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I have submitted my PhD thesis in mathematics but have yet to defend. I have a conference in the next month, a contributed talk on a topic different from the dissertation.

I have prepared the front page and results as follows:

enter image description here

and the main results are displayed as:

enter image description here I am seeking your advice regarding two aspects:

  • What should be my affiliation? This is because I am seeking postdoctoral scope, so I would like to hints that I have no current affiliation and I am looking for postdoctoral. Should I mention something like an ex-PhD student from the [university name] or a thesis submitted at [university name] at the place of my affiliation?

  • Should I cite references of my results by including bibliography at the end? Or, Should I avoid citation of reference by simply mentioning the authors' name and year, as I did above? This is 30 minutes talk, so very less time to display references.

Thanks

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    @ScottSeidman, that seems completely unrelated.
    – Buffy
    Commented Sep 2 at 11:58
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    Your affiliation is where you go daily to sit on a desk an do your work.
    – usr1234567
    Commented Sep 2 at 21:03
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    This doesn't really answer your direct question, so it's a comment. But: don't overthink this. If you want people to know you are looking for a post-doc position, then say, clearly, "I am looking for a post-doc position," during your talk. Probably on the slide where you introduce yourself or on the last slide where you ask for questions.
    – Anonymous
    Commented Sep 2 at 22:45
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    What @Anonymous says. Don't try to play mind games with your affiliation and hope that your audience understands what you are trying to say. Have a slide "I will be on the job market in XYZ!", say when you graduate, and what kind of jobs you would be interested in.
    – xLeitix
    Commented Sep 3 at 7:54
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    @Learner That's great. As I said, I am generally tool agnostic. Just make sure you're not accidentally using a tool that solves a different problem than the one at hand. Writing papers is very different from giving talks. There is more to mathematics than rigorous proofs (or carefully numbered sub-sub-sections or making the fonts in your diagrams consistent with your text...) terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/… and you probably want to convey as much intuition as possible in your talk. Best of luck!
    – user2705196
    Commented Sep 4 at 14:14

2 Answers 2

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You haven't yet earned the doctorate, it needs to be awarded by the institution. So, your affiliation is still the university. This might be especially true if you were funded (or the research was) by or through that institution. You are not, yet, an ex-PhD student. And you don't, yet, have PhD as a title.

Even after graduation, when the degree becomes formal, it might be necessary to still associate the work with the university. But, at that point you are, perhaps, unaffiliated.

For work independent of the university, you can, but probably should not yet, claim that you are unaffiliated, though the work might be. It is a bit subtle, but I would find it odd that someone not yet graduated claims to be unaffiliated.

And don't label yourself PhD until it is officially awarded. You are "PhD Candidate" until then.

There is no advantage to being "unaffiliated" while seeking a postdoc. In the minds of some it is a disadvantage. And, you can say somewhere that you are looking for a postdoc. It doesn't need to be on a slide and you shouldn't think of the talk as reading the slides in any case. The slides are a sparse outline of the talk, perhaps with some graphics and such that can't be verbalized.

While talks can be a bit more informal, you should provide citations of the work(s) used. You can cite your own dissertation or other work to make it easy to find, but it might just be assumed otherwise that this is your work that you are presenting. It is always safer to "over" cite than to under cite. With multiple authors, individual citation is especially important to make it clear you aren't plagiarizing or self plagiarizing. In some venues, making handouts containing bibliographic information available might be a possibility.

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    "And don't label yourself PhD until it is officially awarded..." No kidding! Someone in my cohort did that on a resume and was dismissed from the program.
    – Bob Brown
    Commented Sep 2 at 21:33
  • Thank you for your advice. Ofcourse I am not PhD but PhD student still
    – Learner
    Commented Sep 3 at 0:10
  • Should I say the words "thesis submitted"? For example, my name, PhD student (thesis submitted), my university name. Can this be the affiliation format?
    – Learner
    Commented Sep 3 at 0:16
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    On a conference nobody cares whether you are a PhD student, post doc, or tenured professor. If you have some interesting piece of research to share, people listen.
    – usr1234567
    Commented Sep 3 at 6:49
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    @usr1234567 citation needed :)
    – John Madden
    Commented Sep 3 at 18:46
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The affiliation should be with the university where you performed the work. Even if it is different from your Ph.D. thesis, you likely performed this work while at that university. Your title should be listed as "Ph.D. candidate", since you have not yet received the degree. If you want to be more specific to highlight that your Ph.D. is on a different topic, you can say "Ph.D. candidate in department/research topic". You can also consult your supervisor regarding this, especially if you did this work while being his Ph.D. student.

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