Tagged: university
Keep Calm & Take Time Off: Being Ill at Work
When you’re ill, do you keep calm and carry on, or do you keep calm and take time off? I’ve just come to the end of two weeks sick leave. Shingles seriously knocked me out, even though I noticed it and got anti-viral medication on the very first day the rash appeared. It was the first time in my life that I’ve had to take sick leave for more than a day, and this, alongside my line manager’s kind encouragement to not come back until I was definitely better and pain-free, got me thinking. How many days had I spent...
A Beautiful Mind
An anonymous contributors reflects on their experiences of schizophrenia during their PhD and their nevertheless successful journey to a permanent academic job.
Depression & Academia: There’s No Such Thing as Enough
An early-career academic writes about their struggles with depression and chronic anxiety.
Curriculum Vitae
Here you can find a PDF copy of my CV which I update regularly. You can find more details about most of my publications, papers, teaching, and other activities on this website.
Neoliberalism, Mental Health, & Academia
One of the hardest things about hearing about a PhD student who was harassed by a lecturer, and who then committed suicide while the lecturer kept his job, was that I wasn’t surprised. It’s not that I didn’t think the story was horrendous – I did. It’s that like most graduate students I am reminded on a daily basis – in corridors and, increasingly, in the media – of the degree of suffering, neglect and abuse in academic life. It seemed natural to me, almost, that an abusive faculty member should exist and go unchallenged – and that...
Dark Thoughts: Why Mental Illness Is on the Rise in Academia
6 March 2014, The Guardian Higher Education Network. I was invited to comment on academia and mental health for this article.
Academic Juggling: PhD vs CV
Some of the most common questions with which PhD researchers are concerned focus on how they should set their priorities during their doctoral studies. What else, and how much of it, should you do next to researching and writing your thesis? As so often, I can’t answer this for all PhD students in all disciplines, but I wanted to try and give you an overview of some useful starting points if you’re hoping to prepare yourself for the academic job market during your doctoral studies rather than after, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. So some of...
Academia & Social Media: Practices, Politics, Problems
This post is both a continuation of my previous thoughts on social media in academia, and the product of several workshops and talks I’ve been asked to give on the topic this past year. Most notably, it is a response to and follow-up from a presentation and spirited discussion on social media at an impressive postgraduate conference at the University of Nottingham this month, Homeward Bound: Nation, Belonging and the American Home, and on the first day of the year it seems fitting to reflect on 2013 with a sketch of some of the concerns and questions I’ve...
Academic Job Interviews
Academic job interviews can take a variety of forms, and I’ve experienced a few different kinds of job interview – both from the perspective of a candidate, as well as from the perspective of a member of the interview panel. As with any public speaking engagement, preparation is essential and managing your nerves on the day is a challenge. I found that the interviews I attended after I’d started teaching in a full-time position were much less nerve-wracking, so if you’ve already had teaching experience and got over the initial horror of having to stand in a lecture...
Academic Job Applications
It is notoriously difficult to advise people on how to get shortlisted for an academic job. In the end, someone can satisfy all of the relevant criteria but not get shortlisted simply because someone else satisfies them to a greater degree. The reality is that not all ‘minimally qualified’ candidates can be interviewed; this is simply a matter of practicality, and of course it is frustrating for applicants who fall into the ‘not qualified enough’ category. However, more frustrating is not getting shortlisted because you simply haven’t put together a good application. There is nothing you can really...
The Research Excellence Framework (REF)
Unless you’ve been asleep in the library for the past few years, you’ll almost certainly have heard about the REF (Research Excellence Framework); but you might be less aware of exactly what it is, how it affects you as a researcher, and what you need to do to prepare. In this post I’ll highlight the key points about the REF and indicate some sources of further information. WHAT IS THE REF? The REF is the new system for assessing the quality of research in Higher Education institutions in the UK (previously RAE). It’s used to determine funding...
Public Engagement
I realise that for many of you none of what I write here will be news. Especially in the social sciences and the creative arts, the practices that have in recent years become known as public or community engagement often have long been an integral part of research and other academic activities. However, I feel that in other disciplines, such as my own, public engagement is still occasionally seen as either some mythical thing, or as an unnecessary and irrelevant evil imposed by managerial and governmental monsters. It’s neither, at least for the purposes of this post and...
