Looking back at past inequalities in PhD funding and support

I’ve been taking part in an interesting Twitter thread today about problems faced by non affiliated or barely affiliated academics, essentially independent scholars without university support, including financial. It digressed slightly into different funding arrangements for postgraduates. I remembered how during my Dundee history PhD (2003-2010) many Scotland-wide PhD training events were for a long time only open to funded PhD students. I was initially unfunded for my history PhD, but later won AHRC funding. Even then as a part timer I got no stipend, unlike full timers. My PhD supervisor campaigned with others to get AHRC to provide stipends to part timers. This happened in time for me to benefit before the end of my PhD. As a part timer I was also initially ineligible for the Disabled Students Allowance, which at that time could only go to full timers. Fortunately that changed too. To be fair this is a long time ago, and much has changed. But still.

I could also go off on one about the poor support for me as a computer science PhD student from EPSRC when I fell long term ill. But that’s another story …

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Thoughts on World Book Day, childhood reading and having done a PhD on reading habits

Today is World Book Day 2022, a celebration of reading in the UK and Ireland, targeted especially at children and young people. It is a day for celebrating the power of reading, but also for showing youngsters how they can access it and benefit from it. And I am a big fan.

I was an enthusiastic childhood reader, with early visits to Melrose public library, and still remember borrowing Enid Blyton books and Tudor history. Then when we moved back to Hawick I devoured first the children’s basement floor of the Hawick public library – a grand Carnegie library with lovely architecture – and then was allowed to borrow from the “grown ups” section. There I devoured masses of Agatha Christie books, science fiction and fantasy, as well as doing research into my family history in the research part of the library. I also borrowed books from primary school and secondary school libraries, and the Wilton church Sunday School small library.

Years on reading is much harder for me, thanks to a progressive neurological disease that struck in 1994 when I was just 22. Soon I could no longer easily manage print for extended periods, even large print was troublesome. But then eBooks came along, which I could adjust to have a quite ginormous font, and I was reading again. I adore reading, and on my Kindle usually have a couple of novels on the go, as well as various non fiction books. All read with a gargantuan font that lets me keep reading. I pick up a lot of bargain eBooks in sales, and also read free ones from Project Gutenberg.

However World Book Day has a special significance for me now because between 2003 and 2010 I completed a part time PhD at Dundee University on Scottish reading habits between circa 1750 and 1820. This was a surprising route to take. I’d studied first computer science at university until my illness struck. Then I retrained as a historian. But I was not in any way a literature student.

I worked part time as a research assistant 2003-4 on Bob Harris’s Scottish Small Towns Project, working on the pilot study in Angus. And among other things this introduced me to the history of reading and book history, as I uncovered the history of cultural activity in Angus in the 18th and early 19th centuries, including the spread of libraries, newspapers and bookshops. I discovered that library borrowing records existed rarely in Scotland (though since then more have turned up, all welcome!) and how researchers like Paul Kaufman had showed these could be analysed. And I was entranced.

At the same time I was completing a taught MPhil degree and pondering if I wanted to try for a history PhD. And I couldn’t get away from wanting to research reading habits more. Bob Harris agreed to supervise me, and I started a self funded PhD, though later won funding from AHRC for the rest of my part-time PhD. My approach was very much social and cultural history rather than literary, as I got to grips researching what Scots were reading and how they fitted this into their lives in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Magic, though with my own reading problems due to illness/disability I was frequently envious of how “my readers” in the past were managing to access books!

My PhD thesis is online and freely available for all to read. In a nutshell though it showed how reading was growing in Scotland in this period, and how important reading was as an activity throughout the country and at all levels of society. A very positive thumbs up for reading.

So whenever World Book Day comes around I think back to my historic research in this field, while at the same time looking forward to my future reading. I am so lucky I got to complete a PhD on this topic. And so grateful I can still read, albeit with considerable adjustments, and a gargantuan font, thankfully helped hugely by adjustable eBooks.

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A retrospective look at my first history academic journal paper 15 years ago, on Haddington library borrowings in the late 18th/early 19th centuries

15 years ago in 2006 my first academic journal paper as a historian was published. Sole authored, it looked at the borrowing records between 1732 and 1816 of Gray Library in Haddington, East Lothian, an unusual example of an early free town library. The paper examined these borrowing records to see what they told us about the town’s reading habits at this time.

I thought it might be nice to do a retrospective blog about this journal paper. The paper was published in the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, and the full published PDF version is available on my website, in green Open Access form on my publications web page. Note I had earlier co-authored publications from my computer science days, but this was the first academic journal paper I wrote fully myself, and my first history piece after retraining as a historian, picking up BA, taught MPhil and PhD history degrees.

The paper was written fairly early on in my part-time history PhD at Dundee University, investigating Scottish reading habits circa 1750-1820 (my full PhD thesis is also available freely online). I decided to write the paper to give me a push to write up this good case study, but it was also creating good analysis I could use in my PhD thesis.

I submitted the paper too late for that year’s competition by the journal for postgraduate students. I remember Callum Brown, the then JSHS editor and at the time a professor of history at Dundee University, asking me if I wanted him to hold my paper back for the next year’s competition. But my health then was so precarious with my neurological disease resisting treatment, so I asked him to just consider it for normal publication as soon as possible. So he did.

It’s common for academics looking back at their early published writing to find it naive or flawed in other ways. I’m actually really proud of this paper, and its breadth and depth of analysis. Admittedly I would struggle to write it now, as my neurological disease has progressed more. But I still think irrespective of that aspect that it stands up well to the test of time.

I was blessed with rich library borrowing records, though I had to transcribe these all myself, working on a microfilm copy of the manuscript originals at home (yes I have my own microfilm reader!). That and the subsequent checking took many months, but gave me over 5000 borrowings to analyse.

Using my genealogical skills and research, especially in the then National Archives of Scotland, I researched the library borrowers extensively, allowing me to identify hundreds of them confidently, and note their gender, occupation, birth and death dates, and address if more specific than (or different from) Haddington. Adding these genealogical details allowed me to examine the borrowers and their borrowings in myriad different ways and groupings, and was a very powerful tool.

Such analysis was only practically possible because I built a linked relational database of the library borrowing records and its readers. This is something that at that time was groundbreaking in a Scottish book history context, but even today would be unusual. The three linked relational tables of borrowers, borrowings and books were then loaded into a MySQL relational database system, where I could run SQL queries to search for the borrowings of specific groups of borrowers that I was interested in. For example the following query counts the most popular books among teenage boy borrowers:

SELECT LinkToTitle, Count(LinkToTitle) FROM
(SELECT *
FROM borrowings, readers
WHERE ((borrowings.LinkToBorrower=readers.ReaderID
OR borrowings.LinkToOtherReader=readers.ReaderID)) AND readers.AgeOfBorrower=”teenage” AND readers.Gender=”male”) AS tmptable GROUP by LinkToTitle
ORDER by Count(LinkToTitle) DESC

Comparing male and female borrowings at the library was very important, and allowed me to engage using this substantial data with academic theories and contemporary opinions about differing reading habits by gender. I also relished the way this system allowed me to examine other groups in detail. For example I was able to pull out the borrowings of teenage users of the library, both boys and girls, which led to a particularly satisfying section of my paper.

One branch of my family tree traces back to Haddington, and it was a delight to see ancestors pop up among the library’s borrowers. Two of them sneaked into my published journal paper: my 5xg-granny Jean Veitch (later Mrs Somner) and her father William Veitch, a watchmaker in the town.

My Haddington library records and database have recently been gifted to the Books and Borrowing project based at the University of Stirling. This means that other researchers can build on my work, indeed a number of them already are, which has been fascinating to see. And ultimately the Haddington borrowings I recorded will be available to view freely online.

The findings in the paper were numerous, ranging across changing reading habits, variation by gender and occupation, demonstrating the use of books to educate young minds, and different ways of fitting in the library into your working week. However I think its main contribution was as a proof of concept. Both for the power of relational databases to analyse library borrowing records in a myriad of ways, but also for the potential of enhancing the library borrowings by other genealogical and historical research to better contextualise the borrowers and their borrowings. However on a personal level it was also a proof of concept for me, re my ability to write and publish academic journal papers. Even if with it sailing through peer review with no revisions required prior to publication it perhaps gave me an overly optimistic and unrealistic view of the tribulations that might ensue in that process!

Again my journal paper about the Haddington library borrowers is freely available to download and read on my website, as a PDF linked on the publications page.

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Ten years since PhD viva

March 31st 2020 will mark exactly ten years since my successful history PhD viva. I thought it might be nice to reflect on how the subsequent years have gone, and where things stand now for me, in academic terms.

I live with a severely disabling neurological disease, which struck in 1994 when I was just 22. It’s gradually progressive, and prevents me from working in any paid capacity in academia or elsewhere, and limits what I can do. The last decade saw me continue to battle a major relapse in my disease, including needing high dose chemotherapy infusions in hospital throughout summer 2012. Fortunately this treatment helped stabilise my condition, although it is still progressive.

Nevertheless I have continued to be active as an academic, publishing new peer reviewed journal papers and book chapters, and presenting conference papers and participating in other ways.

In the early stages post PhD my primary focus was on publishing work from my PhD thesis. Increasingly I have moved onto new research and new topics, and have a number of interesting new research projects underway.

An unexpected more recent change of tack saw me switch from my usual eighteenth century interests to jump back into the seventeenth century. My pre-PhD MPhil (taught PG Masters) dissertation studied a rich set of seventeenth century Scottish local court records, and I felt strongly that these merited publication as well as my later PhD research. In addition I discovered a poem about the court in 1682 – written then too! I have an annotated transcript and accompanying essay about the poem due to be published soon. This might sound straightforward, but the seventeenth century context is far outside my comfort zone as a historian. Yet I have derived much pleasure working in it, and learning the historiographical ropes. Encouragingly I also think there could be more publishable outputs possible from this MPhil dissertation research.

I have also combined my historical interests with indie computer game development, specifically traditional text adventure games, or interactive fiction as they are more commonly known nowadays. Two games have been entered into competitions, one about Border Reivers in 1490s Liddesdale, the other an occult treasure hunt in 1590s Scotland based on a true story in my family history. I plan to write more in future. It’s a creative hobby that gives me much pleasure.

Another area I would like to explore more is digital humanities. I’ve always used large scale computer techniques in my historical research, probably inevitable given my previous background as an academic computer scientist. Yet I would like to do more, for example building online portals to some of the databases and resources I have built in my research, and using spatial analysis and visualisation to further explore Scottish book history and urban history.

One thing that has declined over the last decade is my participation in academic conferences. This has had a strong correlation with my neurological disease progression, and the increasing practical challenges of attending conferences given these circumstances. However I do still occasionally speak at conferences, or attend. I was due to speak at a conference in May, but then Coronavirus happened. Hopefully the event is just postponed, rather than cancelled.

Something else that has declined over the last decade is how frequently I have been able to attend Dundee University history research seminars for the university’s history academic staff and postgraduates in particular. There are various reasons for this, but my progressive disease is definitely a major factor. I was delighted recently when I managed to attend a history seminar, the first in a very long time. Many familiar faces to see and catch up with, as well as new folks to meet. Yet even largely home based I don’t feel completely cut off as an academic historian. Twitter is a particular boon, connecting me with fellow academics and historical researchers with shared interests, all over the world. I also have a good number of lecturer friends I can call on for advice if need be. Ever since my PhD I have had an honorary research fellowship in history at Dundee University, which has also been a huge help, and is very much appreciated, giving me ready access to electronic journals and other resources, so vital to allow me to continue to keep up with research in my academic fields.

I don’t know what the next few years are going to bring. But for now I look ahead with optimism, and hope to continue to build on the good progress I have made as an academic historian in the last ten years.

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Review of Joli Jensen’s “Write No Matter What: Advice for Academics”

I recently read this book, published by the University of Chicago Press, in their Writing, Editing and Publishing series. It’s a compact paperback, 166 pages long.

The book is divided into 28 main chapters, split across the following core sections:

• Writing in Academe
• Using Tools that Work
• Challenging Writing Myths
• Maintaining Momentum
• Building Writing Support

Of these I found the sections on tools, challenging writing myths and maintaining momentum most effective. The book’s author is nicely to the point, doesn’t mess about, but gives straightforward, honest advice. There’s much that many academics could benefit from, including making time for writing in a busy academic life, dealing with imposter syndrome, and coping with perfectionism. I also found the book had great advice for handling multiple projects at once, and the generally less often discussed challenge of keeping writing fun, in a context in which it might often seem to become a chore.

On the downside I did personally have big issues with the depiction of humanities scholars, presented as people with only one writing task to focus on, and a relatively easier task as a result than scientists. As an academic scientist turned historian this didn’t fit with my experience. Humanities scholars often juggle multiple writing projects at once too. And, perhaps even more crucially, are often single authors, so must handle all the tasks of academic writing, not shared among a group i.e. all of research, planning, writing, revising, editing, submitting, dealing with peer review, and hopefully proofreading and final publication processes. The challenge can be immense. I don’t think the author of the book grasped that at all. Perhaps she was looking back to more halcyon days.

I also found that it was a shame the book avoided commonly used writing terms like procrastination, which can often be such a problem for many doctoral students. The book does have some good writing tips for postgraduates, but is aimed squarely at later stage academics, who have more challenges fitting writing in alongside their other academic workload. Though the book could be of more benefit to part-time postgraduates than full-timers, who must fit vital writing time in around other commitments, including in some cases full-time jobs. I just think that with a few relatively small tweaks and refocusing the book could have been adjusted to help more postgraduate students as well.

So yes I do have critiques. But generally I came away from it feeling very positive. I don’t think that any academic would use every tip and idea in there. But there are lots of good ones presented. And many ideas challenge oft-held unproductive mindsets. It’s also an easy read, well written, that you can dip in and out of. So yes, thumbs up.

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Reflecting on new PhD researchers working in “my” area

When I did my history PhD at Dundee University (“Reading habits in Scotland circa 1750-1820”) I was plugging a big gap in the research. All PhD research should make a contribution, but it’s rare for a subject to be quite so little studied before as this one. Scottish reading habits and book history more generally had been little researched since Paul Kaufman in the 1960s. Some PhDs had been completed, but usually by librarians, without their own graduate students to inspire. And so, although Scotland has a mass of useful sources (library borrowing records, evidence of book ownership etc.), its reading and book history was largely little researched when I started my PhD in 2003.

Of course the downside of having a big gap is that there’s always a chance someone else will come along and fill it. During my PhD there was a panic moment, when I learned of another PhD student, Mark Towsey at neighbouring St Andrews, looking at many of the same sources, with a very similar PhD topic. We met up, and established our respective approaches. We still had overlaps, but not enough to jeopardise getting our PhDs. And we both completed successfully.

That was some years ago, but more recently reading history has become more popular among Scottish researchers, almost fashionable to an extent. And in the last few years I’ve watched with interest new PhD students starting to work on Scottish reading habits, for example Maxine Branagh-Miscampbell looking at childhood reading in 18th century Scotland, and Jill Dye studying Innerpeffray Library and its borrowers. It’s a slightly strange feeling seeing the field come alive like this, but in a rather wonderful way. And it’s always exciting to see new researchers approach things differently, in terms of their theoretical framework and methodologies, and in terms of the core research questions that they explore.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing the results of these and other upcoming Scottish PhD projects in the next few years. It’s exciting to see these developments, if still rather strange at the same time!

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Implications of living with a rare disease

Today is Rare Disease Day, where people living with rare diseases are promoting their experiences through social media and other forms of networking. Though this is a bit of a break from my usual academic blogging, I hope that readers will understand why I’m writing this.

I live with a 1 in a million diagnosis, falling ill when I was just 22. The name is cerebral or central nervous system vasculitis, which when it springs from nowhere – as in my case – rather than as a result of another disease has an incidence of about 1 case per million people per year. Yes I’m special! Mmmm. This disease has impacted on my abilities to be an academic, forcing me to leave one full-time science PhD and later study part-time as a historian, to PhD level (completed – yay!). And it means I can’t work in academia in a paid capacity, due to my MS-like symptoms and living with what is a progressive disease. But I try to be as productive as I can. To read more about my medical story see here, and to read more about how I’ve coped as an academic see here.

But in this post I wanted to reflect more on some issues that living with a rare disease causes, rather than something more commonly found like cancer or arthritis. These range from diagnosis, through ongoing treatment and medical research, support from the social care system, and varied degrees of understanding from family, friends and colleagues.

Firstly if you have a rare disease, getting the correct diagnosis – which can be life-saving – can be very difficult. General practitioners tend to assume a more common disease form is taking place. Even at hospital level this idea can persist. I was initially misdiagnosed with ME, which at the time (and to be honest still is the case) had no viable treatment. But my symptoms changed over the following years, looking more and more like multiple sclerosis. And progressing. It was very hard to get the GPs to take me seriously. It was only after 12 hours of unstoppable vomiting for no reason – one of my early symptoms – and a GP having to give me a midnight injection in the derriere that he referred me to hospital, extremely concerned. Even at hospital the consultant assumed my ME diagnosis was right. I had to argue with them – hard given how ill I was – why I thought it was wrong, and why more tests were needed. I was right. I had a very aggressive life-threatening disease. One shocked consultant, me just relieved that a proper diagnosis had been made, and treatment could finally start.

But then there are problems too. if you have a very rare disease it’s unlikely to get much medical research, so new treatments may not be discovered, or may not be assessed to be cost worthy and suitable for your disease. With more common forms of vasculitis – the disease I have – there is more medical research happening, particularly into those forms of the disease that are ANCA-associated. For these forms of vasculitis new treatments are developed, and approved on the NHS. But for much rarer forms like my primary cerebral vasculitis the number of patient cases around the world – and in any country – is so small that it isn’t possible to do traditional medical research trials. So my form remains largely unresearched, and there aren’t the trials and resulting scientific evidence to lead to approval for treatment with new drugs discovered for other forms of vasculitis. For example Rituximab is an extremely expensive life-saving treatment approved for ANCA forms of vasculitis. There is not scientific evidence for Rituximab in the rarer non-ANCA forms like mine, and as a result it is rarely approved by health authorities in the UK.

With such a rare diagnosis support at general practitioner level and nurse level can be a problem. They’ve probably rarely encountered any vasculitis cases, which is rare enough, let alone my specific form. I have an excellent GP who has treated me since 2004 (I fell ill in 1994), but it can be difficult to get appointments with him. Because of him being away from the surgery on one day combined with the health centre appointment system stopping named appointments on certain days it would be vastly easier for me to get an appointment with any doctor, particularly a locum, but unless they’re “my” doctor they wouldn’t know what to do with my case. I’m on an incredible cocktail of drugs as well as having something rare and exotic wrong with me, and continuity of care is important. Even with nurses who administer my monthly (and for many years weekly) blood tests things have been a little difficult, with nurses not understanding why certain tests are needed, and not initially taking my word for it. But we got there in the end. Incredibly even at hospital level there are problems if you have to see another consultant unfamiliar with a rare disease and case. My consultant since 1996 recently retired, and I was very concerned that I would be put in a general clinic where I would have to tell my medical story every time, and even after that the medic on the day wouldn’t be confident what to do. Fortunately I was passed to another consultant who was my “backup” for years. He’s young, and hopefully not retiring or moving anytime soon!

It might be expected that a medical professional should know about a rare disease, though they rarely do. But it can be harder for non-medics. This causes problems for example for people applying for benefits through the benefits system. But even with family, friends and colleagues there can be misunderstandings. My disease is largely invisible. I only use a wheelchair rarely, though I have at least one stick (and sometimes two) permanently. People often only see me for the short periods I can go outside to an event, and don’t realise how much it takes out of me, and how much I need to rest before and after events. Also because I manage to do things people can underestimate how badly I am affected. I’m particularly minded of the notorious experience of dealing with a neurologist, who because I had completed a PhD couldn’t grasp that I could have cognitive problems. I completed that PhD towards the end in 1 hour chunks, spread throughout the week, up to 5 hours total time a week if I could manage it. After each hour I would be very wobbly, couldn’t control my limbs, just from the brain concentration I’d been doing, and it might be a couple of days before I could do anything PhD-y again. Yet he thought I was fine, on the basis of a short consultation, and because I had that PhD.

Fortunately both my history PhD supervisors were hugely supportive. They quickly grasped that they didn’t need to understand the medical side of things, they just had to know how I was affected, and let me take control of my studies. I’ve also had wonderful support from the department since completing the PhD, giving me an ongoing honorary research fellowship. And conference organisers are typically very helpful if I have to use my wheelchair, letting my husband accompany me at no registration cost, to assist me.

I don’t know the numbers, but there are probably a lot more people living with rare diseases out there than people think. I’d like to think that the situation will improve for them. But it’s going to take a bit of a sea-change in attitudes, both among the general public, and among the medical profession.

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Looking back on five years since successful PhD viva

Next Tuesday, 31st March 2015, it will be five years exactly since I passed my PhD viva. It’s quite a big anniversary, worth celebrating, and I thought I’d look back on how things have gone since then.

It was my second go at a PhD, this time studying history, part-time. In the 1990s I was a full-time science PhD student, but had to leave that after a progressive neurological illness started at age 22, and my funding council wouldn’t support a switch to part-time study. I’ve blogged before about how much of a challenge it was to try for a PhD again after walking away from the first one. There were advantages though: the first go gave me skills and experiences which helped make me a more efficient PhD student the second time around. But I still never really thought I’d complete it, if I thought about it at all. But I crossed fingers and did my best!

My viva was arranged for the end of March, just five weeks or so after my thesis had been submitted. Unfortunately I developed shingles in the run-up to the viva: an agonising recurrence of the chickenpox virus, a consequence of the high-dose chemotherapy and steroid drugs suppressing my immune system so much. It certainly made preparing for the viva a challenge. But maybe it helped me not get too anxious about things.

On the Wednesday of my viva Scotland was blanketed with heavy snow. Luckily both my examiners got to Dundee: the external coming from Edinburgh, the internal digging out his car in south Fife! I didn’t sleep at all the night before, but I got about four hours sleep that morning, before my husband took me in to the university, and helped me get to the venue – I had to use my manual wheelchair that day, and a suitably accessible venue had been arranged. The examiners had also agreed to restrict my viva to an hour because of my disease which means that I get very brain tired very quickly if things go much over that.

I was told that I’d passed with minor corrections as soon as the viva started, which removed the tension a lot. I remember the next hour as a relaxed friendly chat about my research. Both examiners had lots of questions, and even the third academic present, a Dundee lecturer who was acting as chair or convener of the viva, had questions too, which was nice. It was really enjoyable to be able to chat to people who had engaged with my research so closely. I also took the chance to ask their advice about good publishing strategies. After an hour the chair wheeled me out of the room, to rejoin my waiting husband, and we went off to celebrate.

I’m unable to work in academia because of my severely disabling progressing neurological disease, so have ploughed a different path as an academic. It may be worth reflecting here briefly on what it means if going for a PhD, whether or not pursuing a conventional academic path. Firstly and most straightforwardly passing a PhD is validation of your PhD research and thesis, and the many years spent working on it. It is also a mark of your acceptance into the academic community as a fully fledged academic, capable of formulating and completing large research projects. Extremely important, I think, is the huge confidence boost passing a PhD can give you. There’s very much a feeling of “I can do that!” And for me personally it also saw the achievement of a long-term goal, and helping to put to bed the hurt of having to leave a science PhD after my illness struck at just 22.

I asked for an honorary research fellowship from my department shortly after finishing the PhD, after realising that because of university libraries increasingly switching to staff/student-only electronic subscriptions to academic journals rather than print, which aren’t available to other library members including graduate members like me, I would struggle to access the journals I needed to keep up with current research and thinking. This would be a problem as I aimed to publish my own research in academic journals. Fortunately the fellowship was granted, and has been renewed each year since. This helps me enormously, but Dundee University’s history division also gets some credit whenever I have another academic publication with my affiliation noted. I also take an active part in Dundee’s history research seminars, when I’m strong enough to come in.

Publishing academic journal papers has been an important activity for me since my viva. Soon after the viva I met with my PhD supervisor Charles McKean. He was keen for me to aim at very ambitious journals, which was scary, and hasn’t been completely successful, though I think it was worth trying for. But I’ve had a fair number of journal papers accepted post viva, some of which have gone into print since, others are shortly to go into print. I’m also developing four more papers at the moment, and am increasingly moving into new research, some following on from my PhD topic directly, others more marginally connected. As a historian it’s normal to be sole author of your academic papers. This is very different from science, where papers typically have multiple authors, often a very long list of names. So I have all the responsibility of doing my own research, and the writing, submitting to editors, dealing with peer review (ouch!) and any rejection or revise and resubmit offer, and proofreading prior to final publication. One of my post viva publications, in Scottish Historical Review, had to be proofread in Ninewells hospital during a high dose chemotherapy infusion. The editor had hoped to get the proofs to me days sooner, but as it turned out it was a case of my dealing with them on the day in hospital, single handed, literally, with the other hand hooked up to the toxic chemotherapy infusion, or not be able to do the proofs in time, given how sick and tired I would be post chemo. Not a great memory! But I did it, and I’m particularly proud of that paper, that comes from my PhD research. I really enjoy the academic publishing process, and it seems to be something that I’m good at.

I’ve also been giving conference papers since passing my PhD. On the downside I usually have to pay the costs of attending and travelling myself. And since I usually need to use my wheelchair there, and need help, my husband has to come too. But we usually pick events that give us a chance to visit somewhere we want to go to for a little break. I have to rest a lot after travelling, and can usually only attend part of any multi day conferences, but my husband has a good time exploring the relevant cities while I sleep, with camera in hand. Attending conferences isn’t easy for me, but it keeps me part of the academic community, and I enjoy the challenge of giving papers. I’ve attended four conferences in the last five years, and spoke at three of those. I was invited to give a talk at a conference for archivists, fortunately held here in Dundee. I was speaking as a disabled user of archives, sharing my experiences with them re access, getting support from archivists etc. Then I presented a paper about my taught MPhil dissertation research into Melrose regality court. This was presented at the Economic & Social History Society of Scotland annual conference in Inverness. Inverness is lovely and Leakey’s Bookshop is a must see! I attended, but didn’t speak at, the SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing) 2012 conference in Dublin. It was fantastic to see the city because my great granny was born there. And then in 2014 I went to the annual SHARP conference again, this time in Antwerp – which I have long wanted to go to (oh but the cobbles!) – and gave a paper on TV series Doctor Who and its fanzines. Talk about moving out of my comfort zone as an 18th / early 19th century book/reading historian! But it was fun, and just the sort of thing my PhD gave me the confidence to tackle, and the talk attracted a huge audience – nearly 70 (most panels there were getting 20 or so people), with some having to stand or sit on the floor – who seemed to enjoy it. I will also be giving another talk in a couple of months at a book history conference in St Andrews.

I don’t know how long I can keep doing these journal papers and conference talks. My disease is progressive, even though it’s playing a bit more nicely at the moment, after the summer 2012 high dose chemotherapy infusions in hospital. I have significant dementia-like problems with memory and concentration. I also have to sleep for vast amounts of time, up to 18 hours every day in worst patches. Ironically given that my PhD researched historic reading habits I have enormous difficulty reading now due to the brain damage – thank goodness for my Kindle! And I have to do academic work in scattered short bursts, often a few minutes and no more than an hour at a time. But I do plan to keep going for as long as I can. I may not be employed in a paid academic post, but as I’ve said I’m ploughing my own path, and enjoying it.

Meanwhile next Tuesday is a time for celebrating again. I think I’ll get me a half bottle of Moët et Chandon champagne – my favourite – and some cake. Yum!

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A part-time PhDer’s (well completed) view on full-time PhDing

Another day, another post looking back on my PhD days. I’ve been getting a little exasperated in the last few days, reading comments by full-time PhD students who are bemoaning their funding running out at the end of the third year, for both financial reasons and lack of time to complete. But this is the situation that many part-timers are in all the way through their degrees, especially humanities students, where funding is much scarcer than for science students.

Unlike full-time students part-time PhD students don’t have the luxury of being able to work full-time at a PhD, and instead have to squeeze it in at weekends and evenings as they can, around any job and for example family commitments. It’s difficult, it requires a lot of guts and determination. Some fall by the wayside, but many do complete. And I don’t think full-timers really appreciate just what part-timers go through.

I’ve been both a full-time and part-time PhD student. Part-time was much much harder. It required guts, sticking power, and sheer determination to complete. But the sense of self-reward at the end was huge.

I just wish some full-timers would stop moaning about their funding running out, and think about other options. Get a job if you can, and switch to part-time study for the rest – it can be done!

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Lessons I learned when having second go at a PhD

I’ve been a PhD student twice. Initially I was a full-time computer science PhD student. I had to leave that, after falling ill with what would turn out to be an aggressive progressive neurological disease. Years later, after retraining as a historian (picking up both bachelors and masters degrees), I had a second go, part-time this time. I’ve just been reflecting on lessons I learned from the first time, in a post on a postgraduate forum where I’m a member. And I thought it might be worth reposting them here.

The second time around I didn’t do the standard spend a whole year (or equivalent if studying part-time) doing your literature survey, which I think is a complete waste of time, though I appreciate it can be a way of easing new students into the process gradually. When I fell ill during my first PhD, during that first full-time year, having followed the traditional timetable meant that I made very little progress before it was too late. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. Second time around I did my literature survey and introductory chapter in 3 months, even though part-time, and then got on with the research phase of my PhD.

A big advantage of being a PhD student the second time was that I knew the PhD degree processes much better. Even though I’d had to leave my science PhD before I got too far into things myself I still knew the general processes involved, I’d watched fellow students in my department go through them and had learned from their experiences. This meant that in go #2 I was a much more efficient PhD student than the first time, and very much took control of my PhD. That proved to be particularly important when my original history PhD supervisor moved 500 miles away to Oxford, and initially supervised me long-distance, but then I switched to a new supervisor, and had to negotiate how best to deal with him.

On the downside, writing did not go smoothly time #2. In my case I’d switched to a radically different subject area, albeit picking up those other two degrees first. But I struggled to find my writing voice in my history PhD, and at one point had to restart the writing completely. With hindsight it’s just as well I saved time earlier in the process, because I needed it later! But I did complete within the six years allowed me as a part-time student, even though for much of that time I was managing on no more than 5 hours total a week as my illness worsened. I didn’t need to ask for extensions, and passed my viva easily.

I don’t think I would have completed the second PhD so smoothly if it hadn’t been for the hard lessons I learned the first time.

To read more about my experiences as a disabled PhD student see here.

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