Welcome to the PhD Life blog!

This blog is part of the Doctoral College at the University of Warwick. We aim to create an online PhD community not only for Warwick students but also for anyone and everyone who identifies with any of the following: pre-PhD, PhD, post-PhD.

We publish on a wide variety of topics, but for your easy reading, we have categorised them into four main categories, which you can access via the tabs at the top of each page.

PhD Basics is the place for everything you need for your PhD: from note-taking, working with your supervisors, the research process, writing up, or your viva.

And Beyond is for all the PhD activity that you get involved in beyond those necessities: from publishing to attending conferences, networking and social media presence.

Looking after you and your PhD is a blend of posts focusing on PhD support. This involves practical support, such as time management and organisation skills, to topics focused more on your mental wellbeing. Often, these two topics merge and the best advice involves a mix of both, which is why we’ve put them together.

Your Experiences is all the wonderful tales from our bloggers, featuring topics on everything and anything. Usually with a hint of advice, these posts are more personal and can be about reflections on experiences, musings on hobbies, or internal conversations about the PhD journey.

If you’re looking for anything in particular please use the search function.

Our Authors

Daria Akhapkina

Daria is a PhD candidate in Renaissance Studies. She researches the links between comedy and religion in the Middle Ages and Renaissance and dispels the myths about “dark” and mirthless ages. Apart from writing about fun, she also occasionally has fun in real life as she goes on long hikes, plays gamed and spends time with her two cats. You can connect with her on LinkedIn here.

Read articles by Daria here.

Greta Timaite (she/her)

Greta is an ESRC funded postgraduate student whose research is broadly concerned with AI controversies. In her spare time, she loves to go on a long walk or try to improve her poor tennis game. You can find out more about her sporadic life episodes on Twitter @GTimaite and you can connect with her on LinkedIn at GretaTimaite.

Read articles by Greta here.

Ivy Zhuo

Meifang (Ivy) is a PhD candidate in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. She researches teacher development and wellbeing. You can find more about her study from her profile page. Music, art, culture and sports related events all interest her. If you happen to see a similar face around, that’s probably her! You can follow Ivy on Twitter @ZhuoMeifang on Instagram @ivy_meifang and can connect with her on LinkedIn at Meifang Zhuo.

Read articles by Ivy here.

Ellie King

Ellie is a final year PhD student in WMG researching visitor experience and evaluation in museums with Oxford University Museum of Natural History. In her spare time you can find her doing yoga, reading books, and decorating her new house. You can follow her on Twitter @ellietheking and on LinkedIn @ellietheking.

Read articles by Ellie here.

This blog runs with the help of its incredible contributors, and that could be YOU! If you have any insights, comments, suggestions, questions, stories, feedback, jokes or musings about your PhD experience, we want to hear from you!

We all know that writing a thesis or dissertation can be overwhelming at times, but a blog post should be anything but! We welcome entries from any research area and any research stage, so stop thinking about it and get in touch with us now: doctoralcollege@warwick.ac.uk, @DC_Warwick or via the comments section on this site.

Are you too busy to write a blog post but would love for us to cover a specific topic? Then send us a message and we will make sure to get the conversation flowing.