Dr Scott Midson is a postdoctoral researcher based at the Lincoln Theological Institute, University of Manchester. When he's not paddling with nautical metaphors, he explores the relationship between humans and technologies in the interdisciplinary field of posthumanism, connecting these insights to theology using topics such as theological anthropology, and themes such as love. This blog draws on his own experiences when he was a PhD student, and partially on research conducted for an AHRC/North West Consortium DTP- commissioned report, 'Realising Relational Researchers: A Review of PGR Skills, Partnerships, and Employability in the Arts & Humanities', which is being used as a basis for ongoing research into the place of Arts and Humanities in HE and in the wider context of economics, politics, and society. Follow Scott on Twitter at: @scadhu
I like metaphors – they’re great tools
to think with, and they offer a useful way of swerving our attention from
what’s directly in front of us to help us make innovative and interesting
connections or critiques (this is academia, after all, and where would we be
without critiques?!) that we otherwise might not have made. And so I offer a
not particularly original metaphor for my reflections on the PhD, namely, a
nautical one. There are many great metaphors that can be used and that you
might be encouraged to explore in various doctoral training sessions – I recall
having to design a mountain pictorial metaphor at the dreaded second-year
midpoint of my PhD that, although it looked like it had been drawn by a child
let loose to doodle with some felt tips and unnecessarily huge flipchart paper,
I was oddly proud of – but I’ll stick with the nautical one for this post.
(Bear with me: this is being written by the same person that put smiley faces
on cloud symbols…)
What most PhD
metaphors will highlight is the journey and the turbulence of it. There will be
many ups-and-downs throughout the PhD: there will be days where you have
intellectual breakthroughs and you’re ready to shake up your field – nay, the
whole of academia, nay, the whole world
– with your research; but all the same, there will be days where you feel so
stressed and overwhelmed with your work that a duvet cocoon and Netflix and
coco pops binge are the only options. (Spoiler alert: these vacillations aren’t
exclusive to the PhD, either, and it turns out they pop up in postdoc research,
too.) There will be times when (here comes the metaphor) you feel like you’re
steering the ship adeptly; there will also be times when you’re on turbulent
waters and just about ready to abandon ship. Without meaning to downplay either
of these feelings, one of the things to be clear about is that you’re not
alone.
For me, going
through the PhD, that advice wasn’t always the most encouraging. I looked
around at the other captains steering their research boats. (Is this also an
exercise in the limits of metaphors and the dangers of overstretching them?)
While my boat was seemingly tearing away from my control, everyone else seemed
confident, capable, and cruising along at a satisfying pace. I couldn’t help
but compare myself to other people, and nearly always found myself lacking. But
the important thing to note here is that you are never alone in your triumphs
or struggles. And you’re not a bad researcher for losing control of your
boat/project at times – indeed, this is part of the journey: you don’t
necessarily know the destination. If you knew the destination, there would be
little point in undertaking PhD research that is supposed to be pioneering and
innovative. To do that, you need to embrace what a colleague of mine based in
anthropology, Dr Hannah Wadle, has referred to as ‘positive liminality’ in academia
and research: it’s about preparing yourself for the choppy seas and accepting
that you won’t always have full control of your ship/research. (Here I think
back to clinging to my PhD proposal for weeks into the programme like Linus of
Schulz’ Peanuts comics with his
comfort blanket, only for my final thesis to have evolved into something that
addresses somewhat different questions to those I’d originally intended. It
took a while to embrace letting go of that proposal…)
So, as PhD students, you bob along in
the vast and uncertain waters of the research field. Practically, what would be
ideal to have is some kind of a map – but this can’t of course be a
conventional map, as your research most likely will end up taking unexpected
swerves and turns (much like metaphors themselves). Instead, what I offer –
following reflections on my own experience as well as research into the broader
context of PhDs in Higher Education, politics, and society – is a conceptual
map (I can’t help it – as an Arts & Humanities student, I love a good
slightly intangible concept) for navigating the other vessels bobbing along in
the ocean with you. This ‘map’, or ‘network schematic’ as I referred to it in
my report that I took it from, is designed to provide a way for researchers to
reflect on their wider networks in order to make the most of them. There are
various stakeholders involved in PhDs, and these will have a key role in
matters relating to researcher development, careers and employability, and
general researcher wellbeing (which is at
least as important as the other sections yet is perhaps the easiest to
forget). The networks that these groups – including governmental departments,
funding bodies, institutions, industries and organisations – comprise are
deeply significant for the PhD and are key to making the most out of it.
Without going
into too much detail on the report (as it’s 95 pages long and so would probably
be overkill for a blogpost), the point most relevant here is that the PhD,
though it may feel isolating, is actually about providing an opportunity to
make connections and to capitalise on them. It’s a good idea to look at the
bigger picture beyond your research occasionally: where can your thesis take
you? What career(s) are you interested in? What other opportunities might
enrich your employability and your thesis?
