Controlling the narrative

Pointers on how to draft a narrative CV

What is a ‘narrative CV’? You can read this article first, especially if you want to know the history (and, for UK readers, the plans for rollout for a few major funders).

But briefly, traditional academic CVs are awful. They’re too narrow in what achievements and contributions they record, and they often tell the reader very little about the wood while telling them everything about the trees. That is, they’re long on detail and short on overarching meaning. Thus, we now have narrative CVs, intended to record more of what matters in a qualitative, narrative way—telling a true story rather than just listing individual data points.