Category: PhD life
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Academically Homeless
Yesterday I logged in to my Manchester University library account and discovered that I can no longer renew my books. This came as a bit of a surprise. There’s nothing urgent, you understand, it just brought home to me the fact that, slowly and surely, I’m being set adrift in the big, wide world again. …
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Final Countdown
This afternoon I had my mock viva, which was an interesting experience. It was reassuring, in that I survived and there was only one question that I felt I completely flunked. That said, there were several others that brought home to me the need to be certain of my own position, which of course is…
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Viva preparation
This morning I lifted my thesis from the bookshelf and looked at it for the first time since I put it there in September. I have to admit that there is a certain amount of pride just from in holding it in my hands. It’s a substantial piece of work and represents a good three…
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2015: Happy New Year
New Year’s Day, and I am back at my desk for the first time in several months, mainly in a late attempt to put together a panel for the Reading Early Modern Studies conference in July, for which the call for papers closes very soon. It’s galvanised me into thinking properly about ballads again for…
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Reblogged: on not quitting the doctorate, by Pat Thomson
Originally posted on patter: We hear a lot these days about people quitting the PhD – they have institutional difficulties, experience appalling discrimination, have serious supervision troubles, struggle with funding. These are dreadful experiences and we do need to hear about them. We also hear quite a lot about how hard the PhD is and…
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Easter vacation
With the children on their Easter break, work over the last couple of weeks has been rather hit and miss. Mainly miss, to be honest. But I have spent some time working on a short historiographical piece about the relationship between ballads and news, which I’m happy to say is nearly finished. In the…
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Easter holidays
This week is the first week of my children’s Easter holiday, so I am juggling childcare with work. Cramming little bits of work into wherever it will fit isn’t easy and it certainly doesn’t allow for extended research or writing, for example. But there are little things that I can do. I went through a…
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Musical musings part 2.
After last week’s musical musings, I had great fun on Thursday discussing the terminology of sixteenth century music with my music supervisor. I freely admit to butterflies before the meeting, but in a change of insect metaphor, I came out buzzing. I think we have come up with a solution concerning how to talk about…
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Lyndal Roper and news
I’ve spent a lot of time in the company of Luther in the last few days, courtesy of Professor Lyndal Roper and Manchester’s Dr Jenny Spinks. Prof Roper’s seminar on Thursday evening described Luther’s polemical writing as an expression of his masculinity, but surprised many of the audience with his scatology and lewdness. On Friday…
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Bethan Foulkes @ the People’s History Museum | Researchers in Residence
Blog post by my friend and Manchester PhD colleague, Bethan Foulkes, on her work with the Researchers in Residence Project. Bethan Foulkes @ the People’s History Museum | Researchers in Residence.
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