Greetings from SGSAH, and welcome to our brand-new blog! My name is Katelynn, and I’ll be helping to launch this exciting new initiative over the next few months, meaning that I’ll be you curator/tour guide/friendly neighbourhood answerer-of-questions as you explore what we have to offer through this site.

We’ll start off with the basic inquiries:

Who exactly are you, Katelynn-person?

I’m an intern with SGSAH with an extensive background in blog creation, promotion, and maintenance, but I’m also a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews. As a result, I’m not only here to share some of the excellent work that SGSAH doctoral researcher in our various affiliated schools across the country are doing, but I’m also going to be providing regular posts on the doctoral experience, and what it means to be a doctoral student in Scotland.

How is this site different from the main SGSAH site?

Well, first, it’s a blog: and as a general rule, it’s much less formal. Second, as a blog, it’s open to comments and dialogue. We want to engage our doctoral researcher community—so instead of seeing a post about someone’s research and the information delineated accordingly, we want you to have a means to engage with what the personal experience of a project has been, both its pros and its cons and the honest impression of not just whether it was worthwhile for the researcher, but whether you can learn something from it that will help you in deciding your own research and career path. Likewise, the integration of specific experiences tied to SGSAH alongside candid and accessible treatments of the general questions, concerns, anxieties, and excitement involved with the whirlwind of doctoral student life makes this particular blog unique.

So this site is aiming to do…what, exactly?

Namely, it’s aiming to focus on you. Institutional websites are made for information and formal particulars. Research and initiative-specific websites and blogs are more personal, but they’re all about just that one thing, with just those few people. Here, we’re looking to provide a space where we engage the SGSAH student with information that’s relevant and interesting, personal and poignant, by providing first-hand accounts to give you an inside look at things you might be interested in exploring further, as well as engaging the issues about doctoral researcher life that are most important to you. To that end, we’ll be featuring regular posts on the trials and triumphs of life as a doctoral researcher, as well as inviting guest bloggers to share their experiences as SGSAH interns, Thinkers-In-Residence, and participants in other SGSAH events and trainings (and if you’re interested in contributing, please be encouraged to reach out to us here; we’d love to hear from you!).

From here, then: we’re off!