North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership
New Beginnings: Starting the PhD Journey and Managing Change
Ryan Peacey, Criminology, Social Policy and Social Work, University of Manchester (2021 Cohort)
In late September 2021, I started my PhD in Criminology at the University of Manchester. When I received my place, and later my funding, it came after a period of prolonged uncertainty during the pandemic. Knowing I was at the start of a journey during which I would begin paving my way towards a career in academia, I was both anxious and excited. After an unexpected year out, I was excited to once again have the opportunity to immerse myself in my studies and further develop the research I had undertaken during my masters. Despite this, I felt the familiar anxiety about the change that starting a PhD would entail: how will I find studying at a new university? What will my day-to-day look like? How will I know if I am doing enough? Am I good enough to do a PhD? I share this as I feel some of these fears will likely be relatable to fellow early PhD students (and those who are considering a PhD), and in the hopes that doing so may help ease some of those fears.
Read MoreOrganizing your own reading group
Jingwen Zhang, Social Statistics, University of Manchester (2020 Cohort)
Solitary work and limited social life are common for PhD students, but are we doomed to be lonely? How can we find companions on our personal PhD journeys? One way to help us come together with those with similar interests is to organise a reading group.
Read MoreHistorical research in and beyond the archive – everyday encounters with local history
Ella Bytheway-Jackson, Geography and Environment, University of Liverpool (2019 Cohort)
During my Masters programme (Class of 2020) the pandemic forced the CASE partner to my MA and PhD research, Wirral Archives, to close. My main source of data was completely shut off for an unknown period of time. I acknowledge that this is not a unique story – colleagues in the MethodsX Archives Collections and Documents of Life Stream faced equally anxiety-inducing closures, especially when the collections they intended to explore were overseas. More broadly, as a research community, we have had to learn to adapt our plans and revise expectations over the last couple of years.
Read More“You are writing to dance with the reader”
Ting Liu, Social Statistics, University of Manchester (2019 Cohort)
In mid-November, I attended a writing training session “Writing from a reader’s perspective”, which was an interactive workshop examining ideas of academic style. Although writing is seen as the usual routine for a third-year PhD researcher, doing that well is not like a familiar job completed with ease especially for people like me whose first language is not English. I have been doing research on the UK’s climate change attitudes and green lifestyle based in the department of social statistics at the University of Manchester for three years, but I still found it hard to balance what I want the reader know and what the reader wants to know. Telling a good story is not only establishing your authority as a writer, but also getting into an interactive relationship with your readers. What the whole session made a deep impression on me was that the writer may want to dance with the reader.
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North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership 