Tag: PhD
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Entitlement, Bitterness, and Grief: The Post-PhD Job Hunt Experience
If you follow me on Twitter, you have likely noticed the uptick in Tweets complaining about my job search over the past few months – most likely before either unfollowing or muting me (and frankly, I can’t blame you!). With my current contract ending in a few months and lacking the legal entitlement to any
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End of the (PhD) Road: Reflecting on 5+ Years of Graduate Studies in Archaeology
Last week, I (finally!) graduated from the University of Bradford with my PhD in Archaeology, ending a decade-long academic journey that was a culmination of approximately 5 years of PhD studies, 1 year of MSc studies (Archaeological Sciences), and 4 years of BA studies (Classical Archaeology and Anthropology)…and boy, am I tired. So, after all
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How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating and Do My PhD Corrections
A little over nine months ago, I successfully defended my PhD thesis with major corrections. And then, just a month ago today, I submitted my corrections. A total of 15,414 additional words and 70 pages over what I’d love to say was a six month period…but due to procrastination? More like a two month period.
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On Liminality: Space, Time, and Identities
The following is the text from a talk I gave during the ‘Spring into Science: Queer Representation in Research‘ seminar series at the University of Oxford. I haven’t really talked much about being a queer archaeologist and as someone who often uses self-reflection to spur on discussion, I feel like I need to rectify this.
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Surviving a PhD Defence at the End of the World (aka at the End of 2020)
I had originally planned on writing this blog post shortly after my defence (known as a viva here in the UK) back at the start of December, but life got in the way…and by that, I mean my job closed down due to the pandemic and we moved house and then the holidays arrived and
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Well…I Submitted My PhD Thesis During a Global Pandemic. Now What?
Last Friday, at around 4pm, I officially submitted the final draft of my PhD thesis for my examiners. And I feel…very not excited. Mostly relieved. Definitely anti-climatic, especially as someone who has watched friends in the past joyfully take photos of themselves on campus with their giant volumes of text, all bound and ready to
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Archaeology in a Time of Crisis
“When future archaeologists stumble upon the archaeological record from this period, the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020, what will they find…?” There’s probably dozens of archaeologists out there with something like that sitting in their drafts. Hell, I spent a solid 5 minutes considering it myself before promptly shutting it down. “Not everything has to be
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Anarchy in the UK…Archaeological Sector? A Brief Introduction into an Alternative Approach to Archaeology
Today’s blog post comes from a paper I presented at the 2018 Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference – you can find the full text here. If you think about the word “anarchist”, you probably have a very specific image that comes to mind – some sort of “punk” masked up and dressed all in black, probably
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Digging While Depressed: Struggling with Fieldwork and Mental Health
This post will be focused on dealing with mental illness, so if issues related to depression and anxiety are triggering to you, please feel free to skip today’s blog. Take care of yourself. A few weeks ago, I was in Scotland doing fieldwork for the first time in years. Prior to this trip, I was
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The 2018 Excavation Season Wrap-Up!
I’m baaaaaaaaaaack! Missed me? Probably not, if you were following along with my project’s social media (Facebook, Twitter, and website). For those of you who missed out, however, here’s a bit of a recap of the past three weeks of excavation at the Covesea Caves in Scotland. So, the good news about my recent field
Animal Archaeology 