There are many struggles you’ll encounter during your PhD experience, two of the major ones being feeling overwhelmed, and feeling completely stuck. Both are things I’ve come up against quite a lot over my 2 and a half years of being a PhD researcher, especially the former due to my depression and anxiety. So, in … Continue reading What to do when you feel like you just can’t do it anymore
I said in a previous post that I would talk about why I study wolves – so today I thought I’d fulfil that promise! It’s been a bit of a winding journey to this point. When I started thinking about doing a PhD, I didn’t have wolves in mind at all. Truthfully, I hadn’t thought … Continue reading Why wolves? The wolf in my story and finding a PhD topic that you love
This week's guest blog comes from Jennifer Thatcher, a 2nd year, SGSAH-funded PhD candidate at Edinburgh College of Art. She also writes regularly for art magazines, including Art Monthly, ARTNews and ArtReview. You can read more about her work at https://www.sgsah.ac.uk/research/ahrc17-18/headline_563098_en.html and https://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/profile/jennifer-thatcher. ‘Is it normal for the pipes in my room to whine constantly?’ I asked at the reception … Continue reading New York: A Nostalgic Trip through Magazine Archives
Last month, a story about a medieval woman with lapis lazuli in her teeth hit the headlines. It sounds bizarre but actually makes a lot of sense – researchers examined the tartar on the teeth from her skeleton and found the precious stone, which they theorise was present because the woman was a manuscript illustrator. … Continue reading What is interdisciplinarity, really?
This guest blog comes from Lucy Byford, a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh’s art history department researching the avant-garde magazines and performance of Dada in Berlin. Together with co-founders Dr. Lucy Weir, Erica O’Neill, and Alexandra Chiriac, Lucy has set up the network ‘Modernist Methods’ (@BeyondFineArt) for researchers working on overlooked material cultures. … Continue reading Foregrounding the forgotten: Launch of a new interdisciplinary network for the study of overlooked material cultures
Like many people around the world, when the new year rolled around I found myself binge-watching the new Netflix series ‘Tidying up with Marie Kondo’. I’d heard of her book The Magical Art of Tidying Up some years ago, but had never been interested enough to read it. In fact, I secretly resented the principal. … Continue reading ‘Sparking joy’ in my life and research
Our latest guest blog comes from Charlie, a first-year PhD researcher in the Architecture By Design program at the University of Edinburgh. His research is on the architecture of prisons, and perhaps someday he will design you a new home. I’m a doctoral researcher studying the architecture of prisons with the goal of developing improved … Continue reading Meta-prisons, or, Imprisonizing introspections upon investigations of incarceration
From my previous posts, you may well have thought that I’m all about wolves, and not so much about the Anglo-Saxons. However, Anglo-Saxon literature was a passion of mine long before wolves (sorry Luna!). I became fascinated with Anglo-Saxon poetry when I first read about its influence on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien during my … Continue reading A Passion Second Only to Wolves: The Un-ravellable Mystery of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts
This week's guest blog comes from Christian Clarkson, who graduated with her PhD in December 2018; it was funded by the AHRC as part of a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership between the University of St Andrews and Historic Environment Scotland, and she is currently working for both organisations. Her research focussed on wider-precinct buildings in Scottish … Continue reading A Rage-Nosebleed and Thomas Becket’s Pants: Serendipity in Research
As I mentioned in my previous (and first ever!) post, one of my missions over the next six months is to explore the PhD experience as a sufferer of mental health problems. This is something I barely, if ever, discuss, but I’ve come to realise how important it is for so many reasons, not least … Continue reading Fight or flight? Presenting papers with anxiety
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