Academic CV format for teaching and research posts

A selection committee reads an academic CV with three questions: what have you studied, what have you published, and what have you taught. Make each answer easy to find.

Order of sections

Put first what the post values most. For a research-led post, publications come early. For a teaching post in a college, teaching experience comes before research. A sound general order:

1. Name, designation, department, institution; address, phone, email; a link to a profile page listing your publications if you keep one.
2. Education
3. Eligibility tests and professional qualifications
4. Academic appointments
5. Research interests (three to five lines or a short list)
6. Publications
7. Conferences, seminars and invited lectures
8. Research projects and funding
9. Teaching: courses taught, levels, years
10. Research supervision
11. Awards and fellowships
12. Academic service: boards of studies, editorial work, reviewing, committees, examination duties
13. Workshops, refresher and orientation courses attended
14. Memberships of professional bodies
15. Referees

Education

Latest first. For each degree: degree and subject, university, year of award, class or grade. For a research degree add the thesis title and supervisor's name.

If the thesis is submitted but the degree not yet awarded, say exactly that, with the date of submission.

Eligibility tests

State the test, the subject, the conducting body and the year, as on your certificate: for example the National Eligibility Test, a State Eligibility Test, or a fellowship awarded through one. Committees look for this line early, so give it its own heading just after education.

Appointments

Latest first, each with designation, department, institution, nature of appointment (regular, temporary, guest, contractual) and exact dates. Selection rules often count experience by its nature and duration, so be precise; do not describe a guest lectureship as a regular post.

Publications

This section is read most closely. Divide it by type and number the entries. The publications page shows how to write each kind of entry and how to treat work that is not yet published.

Teaching

List the courses or papers you have taught, the programme and level (undergraduate, postgraduate), and the years. If you designed a course, set question papers, supervised dissertations or used a particular method (laboratory, field work, case teaching), say so in a line. A committee appointing a teacher wants to see that you can carry a timetable from the first week.

Research projects

For each: title, funding body, amount sanctioned if you wish to state it, duration, and your role (principal investigator, co-investigator, project fellow). Mark ongoing and completed separately.

Research supervision

Numbers of Ph.D. and M.Phil. scholars awarded and registered under you, with names and thesis titles for those awarded, and postgraduate dissertations guided.

Academic service

Membership of boards of studies and committees, examinerships, journals reviewed for, conferences organised, and administrative duties such as NSS, admissions or hostel wardenship. These show the committee that you take a share of the institution's work.

Style

• Factual entries, not sentences of self-praise. No "dynamic" or "passionate".
• One citation style throughout, the usual one in your discipline.
• Your own name in bold in author lists helps the reader.
• Exact dates for appointments; years are enough for degrees.
• No photograph or family details unless the institution's form asks.
• Page numbers and your name on every page.

Common errors

• Mixing journal papers, conference papers, book chapters and newspaper articles in one list.
• Listing journals of doubtful standing. Committees notice, and it weakens the genuine entries beside them.
• Counting a paper twice, once as a conference paper and again as a journal article, without saying they are the same work.
• Leaving out the nature of each appointment.
• Sending the same CV when the advertisement prescribes a form. Fill the form.

When the post has a prescribed format

Many universities and colleges, and all public service commissions, issue their own application form and may ask for a self-assessed score sheet based on current regulations. Download the form and the regulations from the institution's own website for the current year; they change, and we do not reproduce them here. Use your CV as the source for filling them in.

A full invented example is on the academic CV sample page.

Questions people ask

More CV guides

Sample CVs

General guidance. This page gives general suggestions, reviewed in November 2026. If an institution, employer or country gives its own form, format or instruction, follow that. Every person, institution and publication in our examples is invented. Nothing here is legal, immigration or professional advice.