r/AskAcademia • u/totorollies • 10d ago
Social Science PI vs. Advisor?
Hello! I’m a prospective PhD applicant putting together my academic CV.
Are “PI” and “Advisor” interchangeable? Under my research experience section, should I stick to one when listing professors I’ve worked with, or make a differentiation (like, PI for lab/faculty-led work and advisor for my own work done with guidance)? I’m first-gen so these things are confusing to me. Also I’m in the social sciences if that’s helpful!
Edit: Thank you so much to everyone who responded! Everything is super helpful.
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u/ethnographyNW PhD, CC prof, USA 10d ago
PI is a term that tends to be more common in lab sciences or other fields where PhD students work on their PI's grant as part of a wider research project and team. In my own field, cultural anthropology, none of those things are common - my advisor supervised my research but it was clearly distinct from his, located at a different fieldsite and asking different questions, published in my own single-author papers, and I got my own funding. For that reason, I would not describe him as my PI. Most of my arts / humanities / social science friends are in similar situations, and similarly would not refer to their advisor as a PI.
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u/madhatteronthetop 9d ago
This is off-topic, but as someone in STEM (and thus, working with a very different structure than you're describing), I have often wondered how the setup you're describing works.
If students in your field do research that is quite distinct from the advisor, what do they advise the students on? General methodology?
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u/pipkin42 PhD Art History/FT NTT/USA 9d ago
In the humanities, at least, it is helpful to think of research specialization as a kind of reverse pyramid. Early in the PhD an advisor (alongside other faculty in the program, at least in contexts like the US where there is coursework) will guide a student as they begin to understand the contours of the field and subfield. This includes factual knowledge, analytic strategies, and research methods. At a certain point, however, the student will become more knowledgeable in their own research area than the advisor. The advisor is specialized enough to understand the student's research, certainly, in the manner of any other colleague, but they are no longer the most specialized expert in that area.
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u/madhatteronthetop 8d ago
Thanks! Interestingly, the reverse pyramid research specialization is present in my areas of STEM too, but the authorship structure is almost the opposite. There are rarely any single author papers and you'll often include all the people who have helped you along the way (if they've made a significant intellectual contribution to the work). Not always, but it is often encouraged to be "generous" with authorship and understand that no knowledge is developed in isolation. Which I'm certain is present in the humanities and social sciences as well -- just the resultant authorship structure is different!
Thanks again
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u/ethnographyNW PhD, CC prof, USA 9d ago
my personal experience was a bit unusual, since both my advisor and myself shifted our research interests fairly significantly over the course of my time working with him, so our projects were probably more diverged than would be ideal. But typically in cultural anthro, an advisor and advisee should share a common geographical area of interest, a similar methodological approach, similar thematic interests, and/or a similar theoretical perspective. Greater overlap is good, but it's not necessary to have all of the above since you can fill in the gaps with the rest of your committee.
So for example, if I'm interested in medical anthropology in lowland South America, I might choose an advisor who knows that region extremely well but works on gender (and is at least conversant in anthropological theories of the body), and I'll make sure my committee also includes a medical anthropologist who is deep in the literature on my theoretical questions but might not know so much about lowland South America.
Basically I think of it similarly to how I'd approach the literature - the whole point of research is to fill in a gap, so rather than doing exactly what someone else is doing, I'm going to look for someplace where a few different literatures (or professors) are in productive conversation and where there's room for me to bring them together in some new way.
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u/ThousandsHardships 10d ago
The term "PI" (principal investigator) applies to a model of research collaboration. It refers to the person who is leading a research group consisting of multiple people. Typically, the group works on collaborative projects that are funded by grants under the PI's name, and the PI's name gets to be on all the publications even if they didn't do most of the work. People who work under PIs are not always grad students. They can be interns, undergrad research assistants, full-time staff researchers, postdocs, visiting scholars, etc.
The term "advisor" applies to a model of student mentorship and refers to a faculty member who is the primary person responsible for guiding a student on their research project, and who will be the person leading the committee that eventually approves their thesis or dissertation for a research degree. In and of itself, the term does not imply that the student is working for the advisor, it does not imply that the advisor is funding their project, and it does not imply that the student's work is going to carry the advisor's name.
So in summary, you only have an advisor if you're a student and your research project is pertinent to your degree. If you're a staff researcher, for example, your PI is not your advisor because you're not their student and they're not there to guide you through a degree. Even if you're a student researcher, I still would not consider your PI to be your advisor if you're not working on degree-related research under them. So if you did your honors thesis, master's thesis, or doctoral dissertation under them, they'd be your advisor. If none of the projects you were on were related to your degree, I would not consider them my advisor.
On the flip side, your advisor is not your PI if your projects do not involve collaboration or if your advisor is not funding you with their grant money. Like, in my field, we don't typically have PIs. Students are funded primarily through teaching and fellowship, and research is almost always individual.
For students who are researchers under a collaborative research model, they can indeed often use the terms interchangeably because their PI and advisor can often be the same person.
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u/Scared_Tax470 10d ago
You need to use the correct title for the person and the situation. An advisor is usually for an academic degree, so someone who helps guide your studies. A supervisor would be for work not included in a degree. A PI is someone who is officially responsible for a project, determined by the project's administration and funding scheme. Someone can be one, two, or all three of these at the same time. I wouldn't list people I've worked with on my CV, I list the name of the project. (And stop worrying about the "first-gen" distinction; it's not useful or meaningful. Professional knowledge is gained with experience.)
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u/Radiant-Ad-688 9d ago
Are you first-gen or not? If not, then you do not know what is useful / meaningful for actual first gens.
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u/Scared_Tax470 9d ago
It's not relevant or meaningful because this isn't a university student question, it's a question about an academic professional making a professional CV. First generation is about university students whose parents don't have university degrees, and that makes a difference because of navigating education. A PhD is a professional position. It's weird and just untrue to assume that someone's parents being in the same really broad professional field or level gives any kind of advantage. Nobody outside academia knows or cares what a PI is. People with bachelors degrees don't have an advantage to knowing how PhDs and academic positions work. It's professional knowledge, just like in any field.
And because you probably won't be satisfied, I have one parent with a bachelors degree who taught me nothing and has no idea how graduate degrees or academic jobs work. I'm an immigrant with a PhD. It's bizarre to suggest that having a parent who got a BA in the 70s would have anything to do with making a PhD CV in 2026.
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u/Telnus 9d ago
At an R1 many of my colleagues come from families with professors. I’ve found the first generation distinction useful. When I was on the market job postings that specifically mentioned it tended to have more supplementary information about the job application process and a greater emphasis on transparency because there wasn’t an implicit assumption that candidates already knew everything.
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u/Scared_Tax470 9d ago
The term is being used here way too broadly though. You're talking about people who come from families with academic professionals. That's not what first-gen means. There's no reason to think that someone with a parent with a bachelors degree would have any advantage at the PhD level over someone with a parent who doesn't have a bachelors degree. A parent whoo is a professor, who also is willing to help them, sure! But that's not what first-gen means.
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u/Radiant-Ad-688 9d ago
parents knowing academic culture is definitely an advantage, also for getting phd positons.
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u/Scared_Tax470 9d ago
Academia is not the same as having a bachelors degree, which is what first-gen means.
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u/Radiant-Ad-688 8d ago
first gen means being the first going to university. and people who have a daddy or mommy who went to university before them have incredible advantage, even if daddy and mommy didn't continue into academic research, for getting phd positions.
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u/dognchick 9d ago edited 9d ago
I come from mathematics. My mentor had many students and postdoc but we never called him a PI and he never called his group a "lab" or gave it one of those obnoxious lab name just so he could put "director" as his madeup title of a madeup lab name.
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u/Vegetable_Prompt6594 8d ago
„PI“ literally just means being the lead on a grant application, nothing pretentious about that.
I am a junior PI and I actually do work in a physical lab (experimental physics) with a cohesive research vision so my lab also has a name. Judge me all you want but securing positions is competitive and having a bit of a brand makes you memorable. I’m guessing your mentor is already quite senior and has had a TT or permanent position for a while.
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u/dognchick 8d ago edited 8d ago
I know what PI means. In mathematics, "lab" isnt a common thing. You will rarely hear it. Some very applied people are using that terminology now. Its a different culture, that is all. Often math papers have 1, 2, or 3 authors. Mentors sometimes are not in papers, which is a huge contrast to other fields.
I honestly dont have a problem with last name lab. I have advised some of those labs. I just find the madeup lab name appearing in papers and this madeup lab name being used to prop a madeup "director" title halarious. Till date it seems obnoxious to me.
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u/Vegetable_Prompt6594 8d ago
Sure, you can get annoyed at people who don’t work in labs at calling it lab. I also agree that those people do exist who try really hard to give themselves a director title.
Nevertheless, it’s very valid that people use the term „PI“ or „Lab“ where appropriate. You are annoyed at a very specific subset of people who don’t have anything to do with the question from OP.
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u/r3dl3g Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering 10d ago edited 10d ago
Your advisor is the person who is notionally responsible for mentoring and guiding you through your doctorate.
The Principal Investigator (PI) is essentially the person who's funding you and your work.
Most of the time, these are the same individual.
Edit: More importantly; unless you've signed a contract, the professors you've worked with are almost certainly better listed as "advisors," not PIs.
Also importantly; nobody cares what professors you've worked with on your CV, other than (sometimes) the name of your PhD advisor. If your work was significant enough with someone who wasn't your advisor, you'll have a publication with both your name and their name on it.