Fallow Fields, Seeds and Academic Gold Rush in the Corona crisis

Planting, harvesting and the stolen time of rest. Can farm life provide a metaphor for academic life? Is the current COVID-tunnel finally creating an occasion for rest and nourishment or did it leave many researchers in even more pressure to perform, in a new virtual world, having to pay the costly interests of time debt? Do you feel the need to find golden productivity before your peers? Our author reflects on the many challenges faced with planting and sowing, nourishing your land, a waiting for your crops to yield results, be it your plants or your ideas.

Managing Time in a PhD

One of the biggest benefits of a PhD is its flexibility. There are no set working hours. If you do not want to work 40 hours a week, don’t. If you prefer to have the Wednesday and the Saturday off rather than a regular weekend, do it. If you do not want to work one day, or one week, you do not have to. But unsurprisingly, this can backfire. Due to a lack of structure, what you need the most in a PhD is good time management!

Fighting with my thesis: Juggling a PhD and the life of a fighter (part 1)

PhD students are all brain and no brawl. True? Not really. The life of a PhD student is more than just the university. Imagine then if you have to juggle the many challenges of the PhDLife with being a Muay Thai fighter. Nora Castle, PhD student in the department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, knows this reality very well. How does she do it? Read more to find out the exciting and very bruised daily life of an academic fighter.

Human stories for humans

Have you ever gotten a patronising comment about the subject of your research? English Literature PhD student Deborah talks about some of the reactions she has encountered when telling friends and colleagues about her topic – female nineteenth century authors – and why she thinks that is and why it should not happen.

Surviving the ‘isolation’ phase

It’s Friday night and you’re alone again… in your room, staring at the same words on the computer screen that you’ve seen for the past three years staring straight back at you. It doesn’t feel great, but you know you can’t escape this. Jenny Mak offers some quick hacks to hopefully make the isolating phases…

It’s not just art historians who look at pictures

I feel very lucky to have completed my doctorate in History of Art because if I get bogged down with writing I can always look at pictures! In this post I would like to encourage scholars working in other disciplines to also consider the visual as a valuable historical source. But how do you start when looking at paintings? Here I offer a few suggestions from my practice…

To Conference Or Not To… There is no question

There is lots of guidance available on publishing academic papers. Sharing your research at conferences, however, is the relative unknown. And this can make the prospect quite daunting. Zakiyya sheds some light on the topic, sharing a few of her experiences and offering tips she has picked up along the way.

In search of more time

“Are there any other tricks you know which will reduce the amount of sleep I need each night, so I have more time during the day?” an old friend asks me. With only the slightest hint of a wry smile I respond: “That is not really how it works…”