As mentioned in my post on how long it takes to prepare and teach a graduate course in the British system, I am in the habit of tracking my time. That means I have complete data for how long it took to complete my PhD overall, as well as a break-down (‘breakdown’ being an ideal […]
Being a consultant, I’m in the habit of tracking my time—a habit I retained throughout my MA, PhD, and teaching. This means that I have a weirdly exact time for how long it takes me to research and write a 5000 word paper (50±2 hours), as well as how long it took me to complete […]
I’ve previously written about a note-taking and writing workflow using mindmapping software in conjunction with Scrivener and Zotero to help organise ideas and minimise rote admin. As I’m now at the point where I can see how different schools and authors fit together, I no longer need to use mindmapping software to organise readings, and […]
I recently presented at a political science conference in the UK where I was one of 5 women presenting, as opposed to 25 men. Notably, only one of the women was an academic; the rest of us were PhD students. Giving my presentation felt oddly like talking to a wall of men who are senior […]
I recently read a Tweet by an academic who explained the difficulty he had in gaining name recognition and citations because he had a non-Western name, and people (a) couldn’t remember it, and (b) didn’t connect the face they met at conferences with the person who’d produced the research. This is a problem, because if […]
A lot of our MA students ask how I arrange the notes and readings for my thesis. While I can’t magically take away the processes of reading or taking notes, here is how I personally organise my readings, to help make thesis/dissertation writing easier—not to mention, try to stay on top of things, as this method […]