I recently found a fascinating blog by someone in the US, Sterling Fluharty of New Mexico, who is a PhD historian writing his own blog about challenges faced in academic life and it got me thinking about blogging itself as a way of communicating and the benefits to those who might be looking for work.
Archive for April, 2009
Other academic bloggers: where are you?!
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009Exam revision season begins
Monday, April 20th, 2009For the next fortnight in my working life I have a very specific task to do: coaching my students through what is arguably still the most important part of their university lives: exams! As a lecturer I have never been given much guidance on helping students revise, it’s just assumed that because I have passed a number of exams in my life that I can teach others how to do the same! So, here’s some thoughts on how to get them to do their best!
Desk-bound research: a good thing or not?
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009I am working on a small research project at the moment that requires me to make use of an electronic database held by my university. It’s called Early English Books Online and will be familiar to those of you who are English Literature scholars or Historians. Basically this database has digitised almost everything published in England in English between 1473 and 1700! As you can imagine this has radically changed the way many of us do research: but is that a good thing?
Things your PhD tutors never told you!
Monday, April 6th, 2009My post a few weeks back on the failures of the UK university systems to support its students after they had completed their PhDs inspired a number of comments. This week I thought I’d look at a similar topic and ask what should we be taught during our PhD years that would be useful in finding a job as an academic? This is also a hot topic in the online Chronicle this week too, see their discussion here
