Careers, fellowships, early career research, academic life, and more
Doing a PhD inevitably means staying in university longer and not being able to rinse off the student-status. This can at times feel a bit awkward when friends and people around us seem to be in completely different life stages. They might be getting a dog and a mortgage, while you’re trying to convince a prospective landlord that you are technically a professional even if you’re officially a student. You’re neither fish nor fowl, navigating the grey area of work, bureaucracy, and life.
It’s not a secret that branding, marketing, and showcasing your research online can boost your academic career. You might have noticed that you will find most researchers and PhD students all over Twitter, where they can share their work, establish their relevance in the field, and grow their networks. Perhaps the one or other might even have their own research blog or podcast. Recently however, there has been a slow shift to TikTok as a platform to promote research.
For our Race Equality Month, we're taking a look back through our archives to share some fascinating articles from previous contributors. Please note this article was originally published in July 2021, so some aspects may be out of date. In this guest post, University of Glasgow PhD researcher Mariana Rios Maldonado discusses her experiences with … Continue reading Learning to Not ‘Unsee’: Racism in Academia
This post from Maxine Branagh-Miscampell is another one from the archives, this time from 2017 and is an article about dealing with pregnancy during your PhD. Our guest blogger this week is Maxine Branagh-Miscampbell. Maxine is a third-year PhD student at the University of Stirling. Her PhD project, titled ‘The Young Scottish Reader in the Long … Continue reading The Realities of the PhD Baby
| Dr Lizzie Marshall As it turns out, there is life after the PhD. When it ends there’s a mixture of relief and disbelief, although for me it leaned heavily in favour of the latter. I’m sure that wasn’t helped by the fact that I did my viva from my sofa because, just as my … Continue reading What next…?
| Vesna Curlic As the mid-point of my PhD creeps closer every day, I’m increasingly aware of the fact that I will soon enough have to make decisions about what to do after my doctorate. The prospect of life post-PhD weighs heavily on my mind, especially as I’m someone who went directly from undergrad into a … Continue reading “What do you want to be when you grow up?”: Career anxiety and the PhD
When I started as the SGSAH blogger six months ago, I did so with the anticipation that it would allow me a space to be creative when so much of my PhD life was anything but. What I didn’t expect from this time was to be introduced to so many amazing researchers who, for the … Continue reading The Long Goodbye (And Some PhD Advice)
In this guest post, University of St Andrews PhD researcher Ann Gillian Chu offers advice on what academic conference organisers in Britain might be looking for in their Calls for Papers (CfPs). Similarly, she also explores how British conference organisers can strive to be more inclusive and understanding when opening CfPs to a global audience. … Continue reading Tips for Responding to British CfPs as an International Scholar (and How to Organise a More Globally Inclusive Conference)
In this guest post, University of Glasgow PhD researcher Lucy McCormick discusses how her current research was affected by her time in Tibet and explores how white researchers of non-white communities can confront their own complicity. In 2013 I was living in a part of China with a large Tibetan population – unsurprising, since a … Continue reading Panning Out: Confronting White Complicity as a Researcher of Tibet
For the 2021 SGSAH Summer School, I attended the Academic IP workshop, run by Amy Thomas. Though I have a basic understanding of copyright law, I didn’t know how it pertained to my work as a PhD. Throughout the workshop, I realised this is something every PhD should be familiar with, so I thought I’d … Continue reading Understanding Your Academic IP and Copyright
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