University Professor biography playbook
Discipline, appointment, research focus, and notable publications.
What the reader is hiring this bio to do
A professor bio is read by colleagues, prospective students, journalists, grant officers, and tenure committees. It is the most reuse-heavy bio on the internet and the most likely to be auto-pulled into directories.
Credibility signals to include
- Title, department, institution.
- Research area at appropriate granularity.
- Two or three landmark publications with venue and year.
- Funded projects, edited journals, NAS/AAAS memberships.
- Teaching commitments and graduate students placed.
Avoid in this industry
- Long publications lists in the bio itself.
- Inflated descriptions of journal impact.
- Buried discipline — the reader should know the field within five words.
- Failing to distinguish current from former affiliations.
Structure
Preferred structure for the bio
A reliable order that performs in this field. Adjust to the venue.
- 1Title, department, institution, discipline.
- 2Research area in concrete terms.
- 3Two or three flagship publications.
- 4Funded research and editorial roles.
- 5Recent or upcoming teaching, with a brief personal sentence.
Tone
How this industry's bios should sound
Academic register. Third person. Precise. Citation conventions consistent with discipline.
Lengths
Recommended lengths by venue
Openings
Opening formulas that work in this field
Open with title and discipline.
Dr. Tomás Vega is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, where his research examines housing-policy effects on intergenerational mobility.
Worked examples
One hundred words. Fifty words.
Dr. Tomás Vega is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, where his research examines housing-policy effects on intergenerational mobility among Mexican-American families in the U.S. Southwest. He is the author of Streets and Schools: How Zoning Shapes Mobility (Russell Sage Foundation, 2024) and articles in the American Sociological Review and Demography. His current NSF-funded project tracks educational outcomes in twelve Southwestern school districts over thirty years. Dr. Vega is an associate editor at Social Forces and teaches the department's graduate sequence in quantitative methods. He received his PhD from UCLA in 2014.
Dr. Tomás Vega, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan. Research: housing policy and Mexican-American intergenerational mobility. Streets and Schools (RSF, 2024). NSF-funded southwestern districts project. Associate editor, Social Forces. PhD UCLA 2014.
Vocabulary
Words to reach for — and words to handle with care
Cross-references
Frameworks and voices this playbook pairs with
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