Life is a banquet: my adventure as an American PhD student in the UK

Danica Ramsey-Brimberg is a  First Year Doctoral Candidate at the University of Liverpool. In her guest post today, she shares her experience of moving away from her hometown in America to embark upon her PhD journey in England. 

If someone asked you to take a leap of faith, leave your country, and spend hours locked in a battle with books, technology, and your own mind, would you?  Probably not.  Me on the other hand, I recently made the three-year (and potentially longer) jump without looking back or any hesitation.

Ok, I just made it sound way more daunting than it is.  Honestly, it’s not that bad at all.  Being an American PhD student in the UK has been a dream of mine for the past few years, and it is finally coming true.

So you might be wondering, “Why are you doing a PhD in the UK? Why not a PhD in the US?”  These are perhaps the most common questions that I get asked by people on both sides of the Atlantic.  The answer that I usually give varies, but usually centers on the fact that I wanted to be near what I wanted to study (the Vikings in Britain and Ireland).  To give the more complete, longer explanation for my choice requires me to go back further into my past.

Around the time I was 5 years old, I knew that I wanted a PhD.  In what field I wasn’t sure, but I wanted to be Dr. Dan.  Yes, I know most 5-year olds don’t typically think in terms of what advanced degree they want, but at that point, I was also thinking about what colleges/universities that I wanted to attend.  (I was an unusual child.). Fast forward to years later, I decided in my sophomore (second) year at Boston College to take a course called “The Vikings” with Professor Robin Fleming.  It inspired me (as well as a family trip when I was 8 to Denmark where we visited many museums) to pursue further study of the medieval period, especially the Vikings.  I continued taking more early medieval and Viking courses from Professor Terry Barry and Dr. Stephen Harrison at Trinity College Dublin the following year on my junior (third) year abroad.  That year was the first time that I had spent longer than two weeks away from my family.  I was nervous, but excited.  In Ireland, I had an incredible time experiencing new things, making new friends, and visiting new places.  When I returned for my senior (fourth) year, I knew that those classes weren’t enough and that I wanted to pursue medieval archaeology with a focus on Vikings.  Since this particular degree was not available in the United States, I decided to go to the area of what I wanted to study, either Britain or Ireland.

After earning my BA in History with a minor in Irish Studies and spending a fifth year at Boston College finishing my MEd in Secondary Education in History, I went off to York (Jorvik in the Viking age), England. (I’ve learned to say England because there are several places in the US called York as well as a York University in Canada.). Some people thought I was crazy traveling that far or even pursuing a second Master’s degree, but I found most of my family and friends were incredibly supportive of my decision.  In York, I met like-minded people pursuing higher degrees in a number of fields and many came from other parts of Europe, the US, and the world.  The classes in the taught MA in Medieval Archaeology course, directed by Dr. Aleksandra McClain, (Taught masters include coursework and a dissertation, while research masters just involve a dissertation, which is much longer.) provided me a better understanding of the time period, as well as knowledge on osteoarchaeology and ancient biomolecular studies.  I culminated my degree with my dissertation under the supervision of Dr. Steve Ashby; it focused on varying ethnic identities in Viking burials along the Scottish and Irish Sea coasts.  During my MA, I still wanted to pursue a PhD, and I knew that I wanted to do it in the UK.  It wasn’t that the degree was shorter (A UK PhD lasts 3-4 years, while a US PhD can take 5+ years.) or it involved less coursework (A US PhD requires the first 2 years to be coursework, while a UK PhD allows courses to be optional.), rather being close to what I would study and to many of the conferences, books, and academics in my particular field.  As I took a year out substitute (supply) teaching and working retail, I applied to doctoral programs.  Knowing that I was unlikely to get funding (as a non-UK person most types of major funding were not available), I knew that most of my decision would be based on my potential advisor, my specific dissertation topic, the brief feel I would get from the campus/town during my quick trip before my MA graduation, the number of resources in the library, accessibility to the airport, ability to do interdisciplinary studies, and gut instinct.  While I know most of those decision-making processes are based on logic, gut-instinct is by the far the most reliable indicator.  It’s how I chose my undergrad university and my MA university.  It’s hard to explain fully, but sometimes, you have to just go with what feels right.

I chose to earn my PhD in History at the University of Liverpool under the primary supervision of Dr. Clare Downham and the secondary supervision of Dr. Marios Costambeys.  My thesis focuses on the Vikings’ manipulation of Christianity to gain political and social power in the Irish Sea area through burial and sculptural evidence in conjunction with place-names and written sources.  My research uses interdisciplinary evidence drawing upon archaeology, art history, history, and geography.  Among the History PhD students, I study the earliest time frame, but compared to many of my friends in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Classics, and Egyptology, I’m modern.  If I need to talk to someone familiar with my subject, I have my advisors, friends from my MA, and academics and other PhD students that I’ve met at conferences.  Being at the University of Liverpool provides me a unique niche at the University and makes it a lot easier to take books out of the library and not have them recalled.  Since arriving last October, I have made new friends and have fallen in love with the city of Liverpool, which is consistently rated one of the friendliest cities.

Being a US student in the UK has both its’ ups and downs.  I miss my family and pets, but with the availability of Facetime and Skype, it’s almost like I’m with them even though there is an ocean between us.  I miss being able to visit certain places and go to certain stores, but it makes them even more special when I do visit them when I am in the States.  I do miss certain foods, but I’ve developed a system of either searching stores (Co-op has Honest Tea, and several stores have “American” sections.) or bringing them with me in my suitcase (like Jello, Kraft Jet Puffed Mini Marshmallows, Hershey’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and Trident or Stride gum).  You adapt, and you focus on all the opportunities available here.  If I wanted to visit a medieval church, it’s a lot easier to find one here than in the States.  If I needed to see the location of a Viking burial or even a Viking skeleton itself, all I have to do is hop on a train or a short plane ride to see one. If I craved Cadbury chocolate, I know there will be less wax in it than if it was made in the US.  In any experience you have, you learn to focus on the positives and be happy.  Would I prefer to be somewhere else right now?  Definitively no.  I’ve had unique experiences, made incredible memories, and developed so many wonderful friends that will last a lifetime.

One of my favorite quotes is from Auntie Mame, a play that was later adapted into a movie and then a musical. In Auntie Mame, the following motivational exchange occurs –

Auntie Mame: Live! That’s the message!

Agnes (her secretary): Live?

Auntie Mame: Yes, life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death! Now come on, Agnes, live!

This features prominently in my mind that whenever an opportunity presents itself, don’t let it slip away.  So, remember this advice if you are considering a PhD whether it be in the UK or the US and have the opportunity.  Take a chance, and go with your gut.  I did, and I’m enjoying every minute of that leap.

In conversation with... Mike Ryder

Mike Ryder is a PhD student at Lancaster University. His research interests include biopolitics, sovereignty, science fiction and war. He is particularly interested in the intersection between literature and philosophy, and the works of Giorgio Agamben, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault. In today's interview, we talk about his experiences of PhD life so far, including how he adapted to the academic environment after taking a break from it and starting a PhD a little later on in life. Go and have a look at his (fab) personal website: www.mjryder.net and check out his Facebook page: www.facebook.com/MJRyder.net

Firstly, it would be great to hear a little bit about your PhD research. What is your subject and what are you researching?

My research straddles two fields, English Literature and Philosophy, and seeks to explore the interaction between the two.

At the heart of my project I’m interested in the concept of sovereignty and ‘life’ as a discursive construct. To help me explore these issues I am conducting a philosophical / biopolitical reading of American science fiction published during the Vietnam War.

I picked sci-fi because there are just so many links that can be drawn between the genre and philosophy. In fact, many philosophers including Arendt and Deleuze mention science fiction explicitly in their works, which just goes to show that there is a direct dialogue between the two. More than that though, I find that sci-fi is an incredibly fertile genre when it comes to new ideas, and ways of examining questions such as the notion of ‘humanity’ and what it means to be alive.

In terms of my theoretical grounding, I’m very much working with Foucault, Agamben, Deleuze, Derrida, and a few others besides, drawing on ideas such as biopolitics, bare life, segmentarity and state bureaucracy. I don’t want to give too much away at this early stage, but there are some really interesting links to be made between the books I’m working with and the concepts that these continental philosophers deal with; the novels themselves being selected from the period 1955–1975, and in many cases pre-empting the work of Foucault et al from the 1970s onwards.

Why did you decide that you wanted to embark on doing a PhD, especially considering the fact that you worked for several years outside of the academic setting before applying to do one?

For a long time now I’ve wanted to be an academic and spend my life combining research, writing and teaching. At the time I finished my BA I didn’t have the option to do an MA straight away as I would have liked to as I didn’t have the funding. As such I had to go out in to the world of work and bide my time until I could afford to start my postgraduate study. It took a few years before I was in a position to apply for a part-time Masters, and even then that was with the stress of commuting over two hours each way and holding down a full-time job. No easy task I assure you!

It was only after I completed my MA that I really knew where I wanted to go with my long-term PhD research (I initially thought I might be a Victorian scholar as I really enjoy the literature of that period). Unfortunately, again, this was where life caught up with me. While many people apply for their PhD while still in education, I spent over a year collecting my ideas together and getting my application ready. It was a lot of work I can tell you and I can’t describe the relief when I received news that I was able to finally take the next step and start on my PhD.

How have you found the transition of re-entering into higher education as a “mature” student? Has there been any stand out challenges, surprises or positives?

I admit it’s been a bit of a shock to the system. I really built myself up for what I hoped would be an amazing return to university and student life. Unfortunately, so far, it’s not really turned out like that. Well, not completely anyway.

It doesn’t help I think that I am in this strange zone where I’m older than the undergraduates and the early-20-something-PhDs here at Lancaster (who all happen to know each other from their MAs); yet at the same time I’m also significantly younger than most ‘mature’ students who tend to come back into study later in life. I know I’m only 31, but when you’ve been working professionally for many years you have a very different perspective to someone who hasn’t been out there in the wider non-academic world.

There’s also the issue for me that when I moved up here, I didn’t bring any family or significant other with me – I don’t have children, or a partner at the moment, so it’s quite hard to find like-minded people, as most tend to live off-campus with their families and commute in, so may not even come to campus for days or weeks at a time.

A very strange experience, and one I’m still getting used to, but please don’t let me put you off!

What would be your advice to people who are about to re-enter (or considering it) into higher education as a PhD researcher, after having had quite a big break from education? Was there anything you specifically did in order to feel more ready to get back into studying?

The studying itself has been really enjoyable if I’m honest. I know I sounded quite negative in my last answer, but this isn’t to say that being a mature student doesn’t have its benefits too. One, I think, is a really good work ethic and sense of perspective. I worked for three years as a professional ghost-writer, writing on behalf of the great and the good in the healthcare sector. The experience means I don’t often take things to heart, and I’m quite good when it comes to dealing with setbacks in my research or my writing.

If I was to give one piece of advice (and this applies to anyone) it’s get a routine and think how you can work more efficiently. Remember it’s not about the amount of time you spend at the library that gets you your PhD, but the quality of the work you do while you’re there.

If you can really get a good understanding of how you work, and the way your body reacts to stress and tiredness then you will know the signs that will tell you ‘I’m not going to get any more work done today so I’m going to stop’. It would be a waste then to keep sitting there for another few hours when you’d be much better off physically and emotionally going home and taking a nap, or doing something completely different. Remember to be kind to yourself!

In your first year so far, what experiences, if any, have you had that you perhaps didn’t anticipate prior to starting your PhD?

I don’t think I was quite ready for the transition of going from a 9–5 job to not really having the same level of day-to-day interaction with people. I know it sounds strange, but you really can go weeks without talking with anyone if you don’t make an effort to take time away from your studies.

What would you say you’ve enjoyed the most about doing a PhD so far? Has anything really rewarding happened yet?

I’ve really enjoyed the process of reading and note-taking and getting my first draft chapter together. I also like the intellectual freedom this project has given me and the time I’ve had to read around my subject.

Your PhD is funded by AHRC (NWCDTP), what advice would you give to prospective PhD students that are seeking funding?

Make sure you know your subject and dedicate a good deal of time to planning what your research is going to be about. There’s a lot of competition for funding so your words need to be carefully chosen and your application can’t be full of ‘filler’ text.

You also juggle part-time work alongside your PhD, what’s your top tip to make sure you keep on top of PhD-related objectives when you have other commitments?

I currently have a part-time job working for Student Based Services, helping to compile the weekly student newsletter here at Lancaster. It’s just one day a week and is quite good as the hours are fairly consistent, so I am able to plan my research around it. More than a day a week though and I’d probably struggle to get my work done to be honest, as I always like to make sure I have Sundays ‘off’.

If you could say something about your overall PhD experience so far, what would it be in a nutshell?

For the most part it’s been really enjoyable, but it’s also been quite different to how I would have expected. My advice is don’t bring any pre-conceptions with you, and be prepared to make the most of the opportunity.

And finally, what is your end goal? Do you have any aspirations yet as to what you want to do after your PhD?

Ultimately, I’d like to become a full-time academic, as this has been my goal for as long as I can remember. I’d also really like to publish both my academic and non-academic work (I write fiction as well in my spare time). My dream has always been to walk into Waterstones one day and see my book(s) on the shelf.

Work in progress: facing my fears

Elaine Sanderson is a first year AHRC NWCDTP funded PhD student at Liverpool University. Some of her research interests include: Latin Literature, Latin Imperial Epic (particularly Lucan and Valerius Flaccus), Ancient Rhetoric and Greek Tragedy. In her guest post today, she shares her experience, insight and tips about work in progress seminars. Follow Elaine on Twitter at: @ElainaM42, or send her an email: e.c.sanderson@liverpool.ac.uk. If you would also like to see Elaine’s personal blog (it’s fab – go check it out), here is the link: www.stimulosdeditaemulauirtus.blogspot.co.uk 

Just before Christmas, a fellow Classics and Ancient History PhD student approached me and asked whether I might consider presenting something in the coming term’s postgraduate Work in Progress seminar series. These seminars are held every Thursday lunchtime, and provide a really welcoming, friendly, and accessible environment for students to share their research with their friends and peers, and to develop their presentation skills.  The wide variety of topics discussed just this term alone really reflects the cross-disciplinary research successes of the department as a whole, and allows students to engage with research beyond the confines of their own postgraduate studies.  Delighted to have been asked to contribute to this fantastic seminar series, I immediately agreed, and set about sorting through the research notes, plans, and chapter drafts I’d been working on since I began my PhD adventures back in October. 

There was just one tiny problem.  I hate work in progress.  It’s not that I have an issue with standing up in front of an audience and sharing my work (although my presentation skills could probably use some polish and refinement).  I’m far too excited about my work, about Lucan and Latin Literature more broadly, to let nerves or stage fright get in my way of singing the praises of my research interests in front of a willingly captive audience.  My dislike of ‘work in progress’ stems from the fact that I’m uncomfortable with unfinished things in general, and incomplete pieces of academic work in particular.  I’ve only just gotten used to sending ‘work in progress’ to my supervisors, although my hitting ‘send’ is generally accompanied by the crushing anxiety that they will be disappointed with my ultimately unfinished writing.  The idea of bringing my half-baked ‘work in progress’ into another arena was therefore an incredibly daunting task.  

I decided to present some of the work which, at the moment at least, forms part of the second chapter of my broader PhD thesis, which examines processes of transformation (both poetic and political) in the Bellum Civile (Civil War), an epic poem composed by the Latin epicist Lucan in the 1^st century AD.  In this chapter, I examine how Lucan uses language and vocabulary traditionally associated with uncertainty in relation to the landscapes of his internal civil war universe and the ultimately defeated Republican cause, aspects of the narrative which form important self-reflexive platforms for Lucan’s poetic and political agendas.  I also discuss Lucan’s use of transformative language, language used more generally to depict physical and material transformations, in direct relation to the motions and processes of the civil war his work portrays.

Once I actually got down to business, I found the experience of presenting to the other postgrad students in my department to be not only very rewarding, but also great fun.  Since there are no other PhD students working on the same Classical texts as me, I can sometimes feel a bit lonely in my research.  However, it turned out that another student, who focusses on Ancient Drama, was also looking at similar elements of language using a very similar approach, and so had plenty of thoughts and suggestions to contribute to my thoughts and research processes.  I also found it refreshing to receive questions and feedback from postgrads working on other areas of the Ancient World, who offered different perspectives on my research, and encouraged me to step beyond my little PhD bubble and consider my research from the outside.

The experience of preparing, presenting, and discussing my research (which is still very much in the early stages of development) helped me put together a list of useful pointers to help with future formal and friendly presentations:

1)    Prepare Early!

     I know that this is a REALLY obvious one.  However, since I finished putting my presentation together four minutes before I was due to deliver it, resulting in a very frantic sprint from my office to the presentation venue, it is clear that I haven’t quite mastered not leaving everything to the last second.  It is SO much better to arrive with plenty of time, with your thoughts and materials organised and gathered (and without a red face).  Had I spent less time worrying (needlessly) about the fact that I was presenting work which is still under development (the entire point of these seminars!), I probably would have spent more time putting together what I was going to say, and thinking about how I can contextualise this particular section of my research within the broader scope of my PhD.

2)    Give Background and Context.

Remember that although your research topics are something you engage with pretty much 365 days a year, not everyone you are presenting to is an expert in your field.  I included a few slides at the beginning of my presentation giving some details of the authors and texts I would be examining, along with some broader historical background.  It’s always helpful to have the option to give your audience some grounding in exactly what you’re going to be talking about.  If anything, it’ll allow non-specialists to engage with and enjoy your talk.  If it turns out that everyone you’re addressing is well-versed in your subject area, you can always skip over these parts, no harm done.  

3)     Choose Examples Carefully.

As someone doing a very literature heavy PhD, I’m often faced with the dilemma of how I should show examples to support my arguments in a presentation setting.  In preparing for this presentation, I found that it’s best to follow a sort of Goldilocks approach-not too much, not too little.  Give an example which is substantial enough to illustrate your point, and provide a platform for some (brief yet nuanced) analysis, but not so hefty that you spend more time going through giant passages of text than you do actually talking about your research.  And of course, if like me you do a lot of work with ancient languages, always provide a translation to accompany your examples!

4)     Don’t Be Ashamed!

Looking back over my preparation for this presentation, it’s pretty clear that my anxiety of not having enough impressive research to show was the main thing hindering me.  Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m still only a few months into the PhD, and that I’m not actually expected to have produced a huge volume of writing thus far.  Instead of spending time and energy battling the inferiority complexes which seem to dog postgrad students of all ages, disciplines, and stages of study, try to see opportunities to present as valuable chances to receive feedback and input on your work!

For more details of my Liverpool Work in Progress presentation, ‘In dubio mundo’: Lucan’s World and the Language of Uncertainty, follow the link below.

www.academia.edu/31841904/_In_dubio_mundo_Lucan_s_World_and_the_Language_of_Uncertainty_University_of_Liverpool_CLAH_WiP_09_03_17_   

How there isn't a right way to start a PhD

Rosie Mutton is a CREST (Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats) funded PhD student in Politics at Lancaster University. In her guest post today, she reflects upon the very beginning stage of her PhD journey and sheds much-needed light on how she learnt that there is no concrete or ‘right’ way to starting a PhD, and that it’s actually a very subjective process. Follow Rosie on Twitter: @Rosie_Mutton 

I only started my PhD in October last year, so I don’t really have that much experience to share with you (yet!) However, one thing that I really struggled with were my first few days as a PhD student. In my opinion, the initial days of starting a PhD are not talked about much, despite it being such a different experience to any previous university studies. I immediately noticed the lack of both an imposed structure and short-term achievable targets. My overriding feelings were of panic and disorientation. I knew the simple theory behind doing a PhD: you conduct research in order to write your thesis; but the actual reality of ‘doing’ a PhD is a lot more complicated.

As a researcher, my default response to this gap in my personal knowledge was to go and look it up in a book. I read several handbooks about ‘how to do a PhD’, but none mentioned a fixed starting point of where or how to actually begin. Most of the advice offered was fairly generic about writing a literature review or mapping the research process, which is all very useful, but is of more use further along in the process. It is generally assumed that you already know how to ‘get started’, which I found odd and confusing. I had no idea where to begin or how to make sense of the huge, and seemingly unachievable, task that lay ahead.

After the realisation that, for once, a book could not answer my question, I decided to talk to my friends who were further along in their PhD experience, and my supervisors, to ask how they got started. I’m very lucky in that both were (and are) immensely supportive, and offered helpful advice, shared their experiences and made suggestions about things I could try. However, for all their amazing help and advice, they could not offer me what I was looking for: someone to tell me exactly what I needed to do, and that starting in this particular way was ‘correct’.

My first few days were mainly characterised by mild hysteria, but eventually I started to realise that the reason no book, friend or supervisor can tell you the ‘right’ way to start is because there is no ‘right’ way. No one can tell you how to start. It cannot be quantified by a step-by-step diagram as everyone’s experience and journey is different. There are so many variable and subjective factors that can combine in multiple ways, that for there to be a generalizable, rigid, linear framework for students to try to adhere to would be unhelpful. It took me a while to appreciate this, and that I needed to be selective about the advice I followed in order to draw on others’ experience to construct a way of starting my PhD in a way that suited me and the way I work. The point of a PhD is independent research and although you can receive help from an array of books, friends, lecturers and supervisors, ultimately it is up to you to make the decisions about how and where to start.

To a certain extent, I think that there is also a ‘mental block’ about how to approach academia that needs to be overcome. When you are researching for a PhD (particularly in social sciences) you can’t go and look up the answer. You are the person contributing and creating the answer which is a very different approach to any other academic degree you have studied for before. Once you accept that there is no single ‘right’ way to start your PhD experience and that you are developing the answer yourself, this will help you to start being open-minded about how to do things. I have only just recently come to appreciate this, but now that I have, things are getting a little easier.

So basically starting a PhD is hard (bit of an obvious point, I know). But I think that is it hard because of all of the reasons people don’t tell you. Most reflective accounts focus on the amount of work a PhD involves or how isolating it can be as an experience, and these are the things that most people know about (although they certainly are crucial points to be aware of). However, I think that the difficulties faced at the beginning of the PhD process are often not talked about. The key to starting a PhD is recognising and accepting that there are some things books just can’t tell you. As a researcher who spends most of the time reading books, this scares me. Now that I have accepted that, I have been able to focus on making my own way through, in a way that is suitable and beneficial for me. It takes a while to get used to this shift in perspective and the level of control over your own time. It certainly involves a lot of trial and error, and I have by no means completely solved it, yet I have definitely made progress since those first few daunting days. 

In conversation with...Dr Raana Bokhari

Dr Raana Bokhari is a Teaching Associate in the department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. In today’s interview, we talk about her PhD journey and experiences, along with the lessons that she learnt along the way. Raana also sheds light on her experiences of breaking into the academic job market, and provides her much needed advice to those that are planning on getting an academic job subsequent to completing a PhD. 

Firstly, it would be great to hear a bit about your PhD journey and some of your experiences. What did you research and when did you complete your doctorate?

The PhD was a combination of textual theological study and ethnography, quite a novel and rare academic approach. I looked at how a hundred year old theological Sunni text written for women in India had travelled with the diasporic community to Leicester to see how text shapes and informs daily religious life in UK Muslim Deobandi women. I completed in 2013.

It wasn’t easy: a PhD is quite a lonely journey because although you feel unconfident, actually only you are the real expert because it’s a new piece of research and therefore only you know a lot about it, and it’s your singular research. So there are great research networks around and you’re blessed if you have a good working relationship with your supervisor, but it is quite lonely and arduous.

During your time as a PhD student, what would you say was one of the most enriching and positive experiences you've had? 

The research courses and networks at faculty level are tremendous. Other PhD students became a really important part of my support.

The fieldwork itself was probably the best experience. I loved being out in the field, meeting and interacting with participants. I took the approach that they were just as much in charge of the PhD as me, a very reflective interactive approach. Their warmth and access into their lives was a real privilege.

Then being able to disseminate that at conferences and get feedback from peers and experts was tremendously valuable. I was fortunate enough to publish parts of the thesis before the viva, that would not have been possible without the intellectual interaction with colleagues.

What was one of the biggest struggles you encountered in your PhD journey? Did you expect this struggle to occur?

Actually getting to grips with the plethora of writings was a mammoth task. I had thought that the literature review would be fairly straight forward, but because of events since 9/11 there has been a phenomenal amount of literature on Islam and Muslims: coming to grips with that was really difficult. The biggest shock was not realizing that although I thought I was clear in my mind about what my thesis was on, it took me a year to come to grips with the theoretical frameworks that would underpin my research.

And then writing itself! I’m a fairly confident writer academically, but that confidence somehow just went out of the window! It took a while to pluck up the courage to write and feel in control. In fact, it was in the last year of the research that I felt everything come together.

What was one of your favourite ways to detach yourself from your PhD research and enter into a different headspace?

Just by pretending I wasn’t doing a PhD lol! Actually I had a young family so that constant distraction of home life and the normality of life was a God send. Immersing yourself in life away from the thesis is actually really important for sanity. So doing things with the family and focusing on my children growing up was a good coping mechanism – it’s a double-edged sword of course, because there are times when I needed to prioritise work but things happening at home took over.

In independent-led work, it can at times be easy to feel unmotivated because there is less structure due to the fact that we are responsible, as individuals, to organise our own deadlines and productivity. What is your advice when you have slow-moving days, and feel slightly unmotivated in terms of your work and progress? 

Looking back, I would say just let slow days be used productively as time that you are mulling over ideas. There is a lot of time and effort that goes into a PhD that isn’t easily quantifiable, like how you process an important work you are reading and thinking about how it shapes your research. So embrace the slow days and let them be that time when you are genuinely thinking over things. You sometimes need a bit of distance from your ideas to be impartial and see whether they work or not.

The other thing I would say is write, no matter how little, and even if they are just rudimentary thoughts. I did a lot of that, writing, jotting down, planning. All of that in the final analysis helped tremendously in shaping the thesis.

Did you always anticipate progressing into an academic-based job when you were doing your PhD? If so, what were your main fears about entering into the job market after you finished your doctorate?

I was already in academia before the PhD, so I undertook it because it was a necessary and important part of my career progression. I’m very bookish, so it’s the place where I am most comfortable, reading, researching, writing. However, that doesn’t mean I didn’t have any apprehensions: quite the reverse. I felt great trepidation at entering the job market simply because academia has become increasingly competitive. But I think it’s about having integrity and being honest about your research interests. It’s difficult because you have to weigh that up with wanting to secure a post, but after the effort of a PhD, if you want to stay in academia, the chances are that you are really committed to your research. It’s a case of letting that enthusiasm come through in an interview, and of course hoping that posts come up in your field. Keep pushing, don’t give up.

What was your overall experience like in terms of actually getting an academic job?

I’m still part time, which currently is perfect with having children that need me around. But the process hasn’t been easy. I didn’t have any work for over a year after obtaining the PhD. But, I carried on doing small scale pilot research projects, even self-funded a trip abroad for it. Having new data to work on kept me active rather than becoming stagnant. Also, a few posts were advertised for which I was fortunate to be shortlisted. I’m a great believer in things happening for a reason, and events happening in life when the time is right. So even though I would feel a certain degree of disappointment at being told I wasn’t successful, I knew without a doubt that the decision was better for me… in the end that proved right, because I secured a post at Lancaster University which was always the ideal location for me, so I think what you put out there in the Universe will come your way in the end. Just keep the faith. 

Have you gained any life lessons in your time as a PhD student/academic? If so, would you be able to tell us one?

Yes: to always be humble about my PhD journey, both the difficulties and achievements and be very grateful for all those who participated in my PhD journey and taught me so much. Both negative and positive experiences are a great tutor in life.

Also, do you have a quote that you like to go to for a source of encouragement?

I read a statement (hadith) from Ali ibn Abi Talib (600-661) which took my breath away during the PhD journey. It resonated with me so much, and is a daily reminder to me to use what I learnt in a productive active way.

'O you who carry knowledge around with you; are you only carrying it around with you? For surely knowledge belongs to whoever knows and then acts accordingly.'

Finally, what would you say to a PhD student that is wanting to attain an academic-job at the end, but feels discouraged about the seemingly lack of opportunities/ jobs available? Is there any advice that you could offer from what you’ve learnt from your own experiences?

It sounds clichéd but things really will work out for you if you persist. At times it feels like a saturated field, but the fact that you are studying a PhD means that you have a viable, doable research project. At some point, an opening will come in your field. However, if it doesn’t, my advice is, try to make that opening: write a research proposal and get advice from your tutors. Submit the application to a funding body. Having good links with your supervisor and research tutors is essential because they can help guide your career. If this is what you want to do, don’t give up. I remember one of the professors in my department told me that it took him 5 years to get the job he really wanted, but he persisted with part time teaching and work up to that point.