We at Pubs and Publications recently put out a call asking for new members to join our committee. We were absolutely blown away by the quality of applications we received. We would therefore like to use this post to introduce and welcome the new members to our team. We asked them a few quick questions about themselves and their PhDs.
Rachel Wilson-Lowe
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your PhD.
My name is Rachel Wilson-Lowe, and I am a 2nd year PhD student at the Social and Public Health Sciences Unit (SPHSU) at the University of Glasgow. My PhD is looking into how and why women use online spaces to talk about their abortion experiences using qualitative methodology. I am originally from the United States, moved to Edinburgh when I was 18 to do my undergraduate in psychology and have been in Scotland ever since. My partner and I live in between Glasgow and Edinburgh and have a 5 year old German Shepherd fur baby named Skye.
2. Why did you want to join Pubs and Publications?
One of the other students at the SPHSU was a blog committee member, Ian MacNeil. He encouraged me to write a post, and I really enjoyed sharing my experience in this forum, so I thought it would be really fun to join the team.
3. What is the biggest challenge you’ve overcome so far during your PhD?
I think my biggest challenge was probably balancing my mental health with starting my PhD. I found it to be a bit overwhelming and was embarrassed that my anxiety/depression was making the transition from Masters student to PhD candidate so hard. But I received so much positive feedback from other academics and the people in my Unit when I shared my anxiety related blog, and that was really encouraging.
4. If your PhD was a film, which film would it be?
Oh gosh….. maybe Legally Blonde? In that, I never really saw myself doing a PhD and suffer from Imposter syndrome, and maybe don’t feel like I am the exemplary Public Health kind of person. But I am still managing to have a ball and wear pink haha!
Giovanna Pasquariello
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your PhD.
Hi! I’m Giovanna, I’m 24 years old and I’m Italian. I lived in Naples during my undergraduate and master’s studies. I love imagining myself travelling for my studies, learning something new about the world and giving what I can in exchange. That’s why I decided to apply for a PhD. I study Ancient History; in specific, I deal with the territorialisation, representation and propagandistic patterns of the Galatians in Asia Minor, through an epigraphic approach. I love how this kind of research gives me the structures to analyse both the past and the present, in particular regarding how communities represent each others.
2. Why did you want to join Pubs and Publications?
I wanted to join Pubs and Pubs to respond to my desire of sharing: sharing research and student life experience. I aim to be helpful to someone else, and to be both inspired and inspiring.
3. What is the biggest challenge you’ve overcome so far during your PhD?
The biggest challenge of my PhD so far is to accept myself as I am, strengths and weaknesses, and to not be scared by showing the latter to others.
4. If your PhD was a film, which film would it be?
My PhD as a film: the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind … what a difficult question, though!
Claire Aubin
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your PhD.
I’m originally from the United States and currently in the second year of my PhD in History at the University of Edinburgh. I also completed my LLM in human rights law at the University of Edinburgh, so clearly there’s something about this city that I just can’t keep myself away from. My PhD research focuses on the role of Holocaust perpetrators’ individual agency within post-WWII immigration systems in the United States and United Kingdom. During my first year, I also co-founded the Emotionally Demanding Histories group, a network for researchers of difficult or sensitive historical subjects here at Edinburgh.
2. Why did you want to join Pubs and Publications?
I wrote a fairly introspective post last year on impostor syndrome, and truly enjoyed writing about something relevant to the PhD experience without being directly related to my research. Also, it’s a wonderful community of people, and I do love a good pub!
3. What is the biggest challenge you’ve overcome so far during your PhD?
Managing non-academic stress alongside academic stress has definitely been the most difficult aspect of the PhD thus far. The PhD can take over so much of your life that you lose sight of your personal life, and finding that balance is a real challenge.
4. If your PhD was a film, which film would it be?
I want to say Legally Blonde, but I think that might be a bit too obvious.
Oresta Muckute
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your PhD.
I am based at the University of Leicester, and I study the narratives of loss in the English Civil Wars in England, Wales and Ireland. I look at the testimonies of maimed soldiers and war widows to answer questions about how ordinary people articulated their loss, and I attempt to measure their success in gaining help. Probably quite expectedly, I enjoy activities related to history and culture, so a lot of my free time is spent that way. In reference to hobbies that are a little less obvious, I like bouldering (and being bad at it).
2. Why did you want to join Pubs and Publications?
I joined Pubs and Publications primarily because I have spent a lot of time reading this and other PhD experience blogs. In return, I want to share my experiences in this format with both regular readers and those desperately searching for insight online the way I did (and still do) in preparation for my PhD. I also want to make sure that I write and think about things other than war!
Sonali Dhanpal
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your PhD.
I initially trained and practiced as an architect from Bangalore, India and went on to graduate from the University of York with a Masters in Conservation of Historic Buildings in 2016. I am at present, a first year PhD student at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University. My research focuses on colonial urban history and domestic architecture in two princely capitals cities Bangalore and Mysore, during high colonialism. It encompasses discussions of race, caste and class, missionaries, plagues and a whole range of events from the long enduring 19th and early 20th centuries. I am interested in all types of beer, dachshunds, water colour painting and travelling. When not doing those, I spend copious hours correcting arbitrary generalisations of colonialism assumed by many and proving to my friends and family that there exist other careers engineering and medicine.
2. Why did you want to join Pubs and Publications?
Navigating academia may be obvious for students already familiar with the British higher education system but for someone trained and educated in a different continent, understanding how the academic system operates, can often feel like uncovering a “hidden curriculum.” I realised that I could actually help and communicate with others who were also in positions like me (or trying to be) be able to navigate mentorship, research funding structures or even something as simple as the standard language used in emails, things I have been incrementally learning as a PhD. I have slowly built up a compendium of information particularly for BAME students and more specifically WOC in the UK, and the Pubs and Publications blog would be a great place for me to share my experiences. My insights also come from someone who finds themselves constantly describing to people in the UK, my experiences as an Indian researcher and people in India about being a researcher in the UK, which will add to a touch of humour to all my posts so, I hope you will look forward to them
3. What is the biggest challenge you’ve overcome so far during your PhD?
In the 8 months of my PhD, I have been confronted by a constant internal chatter of doubts and a steady stream of uncertainty. I have come to learn that these are symptoms of the prevalently known, “imposter syndrome” apparently ubiquitous to academia. The first few months have felt very much like I have been groping in the dark trying to find my way out while surrounded by academics and other PhDs who are a few years ahead, who seem exceedingly more certain of what they are doing. The process has however incrementally started to make more sense and I think I am slowly starting to find my feet within the system. While I am not entirely sure that I have “overcome” my imposter syndrome wholly (from what I hear, it never really goes away), I have grown more comfortable with the PhD.
4. If your PhD was a film, which film would it be?
So the last few months have felt like a Guy Ritchie movie, let’s say Snatch, hard-hitting-fast moving action sequences, that feel very visceral and full of energy. Injected with a whole lot of drama, multiple moments of getting lost in translation (Brad Pitt’s accent – you know what I’m talking about) with even tragic burning of a home (metaphorically of course) and constantly feeling like it is all a gamble. The only difference is that the end with multiple plot lines that all makes sense hasn’t come together yet, fingers crossed!
Megan King
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your PhD.
After completing my Master’s at the University of Stirling, I went home to York, Pennsylvania and worked as a primary school teacher before returning to the UK to start my PhD at the University of Kent. I loved teaching, and I loved that my school allowed me to focus my lesson plans on critical issues in American History. What I didn’t love was explaining to a classroom of twenty-six underprivileged pre-teens from a city whose crime rate exceeds the national average by over 138 percent, how a man who berates people of color, women, and members of the LGBTQ+ community was elected as president. I became disheartened and opted to return to a simpler time, when Thomas Paine dominated the media and Patrick Henry was one of the more rabble-rousing political leaders. Focusing on the processes of radicalisation and mobilisation, I’m now beginning my third year of a research project that applies contemporary theories from the field of terrorism studies to the Imperial Crisis.
2. Why did you want to join Pubs and Publications?
What drew me to Pubs and Publications the most was its relatability. Too often, I look at other PhD candidates and I assume that they’ve got everything under control. While I’m planning lessons with a bottle of Malbec, breaking out in hives before presentations, and obsessing over that one sentence that “just doesn’t sound right”, they’re probably maintaining a healthy work-life balance, crushing it at conferences, and knocking out thousands of words per day. These things only happen to me, right? Well, imagine my surprise when Pubs and Publications showed me that at one point or another, all postgraduates struggle to find their footing. Moreover, it’s okay to hit a few rough patches along the way. So that’s why I’m here. My aim is to help continue spreading the word on the ups and downs of PhD life and to let our readers know that there’s always someone with whom they can sympathise.
3. What is the biggest challenge you’ve overcome so far during your PhD?
The biggest challenge I’ve overcome so far during my PhD is my mental health. Throughout this process, I’ve struggled with being 4,000 miles away from home, the financial woes of self-funding, and everyone’s favorite, impostor syndrome. I’ve learned, though, that I need to make time for myself, and more importantly that I’m allowed to take time away and either go to the gym, read for fun, or even socialize with other humans. While some days are still more difficult than others, I’ve gotten better at reminding myself that my friends and family are genuinely only a phone call away, that money will always come and go, and that I don’t need to be my harshest critic.
4. If your PhD was a film, which film would it be?
If my PhD were a film, it would be the ESPY-winning classic Miracle, starring me as game-winning goal scorer Mark Johnson. As the first in my family to attend university, I came into this project feeling about as confident as I imagine the United States men’s’ ice hockey team did upon their arrival at the 1980 Winter Olympics. I saw myself as a massive underdog in academia (AKA the Soviet Union) and I wasn’t totally convinced that I could take home the gold medal (In this exhausting metaphor, medal equals PhD. Keep up!). However, with the support of my team and the prodding of my supervisor, who, incidentally would absolutely nail the infamous Herb Brooks locker room speech (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwpTj_Z9v-c), I feel like I’m on my way. Except unlike ice hockey, which ends after three periods, my PhD will not be completed in three years. Where my fourth years at?!
We are all very excited to see the brilliant posts our new committee members produce during their time with Pubs and Publications. Please make them all welcome and let’s continue to share in the highs, lows, and day-to-day life of the PhD experience.
Featured image: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1585491
.
Leave a Reply