What three things does someone need to know about you to understand your work and decide how to connect with you?
Your bio page is how prospective students, potential collaborators, funders, donors, and colleagues across U-M find and evaluate your work. It’s not your CV (that’s downloadable separately) and it’s not a tenure case. It’s a clear, approachable portrait of what you do, what drives it, and how to engage with you.
Bio Content Guidelines
1. Your Research and Creative Practice (~200 words)
Describe the main thrusts of your work (typically 2–4 areas) in language accessible to someone outside your specific field. Use the prompts below as a starting point:
- What questions or problems drive your work? What are you trying to understand, change, or create?
- What is your approach? Methods, tools, media, or disciplinary perspective.
- What has your work produced? Mention a few recent projects, publications, exhibitions, or built works that show where your program is now.
- Who do you work with? Collaborators, research groups, communities, or practice contexts.
2. Qualifications, Training, and Affiliations (~100 words)
Briefly note your degrees and training, plus any affiliations with firms, clusters, centers, institutes, or other departments at U-M or beyond. Awards and honors can go here too.
3. Optional Extras (but highly recommended)
- Open to research assistants? If you’re seeking grad or undergrad RAs, say so and explain briefly how to approach you (e.g., “Send an email describing your interests and how they align with our research areas”).
- Seeking collaborations or partnerships? If you’re looking for specific kinds of partners or support, make that visible. Talk to R+CP if you’d like help framing this.
- Projects and publications up to date? Make sure your recent work is entered so it populates the feed on your bio page.
- Linked to your clusters and initiatives? Confirm you’re connected to the right clusters/labs so those feeds appear on your profile.
The Marketing and Communications team will handle formatting and posting. Questions about framing your bio? R+CP is happy to help.