Expanding Support in Academic Research Beyond Your Advisor
In the world of academia, finding the right mentor can make all the difference. This is a story about a student at Princeton University, who embarked on a quest to find guidance outside their advisor's area of expertise.
The student, who is working on a Junior Paper (JP) project focusing on a series of maps produced in twentieth-century Yiddish memorial books, sought supplementary guidance from a professor who specializes in mapmaking and its relationship to memory. This professor, met through a friend who took a class on mapping, would prove to be a valuable resource.
The professor encouraged the student to delve into the realm of "cognitive mapping" - an approach that emphasizes the personal, subjective elements of cartography. To aid the student in their exploration, the professor provided a list of reading recommendations and hard-to-find articles.
At Princeton, students can find scholars who can supplement an advisor's mentorship, even if their expertise is not aligned with the student's research topic. One way to do this is by searching the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs Directory, which allows you to search faculty by name, title, or topics of research. Browsing or searching topics relevant to your interest helps identify faculty working in those areas.
Another strategy is to explore broader university faculty and research directories, look into research centers and interdisciplinary institutes, use university-wide search tools, attend university seminars, workshops, and talks, and consult your department’s administrative staff or graduate office. By combining these approaches, you can locate faculty and researchers with similar or complementary interests outside your advisor’s expertise at Princeton or other universities.
In the student's case, their spring JP adviser is strict with deadlines and encourages daily work on the project. Despite the adviser's area of expertise being early modern Europe, which is distant from the student's research topic, the student found support from professors and graduate students at Princeton who were willing to help.
This article offers a guide to JP-writing in the Humanities and provides a glimpse into the world of independent work abroad in the context of Junior Paper (JP). Whether you're a student seeking guidance or a researcher looking to collaborate, Princeton University continues to be a hub of intellectual exchange and discovery.
This article was written by Rafi Lehmann, Social Sciences Correspondent.
- The student, despite their advisor's focus on early modern Europe, found valuable supplementary guidance for their Junior Paper project on cognitive mapping by seeking assistance from an independent professor at Princeton, thus fostering personal growth and learning through education-and-self development beyond their advisor's area of expertise.
- As the student works on their independent Junior Paper project, they engage in personal-growth by understanding the personal, subjective elements of cartography through the professor's guidance, exemplifying how networking, self-motivation, and resourceful learning can lead to successful independent work in academia.
