This week, Blogger Vesna Curlic grapples with what makes a good PhD routine and her journey towards finding a routine that works for her (for now, at least). Make sure to read until the end for some exciting happenings over on our SGSAH Instagram page! One of the best and most challenging part of doing … Continue reading Strict but Compassionate: Finding a Routine as a PhD Student
Sometime in early 2020, when it sunk in for everyone that the pandemic was not just going to be a weeks-long affair, many PhD students and ECRs were suddenly scrambling to replicate some semblance of the office environment. I’m one of those people. I love the office environment. Pre-pandemic, I loved going into the office … Continue reading An Ode to Virtual Writing Groups
Why do we do what we do? I ask myself this question with some regularity. When I’m stuck at my desk, fiddling with the same sentence for hours until my eyes cross or despairing at the state of the academic job market, I find myself asking why on earth anyone would want to do a … Continue reading Academic Delights: Thoughts on Gratitude
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
The end of 2020 is rapidly bearing down on us. Sitting here at the end of this year trying to reflect is an almost impossible task. The world, and everyday life, has changed in ways we didn’t think possible this time a year ago. Personally it has been one of the most difficult years, both … Continue reading Well what was all that then?
In this guest post, Manos Apostolidis discusses how to navigate the waters of a PhD and personal development when we have to face our own barriers. It presents a guide of his own techniques for how to navigate this and be kind to yourself. It also features some lovely images of Greece, somewhere I spent … Continue reading Obsessive Compulsive Disasters
The 1st October 2020 was the first “official” day of my PhD Research. It was one of those days – rainy and sunny at the same time. No doubt that’s a metaphor. The rain was a nuisance, but there was a fabulous rainbow as I walked my kids down to school. My 6-year-old asked his … Continue reading MIND THE (interdisciplinary) GAP!
What do depression and the PhD process have in common? (This is not a setup for a joke. I’m sorry.) The answer, as I came to discover recently, is their tendency to force our attention towards new questions; questions that are unexpected, overdue, crucial for our development, and illuminating in their own way, even when … Continue reading On questions and questioning
This is not a particularly new subject to write about, however it is something I have been thinking about lately. How much of our identity is wrapped up in our identity as a PhD student and as a researcher, and how much remains of who we were before? I, like many of you, am lucky … Continue reading Are we human, or are we researcher?
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