So, what is it that you do?

School of Critical Studies, 5 University Gardens, UoG

I am a PhD student. I've said that already. But what is it that I actually do? The image associated with a PhD, for many people including myself before I had any experience of it, is either of a genius in a laboratory replete with white coats and test tubes, or a half-mad, bespectacled recluse snowed under a pile of books in a library. I suppose all of us PhD students, depending on whether we work at the hard sciences or the humanities, might appear like one or the other at some point during our hours and hours of research. But a PhD nowadays is much more than that. Reading (loads) and writing (and discarding much of it eventually) still form a chunky part of a doctoral researcher's day, but now there are more roles, more call for engagement and impact and getting your work 'out there' - which sound depressingly like marketing speech - and this is only a small indication of the corporate, managerial style (alas!) taking over universities now. There are positive sides to it: being urged to get out, see more, do more, learn new stuff not necessarily related to your research is a good idea, particularly for those who have spend much of their lives in the cocoon of academic life. By that, I mean the young. For us older hands who have been out in the world already, it's what we've been doing already.


So what do I do? First, I work on my PhD, at the University of Glasgow, School of Critical Studies (a mellow-coloured though not photogenic building, pic. above)

The University of Glasgow was founded in
1451, when there was still a Byzantine empire:
the perfect place to write a novel set there! 

A PhD in Creative Writing has two components: the creative, in which you write an original work, and the critical, in which you engage with theory/ do scholarly research.
For the creative component, I am writing a historical novel (working title: Zoe, or The Obscure Rose), set in the Byzantine empire, which revisits the First Crusade from the viewpoint of marginal characters. For the critical component, I am examining issues related to the links between historiography and historical fiction, with popular narratives of the time of my novel (Lives of Saints, romances, dream books), and with national stereotyping in First Crusade fictions. I am also looking at two novels set at the same time and place, Count Robert of Paris by Sir Walter Scott, and Come Forth King, [ Ένας Σκούφος Από Πορφύρα, literally, A Cap of Purple] by Greek author Maro Douka, translated by David Connolly. Some of the character in both those novels are historical: Anna Comnena, the princess historian, her father, Emperor Alexius I Comnenus, and her mother, Empress Irene Doukaina. Anna Comnena will be a character in my novel, too, but only in a minor role: I want this novel to be about poor, unimportant, marginal people. Queens, princesses, kings and lords have dominated historical fiction for a very long time, as they have dominated historiography. They've had their say. Let others speak now.


I am also a Hunterian Associate. Details on exactly this programme is and what I'm doing there can be found here and here. This is an extraordinary opportunity to take my research in places I wouldn't have normally thought of, outside the sometimes sterile setting of desk and library. I'm talking about physical places: the Hunterian Art Gallery, the Special Collections of the UoG Library; and virtual places: my blog (or two). Fascinating stuff.


I am also a College of Arts Intern. This is still a mystery and a miracle to me, how I was made one: it is one of those extraordinary things that happen to you and make you very happy when you are told and then they make you even happier when you work on them. I get to do all sorts of different things a person working in a university would normally be expected to do - basically it's a bit like trying out different positions and completing various tasks related to uni life. All sort of tasks, and that's what I love about it. For someone with a really low boredom threshold, like myself, trying your hand at different things (and hopefully helping people along the way), and finding out what you'd rather be doing and what you'd rather not, and not having to commit to anything for too long, is just ideal.

So, this is what I do for my PhD. I'm doing much, and I'm enjoying every bit of it so far (though I retain my right to whinge a little from time to time).

I'd really love to know what other people's experience of their PhD is or was. So, if you're reading this, please, do share!

Setting out

Torquato Tasso and the Muses. Illustration by Giambatista Piazzetta for Gierusalemme Liberata, Venice 1745. Sp Coll Hunterian Cd.2.1, Special Collections, University of Glasgow Library

I am starting in medias res, but this is not unusual for someone who is so chaotic in their work habits as I am, as well as an early reader of Homer's Odyssey. The thing is, I would have loved to be organised and done a proper log / blog, starting on day one of my PhD (and ideally finishing on the day after good news from the Viva came in), but it's not happening this way. I'm not even in the middle yet (as in medias res would imply), having just finished year one and soon embarking on year two of  my PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. Although I knew about blogs, of course, and everybody is banging on about how great, important, necessary, compulsory it is to have a blog nowadays, I always feared it and thought it out of my league.  

Then two things happened, related to one another: first, I became a Hunterian Associate at the University of Glasgow, and the major part of my project for the Hunterian is a blog. (The picture above is courtesy of that project). After some investment of time and effort, it was obvious that I could do it, and it was as simple as people said it was. Second, I found a book at the gift shop on the ground floor of the Hunterian Museum, which I thought would help me with the project. Show Your Work by Austin Kleon, trite as that may sound, changed, well, not my life exactly, but my outlook on dealing with creative work, i.e. with its management and presentation. Bear in mind that I was exactly (still am deep down inside) the kind of "pre-digital" person Kleon describes (p.35), who believed that the writer's contact with an audience could only be through a finished project. To my defence, back when I first started working on a computer,  they were those huge boxes with black screens where bright orange or green characters flickered in an unsettling manner, and you had to fully type in all the commands yourself. (Funnily enough, this experience came in handy when I took an XML course last year. Anyway.)

The best thing about Kleon's book is that it not only offered sensible advice in small and easy to remember bites, but it made me take action immediately. I got the book the day before yesterday. Today I'm starting this blog. 

What is the purpose of this blog then? I'm thinking of it as an archive, where I put down - in digested form, obviously - the work I'm doing for my PhD. My academic life was quite unorthodox: earned my first degree in the 1980s - did my MSc in the 2000s, and got back for the last stand only a year ago. Having worked in various capacities in between those gigs, most notably as teacher and interpreter/ translator, I could never really settle in any specific pattern of working routine. Add to that that I am a mild case of ADHD, and the result is - well, chaos. I know some people thrive in chaos. My problem is, my work being all over the place, I often have this terrible feeling that I have done nothing to show for all these years, that because I can't see it, it doesn't exist. 
Therefore, putting a little something out every day (or most days), as Kleon advises, will help me to keep track of all this work that I'm doing without having to dig in cupboards and boxes for my notebooks of years and years just to make sure all this time was not wasted, and will set a pattern for logging, assessing, and sharing. For future reference, and for present relief.