add a one-line note under any item that is especially relevant to the role. Resist the urge to delete genuine output — on an academic CV, completeness is a virtue. If you are also preparing application essays or coursework alongside the CV, our coursework writing services can lighten the load.
Common mistakes to avoid
The errors that sink academic CVs are almost always avoidable. Inconsistent citation styles, a header cluttered with irrelevant personal data, sections in random order, and unexplained gaps top the list. Two structural mistakes recur: treating the CV like a resume and cutting publications to save space, or padding a thin record with secondary-school detail and hobbies.
Proofread ruthlessly — a typo in your own paper’s title is a bad look. Check every link and DOI survives the export to PDF, since most portals strip Word formatting. Finally, never fabricate: an invented publication, an inflated grant figure or a referee who has not agreed will be caught and will end your candidacy. For a wider list of pitfalls that apply across academic documents, see our guide to common dissertation mistakes.
Related guides
- Research proposal template
- PhD thesis structure and word counts
- Dissertation title page template
- Literature review template
- Methodology template
- Dissertation timeline planning
- PhD thesis writing services
