This update first appeared in a condensed version for the University of Stirling's Arts & Humanities postgraduate page here. Here is a little more about my recent archival research and a forthcoming chapter for the 'Edinburgh History of Reading: A World Survey from Antiquity to Present' (eds. Mary Hammond & Jonathan Rose, Edinburgh University Press, 2019)

The image here is unrelated to my research but a little gem that I stumbled across in the process. A child's drawing of a castle by James Richardson, 1810. Many thanks to Perth and Kinross Council Archive at Culture Perth & Kinross for the permission to include it here. Full Reference: Perth & Kinross Council Archive at Culture Perth & Kinross, MS101/bundle 66

I recently received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Postgraduate Fund at the University of Stirling which has allowed me to undertake archival research at local council archives across Lowland Scotland and I am very grateful for this!

I visited Perth and Kinross Council Archives and Glasgow City Council Archives at the Mitchell Library to complete essential research for a forthcoming book chapter on ‘The School Library and Childhood Reading in Lowland Scotland, 1750-1850’ which will be published in The Edinburgh History of Reading: A World Survey from Antiquity to Present in 2019 (eds. Mary Hammond and Jonathan Rose). I hope to continue this work with visits to archives in St Andrews, Dundee and Stirling.

For the purposes of this book chapter, I have been looking at the role of school libraries in the period, delving into institutional records to see if, and when, importance was placed on the presence of a library for school children at various institutions. It has been interesting to be able to pin-point the time at which there was a recognition that children having access to a range of books was an important part of their curriculum.

In Perth in 1840, for example, a petition was sent to the Town Council requesting that the money which had thus far been spent on school prizes be used instead “…to assist in the formation of a small Library at each of the Schools, a thing which, in the opinion of your Petitioners will, in the end tend more to promote the religious, moral, and intellectual improvement of those under their care”. Records like these allow us to see when the school library became an important part of childhood education across Scotland, not only in elite schools such as the Royal High School, and the reasons for institutions to push for these.

My trips to Perth and Glasgow were both interesting and fruitful, not only for this book chapter, but for my PhD research in general. For my PhD thesis, I’ve taken a case-study approach, looking in detail at the reading practices of young people at three institutions: the Royal High School of Edinburgh, the University of St Andrews, and Innerpeffray Library in Perthshire. It is therefore fascinating, and very useful, to look at other areas of Lowland Scotland to investigate how children and young adults were accessing books and what they may have been reading in this period.

This blog post was originally published on the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society website and can be read here. My talk was part of the Society's 2016-2017 programme.

Choosing a topic for my recent talk at the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society was a relatively easy one. Not only is the Royal High School of Edinburgh well-known as one of Edinburgh’s historical institutions, it is also, for me, one of the most rewarding aspects of my PhD thesis which focuses on ‘Young Scottish Readers in the Long Eighteenth Century’.

I first stumbled upon the library records for the Royal High School during research for my Masters dissertation and was astounded by the wealth of material which lay, relatively untapped, in the basement of the City Council buildings. The school archives contain in-depth library records from the eighteenth century onwards, which include library catalogues, records of acquisitions, and borrowers’ records. These can give us an insight, not only into, what eighteenth- and nineteenth-century schoolmasters wanted their charges to read but also the actual books which found their way into the hands of boys at the time. These records formed a large part of my Masters project on Reading and Education in Edinburghand have now found their way into my PhD thesis as a case study.

In my thesis, I compare the evidence of childhood reading and education at the Royal High School to the reading habits of young people at the University of St Andrews and the Library of Innerpeffray in Perthshire. I also look at the role of schools and curricula in childhood reading practices; and the representation of idealized and fictionalized reading and educational experiences in the novels and conduct literature of the period, 1750-1850.

For my talk at the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, I chose to focus on the acquisition records for the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These records of books purchased by teachers reveal the shifting priorities of the school. It is interesting to see how these matched up to the changing curriculum and the development in what was deemed a suitable education for the young gentlemen of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Edinburgh. I also looked at some examples from the borrowers’ records which reveal the changing reading practices of the schoolboys across this period, from a focus on Latin and history books, to novels and poetry at the beginning of the nineteenth century and eventually to children’s literature by the middle of the nineteenth century, something made more readily available by the introduction of a separate ‘Juvenile Library’ for year one and two pupils in 1848.

I want to thank the society for inviting me to speak about my PhD work and making me feel so welcome. It was a really enjoyable experience and I particularly enjoyed the engaged, and challenging, question and answer session from members at the end.

I've recently returned to Twitter having taken a bit of an extended break from it and having been back for a while now, I have been wondering what kind of role I'd like Twitter to play in my academic (and personal) life.

My Twitter break happened almost by accident. My husband and I decided to go 'off-the-grid' during our honeymoon in October and so I deleted the Twitter app from my phone for the week... and then never re-installed it!

I found the week off Twitter quite refreshing and so decided to continue with it before deciding what to do with it. A couple of months passed. I found myself feeling less stressed without the constant comparisons with other academics (particularly other PhD students) and their insanely productive weekends. I also felt a lot more focused on my work and spending less time online in general.

Academic Community

I did also feel a little more isolated than I had done and coupled with the fact that I am in the throes of writing up and therefore spending more time at home or in the library than at my institution, I was beginning to feel a little disconnected from any kind of academic community.

I have, however, discovered the joys of a real-life support system in the form of a PhD writing group. Lucie Whitmore over at the SGSAH blog has written more extensively on the format of our writing group. So all that there is left to say is that it has been a bit of a PhD-saver for me this year and is probably one of the main reasons I haven't really missed Twitter.

Academic Twitter

So having recently returned to Twitter, what role does it play in my academic life?

I think Twitter is still a really good place to share useful links. I've definitely missed finding out about the latest Calls for Papers (although mailing lists do get these to me most of the time), blogs and just generally what everyone else is up to.

This isn't the only use of Twitter of course and I know that some academics are questioning the role of academic twitter in the face of the politics of the last couple of years which tend to dominate our Twitter feeds. As academics, should we be participating in these discussions as a matter of obligation? I'm not so sure.

What Next?

There is also the fact that Twitter's growth as a company is stagnating. This article by David Giannetto explains it better than I could but if Twitter really has nowhere to go and the format (140 character soundbites) is becoming tired, what will academics turn to next to network and share their research with a wider audience?

I am back on Twitter, albeit with less enthusiasm than previously, and probably will stay there but will definitely be managing my time on there a little more effectively. Perhaps by allocating a set time each day/week to check it and keeping any extensive tweeting to conferences and big events.

What role does Twitter play in your academic life? Are there any alternatives out there that you're enjoying more?

Image from PhD comics which, if you haven't read it before, is an excellent source of procrastination!

So it's been nearly a year since my upgrade interview for the PhD after which I made some ambitious New Academic Year Resolutions.

This past year has both gone very slowly and very quickly: a lot has happened but I also can't quite believe that I'm entering the third year of my PhD. At our university, we have to have an annual review of our progress where we hand in a piece of writing (usually a chapter or section), a progress review, bibliography and updated thesis plan. It was when I started to do my thesis plan that I realised just how much my PhD has changed this year!

We were always told to expect our topics to change over the course of the PhD, and indeed, that this was a positive and natural thing to happen but I hadn't realised until I revisited that plan I made over a year ago how much things had moved on.

I did have an inkling that my work had changed. After all, I've done enough chapter plans and writing this year to see a fuller argument develop and even subtly tweaked my PhD title at one point. (It is now about 'young' readers rather than 'child' readers) to take account of the fact that some of the young men I study probably can't be counted as children ('teenager' is too anachronistic a term for my period but they are aged between 9 and 18 so 'young readers' it is!).

However, when I sat down with last year's plan expecting to tweak the odd sentence and chapter here or there I realised just how much had changed and how much clearer I feel about where I want the topic and argument to go.

A few months ago, I started to try to storyboard my PhD, having read this article. When I started the storyboard task it was because I wasn't really sure where the whole PhD was going, I was really immersed in a single chapter and, particularly because my PhD focuses on case studies, it was difficult to see the big picture. I soon got caught up in other more pressing matters (conferences, research trips and actually writing!) and abandoned my storyboard. But having made an updated traditional plan, I decided to go back to the task when I had a bit of spare time between handing in the work for my APR and the interview itself.

I've recently started tutoring learning strategies for undergraduate students, including some who are working on their final year dissertations and so I'm more curious than ever about different techniques for managing big projects like this.

What I'm really trying to say is if you're still in first year without a really clear idea of where the PhD is going, don't worry too much - no one is going to force you to commit to your first plans! And if you're in the middle of trying to find your way to the other side of a topic that seems to be in a constant state of flux, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes just looking back at where you were a year ago is enough to remind you of how far you've come and how much more is still there for you to discover.

So it's really been a while since I last blogged here! I've been juggling quite a few different things the past few months. Between finishing up the second year of my PhD and wedding planning, blogging has fallen by the wayside a little but I have a bit of extra time at the moment so I thought I'd fill you in on what I've been up to with my second PhD summer!

Summertime in academia is always a bit of a strange time. In some ways its a bit of down-time, classes have finished and most of us get the chance to take a little break somewhere (we've postponed this until after the wedding this year and I'm definitely feeling a bit worse for wear for not getting away for a week or two!).

In other ways, it's an incredibly busy time. Conference season and research take up a huge amount of the summer months and if anything, I'm approaching September even more tired than I did May!

I've been incredibly fortunate this summer to have the chance to spend a month researching in St Andrews for my chapter on young readers at the university there. You can read more about what I got up to here. This trip culminated in a talk and Q&A which was both the longest I've had the floor and probably one of the bigger audiences I've presented to (it was also filmed so there was that added pressure!). My time there was really productive and thought-provoking though and I met a lot of very helpful, kind people. My PhD is definitely much better for it!

I was also away for two international conferences, the ISECS early-career seminar in Sofia, Bulgaria and the BSECS postgraduate conference in Barcelona, Spain. These were back-to-back, with me flying straight from Sofia to Barcelona, and my papers were on two completely different parts of my PhD; the Royal High School in Edinburgh and Innerpeffray Library in Perthshire.

However, having now presented this summer on each of my three case studies I've definitely found myself with a better handle on the argument as a whole and with a renewed enthusiasm going into my final, writing-up year. But I am also looking forward to a holiday in October!

What have you been doing with your academic summer?

There's often a lot of pressure on doctoral students to gain wider experiences outside of the PhD itself, whether that's teaching or conference organisation, and increasingly, given the competitive nature of the academic job market, that also involves work experience in industry.

With this in mind the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities have introduced a doctoral internship and artist-residency scheme. This scheme gives PhD students the opportunity to undertake a short internship or residency with a company, in order to complete a specific project, gaining new skills and applying the skills gained from their PhD in a different context.

I was really keen to take this opportunity. Throughout my Masters I worked with an edtech and publishing company, Giglets Education, and this work experience definitely had a positive impact on my time management and organisation skills as well as helping to develop some of the technical skills which are increasingly in demand in academia. I was excited to develop these skills further and so kept my eyes open for the perfect internship.

Funnily enough, it turned out to be right under my nose - an internship with SGSAH itself. I had a quick chat with Jude and Lindsay at the internship showcase and soon realised that the position was exactly what I was looking for. The role involved working on an AHRC-funded training workshop aimed at PhD students interested in using their research to influence public and cultural policy: 'Policy Stories'. It was a good combination of 'digital', 'education' and 'doctoral training'.

The internship involved working 6 hours a week from November to April, often from home. Alongside another doctoral intern from ECA, I initially helped with running the training workshop which took place at the Scottish Storytelling Centre and the Scottish Parliament back in November. I ran the @policystories Twitter account and spent a lot of the two days live-tweeting, taking detailed notes around the workshops for the legacy materials and collating blog posts from the workshop attendees.

We then set to work building a set of resources featuring video recordings of the talks, discussion points and workshop ideas for anyone wanting to either recreate the training event in their own institution or work through it by themselves at home. You can see what we came up with here.

It was lots of fun! I got paid to do something interesting and challenging and I gained and cemented a lot of new skills, technical and event management. I feel much more confident working with YouTube, Wordpress and MailChimp now and I've gained experience working with InDesign, something I've been meaning to do for a long time. All of which, I'm sure, will be useful skills in the future - whether in academia or not.

I'm still sure that I want to pursue a career in academia but, given the state of the academic job market, it's not unwise to keep options open and build other transferable skills. The internship was a nice change from PhD research and I would definitely recommend it in your second year if you get the chance.

Has anyone else taken an internship or made work experience part of their PhD life? What kind of experience is particularly valuable for doctoral students?

So I am aware that a lot of my recent posts have been very focused on the emotional aspects of the PhD and have maybe been a bit 'holistic' for some people (blame the yoga and kale...). This also wasn't necessarily the focus of this blog when I started it. However, I still feel quite strongly that it's important to be open and honest about all aspects of the PhD process. I promise to get back to some more academic stuff in the near future, particularly once conference season is in full swing!

Having said all that, this week I want to talk about a recent purchase which I mentioned briefly in my 'Happiness Non-Negiotables List': The Happiness Planner.

I stumbled across this planner online and immediately knew it was for me. I've tried various stylised to-do lists and notebooks before, but this seemed to have everything I could ask for.

The weekly/daily pages have enough space that I can plan all my academic endeavours but also have specific spaces for planning out and recording exercise, meals, things that have gone well that day and hopes for the next day.

It definitely appeals to my desire to have a well-balanced life (which I've blogged about here and here) as it's not just an academic planner but still includes that alongside a more holistic space for reflecting on life as a whole.

The beginning of the journal also includes a number of different pages aimed at helping you to reflect on your current goals, strengths and weaknesses, and what makes you happy/unhappy. These took me a few days to fill in and reflect on and actually took a lot out of me emotionally. Properly thinking about where you want to be in 5-10 years time and what you really value in life takes a lot of energy and isn't really something you can just knock out in a couple of minutes (although interestingly, my fiance has commented that he thinks the PhD has made me very self-aware/reflective, which can only be a good thing, right?).

So having used the journal for a few weeks, what impact has it had?

• I've definitely noticed the days where the balance isn't quite right, if I have nothing to put into the exercise section and my meals have all been eaten on the run I know it's probably time to pull back and make more time for my health
• I always have something to be grateful for, even on stressful days, I can always find something positive.
• I need to make my to-do list items slightly more manageable. "Finish PhD" probably isn't a manageable thing to include on your to-do list.

The 'Happiness Planner' website has a few free printables so you can experiment with the format of the diary before committing to buying one and I would definitely recommend doing so. It's made me really think about what I value and want in life, and has made me more organised and mindful day-to-day. What's not to like?

Images courtesy of the thehappinessplanner.uk.

I was recently tagged by my friend, Hannah, over at Obliviously Awesome (she writes a great, no-nonsense blog about first-time parenting so you should definitely check that out too!) to write my 'Happiness Non-Negiotable List'.

The idea is that there are little things in our day-to-day lives which make us happy and help us get on with what we need to do (in Hannah's case being a kick-ass mum and in my case completing a PhD).

As Hannah has done, I've left out friends and family; they are obviously the most important factors contributing to my ability to be a fully-functioning human being but this list is more about the little daily things.

So, in no particular order, here are my 'happiness non-negiotables'...

The Happiness Planner

This is a relatively new acquisition. I stumbled across this planner online and promptly ordered one for myself and was definitely tempted to order one for everyone I know at the same time! It's basically just a diary but it's beautifully organised to cover all aspects of a well-rounded life with daily pages devoted to 'to-do lists', exercise, meal plans, gratitude and lessons. There's also a big section at the front designed to help you set and complete goals. I'll probably write a more in-depth post about this soon, I absolutely love it! You can buy it here.

Coffee

I'm actually a bit sad to admit this but coffee is quickly becoming a non-negiotable for me. I try not to drink too much as it doesn't really agree with me and tends to make me more anxious and crankier than I'm naturally inclined to be, but a morning coffee (and increasingly slightly overpriced coffee at a local indie place where I can also work and generally pretend to be cooler than I am) definitely helps me to be more productive and feel like I'm really getting stuff done. And it definitely fits into the cliche vision of what I thought doing a PhD would be like...

Wine

This is (thankfully) not quite a daily necessity but it definitely does feature. There's a really amazing independent wine bar close to our home which is great for meeting and catching up with friends, listening to records and, if the writer's block really isn't shifting, for writing hefty chunks of a difficult chapter.

Exercise

I'm increasingly coming to terms with the fact that daily exercise isn't just necessary to keep me fitting into my skinny jeans but is also absolutely necessary for my mental health. For days when I'm particularly busy, I really have to force myself to get out and do something active. At the moment I'm focusing on getting 10,000 steps in a day and committing to a weekly yoga class. My ambitious goal of running a marathon this year has fallen by the wayside since the PhD has picked up and with all the other things I've decided to commit to this year (learning to drive, Gaelic, Chinese, getting married...) but I hope that I can get a bit more running or hill-walking in at the weekends soon.

Mollie

Mollie is my puppy (is she still a puppy? How long can we carry on calling her that?). Some days she drives me completely insane but most of the time her unconditional love, zest for life and her need for twice-daily walks keeps me happy and keeps the PhD in perspective.

Music

I think there's something about not being in a work place that makes me really want to recreate the buzz and atmosphere of an office. I often achieve this by having background music on the go. A good playlist definitely makes me more inclined to keep visiting the same coffee shop/wine bar over and over and my current obsession with a certain 'Folk Pop' Spotify playlist is fast becoming a bit of a joke in our household as it has become the soundtrack to our lives.

I nominate Lucie over at Costume and Conflict, Kendell over at My Lean Green Year and Diljeet Bhachu (and anyone else who wants to join in!) What are your 'happiness non-negiotables'?

During my recent short break from the PhD, I decided to read a couple of non-PhD books to keep me amused and help me switch off from eighteenth-century children for a while. Because my research has such a strong literature focus, I often find it hard to read fiction and relax while doing so. I find myself over-analysing texts as I read and often find something interesting that I want to note down before I forget, which makes reading feel a lot like work!

I tend to combat this by either reading contemporary children's books, of which there are some truly excellent ones out there, or by reading non-fiction. For my week off, I chose non-fiction.

My fiance, David, is a web-developer and we often talk about how similar coding can be to the PhD-writing process. I've written before about imposter syndrome and one of the best articles I've read about that was written by a developer. So, while I was in the middle of stressing out about my PhD, Dave sent me a link to a podcast which he thought I would enjoy: 'How to be Original and Make Big Ideas Happen' from a16z. I'm not normally a big podcast listener (I've always found it much easier to take things in by reading than by listening) but this particular programme was really interesting and it led me to choose the books I wanted to spend my time off with. The programme discussed Adam Grant's new book Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World. It's an excellent book which I'm still working my way through (and which is, sadly, slightly worse for wear having been at the bottom of a rucksack during a rather wet long-distance walk over the Easter weekend!) but as is the danger with Amazon, it pointed me in the direction of lots of other similar books for me to spend my hard-earned money on, including the one that has really affected how I now see my PhD work: Cal Newport's Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.

I mentioned this book briefly when I talked about whether social media can be detrimental to the PhD but wanted to devote a whole post to it.

The premise behind Cal Newport's book is that in our current knowledge economy, 'deep work', which he defines as "cognitively demanding activities that leverage our training to generate rare and valuable results, and that push our abilities to continually improve" is increasingly rare but also increasingly valuable. He argues that knowledge workers spend too much time indulging in shallow activities which give a sense of productivity and success but which are ultimately "empty" (email, social media etc.). Although the context for Newport's premise is focused on business, he is also an academic and there is therefore a lot that PhD students can take away from what he says.

One of the sections of the book which really struck a chord with me was when Newport was discussing his academic productivity. He had already published an impressive number of articles but he set the goal to write nine journal articles that academic year. Using the principles of focused work, he ended up publishing thirteen articles, while managing to take evenings and weekends off.

The idea that to do your best work, you only need to devote 15-20 hours of focused work a week, while coming to terms with the fact that that period of intensive productivity will be difficult and uncomfortable really appealed to me. It fits in with how I see my ideal life - filled with hard work that I'm passionate about and that challenges me with plenty of time left to devote to my family and friends, my health and personal growth and all the other fun things that make life worth living!

Discussions around productivity and working hours often comes up in conversation among my fellow PhD students and I have always been an advocate of a good work/life balance. (In fact, a lot of discussion came out of my last blog post on taking holidays, including this really interesting post by a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen.)

That doesn't mean I don't sometimes work in the evenings or over the weekend but I always try to keep it in check and, if I do end up having to put in those extra long hours, I make sure to ask myself why. Is there something I could have done differently so I don't have to give up that valuable time with my fiance, friends and family?

Having read Newport's book I am even more convinced that to be successful and productive during the PhD, and afterwards when building an academic career, you don't need to sacrifice the rest of your life, or work yourself into a state of stress and ill health. After all, who can argue with publishing 50 peer-reviewed articles and five books by the middle of your career?

As PhD students we are often told how important it is to maintain an active and professional online presence and to make use of a myriad of different services and social networks to do this: Twitter, academia.edu, LinkedIn and long-form blogging, to name just a few. There are also plenty of training events about social media aimed at PhD students (I have attended no less than three in my year and a half as a PhD researcher!)

I find this really interesting as I know of lots of established academics who have very little online presence and anecdotally, I would say that, among my PhD colleagues, the split is close to 50/50 between those who embrace all forms of social media and those who stay as far away as possible from it. So is it actually as vital a part of establishing an academic career as it is made out to be?

During a recent PhD break (which I will blog about in the coming weeks) I read Cal Newport’s new book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. He argues for the rejection of, or at least a re-evaluation of, all social media by professionals who have to routinely engage in ‘deep work’, which he defines as “cognitively demanding activities that leverage our training to generate rare and valuable results, and that push our abilities to continually improve”. You can read more about Newport's book here.

This idea took me a little while to accept, given how often I’ve been told how important social media, and Twitter in particular, is for establishing an academic career. Its supposed benefits include, but are not limited to, connecting with the public, connecting with other academics, establishing yourself in your field, finding new opportunities for collaboration, peer support, and keeping up to date with events and projects which are of interest. But Newport, a successful mid-career academic in computer science with an impressive publication output doesn’t use it at all. So is it really necessary?

Back in October I spent a week as the curator for the @wethehumanities account and this was a great way to really open up conversations with others about the things that matter to me; I discussed PhD life, work processes, language learning and childhood reading and I was enlightened and inspired by the whole thing. I was also exhausted.

I would still heartily recommend curating the account. We The Humanities looks for people in the Arts and Humanities to take over their account for a week and talk about the things that matter most to you. It's such an amazing way to connect with a much wider variety of people than your own Twitter following and have brilliant conversations about the things you care about.

Leading up to curating the account I was online a lot, particularly on Twitter. I would tweet about what was going on that day and was live-tweeting conferences and events that I was attending. I was also blogging weekly. I was always online. And that was the problem.

Being always online is exhausting. It also leads, in my case anyway, to intense feelings of what I like to call #AcademicFOMO. Because as well as tweeting lots about what I was up to, I was also reading lots of tweets about what everyone else was up to. The conferences everyone was attending, the articles everyone was publishing, the training everyone was doing.

Particularly among PhD students, but I suspect among most academics, there is a constant pressure to be on top of everything and to say 'yes' to every opportunity. This is a difficult thing to manage anyway and I think for someone who is a high-achiever, or someone with perfectionist tendencies, it can be overwhelming.

Twitter makes constant comparisons with others very easy and damaging. It's difficult to always remember that you're only seeing a limited, curated version of someone else's life and that they may have their unproductive moments, just like you.

In light of what Cal Newport says about Twitter, I still believe that it's a really useful, if not necessary, tool for academics, and is actually a fun thing to engage with. However, I’ve definitely been re-evaluating my use of it. Not only has taking a little step back been good for my #AcademicFOMO but if Newport is to be believed, spending less time generating short-form content should drastically improve my ability to engage in focused, high-quality work, which after all is what the PhD is actually about.

What do you think about Twitter and its uses for academics? Does it have a negative or damaging side too?

I've been asked a few times recently: 'how did you come up with your PhD topic?', mostly by Masters students who are currently in the process of applying for PhDs and funding. A few months ago I wrote a post about this for SGSAH's social network 'The Gither' and I wanted to make a slightly shortened and edited version of that post available here.

My project is titled 'The Young Scottish Reader in the Long Eighteenth Century'. I deal with evidence of children's actual reading experiences through letters, diaries, library borrowers' records, booksellers records and marginalia (the scribblings in books themselves) in order to construct a picture of what children may have been engaging with (rather than making assumptions based on what was published for children at the time).

Where it all began

Way back in 2012, while preparing for my undergraduate dissertation, I had to make a difficult decision about what my degree in English Studies was going to culminate in. We were told that this was something people would ask us about in interviews and general conversation and we should do something that we would be proud to talk about for years to come. I really wanted to focus on something I enjoyed. I enjoyed eighteenth-century and Romantic literature; my favourite modules had been 'Eighteenth-Century Literature' and 'Jane Austen' but throughout my degree, the Harry Potter series had always sat beside Sense and Sensibility on my bookcase (and in my list of all-time favourite books) and so I decided to work on children's literature.

Children's Literature

So it was an easy choice for me when we were given free reign to choose a topic for our undergraduate dissertations. But I did have to work hard to prove that it was scholarly enough. I chose three key 'children's books' of the twentieth century: Peter Pan, The Chronicles of Narnia and (one of my all-time favourites) His Dark Materials. I looked closely at the language used in each of texts, how it addressed both adult and child readers and the didactic messages of the novels in relation to gender norms. As I made my way through the reading and writing of my first dissertation, I was increasingly interested in the process of reading - What do children read? Why do they read it? And why are adults so keen to control what they read? I had my own, personal experiences of this too and I think in some ways those early experiences still influence the researcher I am today.

Learning to read

My early education took place in the Netherlands. We moved there when I was four and I spent the first four years of my school-life in a Dutch primary school. I learned to read and write in Dutch before English. It was a strange experience being able to speak and understand two languages but only read and write in one, and not the one I spoke at home.

I remember coming back to Scotland for a holiday at the age of six, having learned the rudiments of reading and writing in Dutch, with a strong desire to read and write in English. I took an A5 piece of blue airmail letter paper from my Gran's sideboard and proceeded to write down every word I knew for sure how to write in English. Most of the words were those gleaned from family letters: 'love', 'dear', 'granny', 'gran'pa'... I was desperate to know more. I started writing letters to my cousins in Ireland and we conversed back and forth for years, the letters steadily growing longer, more detailed, more elaborate. When we moved back to Scotland when I was eight years old, we immediately joined our local library. There I became obsessed with The Babysitter's Club and Sweet Valley Twins books, far from classic children's literature, but those books taught me to read in my own language and grew my love for reading. By the time we started our new school my reading and writing skills were advanced for my age and I was devouring up to fifteen books a week.

However, my choice of literature right throughout my teens was hardly typical for someone who went on to be a PhD student in English Literature. I gravitated towards the trashy mostly, with a strong preference for a harrowing WWII tale and even by the time I sat Higher English, my books of choice were definitely more popular than classic (my personal study was on The Girl with a Pearl Earing which is a fantastic book!). This meant that I had a bit of catching up to do by the time I went on to study English Literature at university. And I did catch up, but my love for children's books stayed alongside my love for Austen and Grassic Gibbon.

My PhD

The eighteenth century saw the growth of a recognisably separate literature aimed at children and children became an important part of the growing print culture. My initial research questions came from a curiosity about where this new categorisation of literature had come from but actually my own experiences of learning to read and choosing books as a child and a teenager were significant too. I'm glad I ignored those who told me I should be reading different things and I'm appreciative of those who saw that I loved reading and let me read whatever I wanted, because I have no doubt that those early experiences made me the researcher I am today and gave birth to a PhD which focuses on the actual child reader, and not on what we expect children to read.

So where did your PhD topic come from?

In my last post I mentioned briefly that one of the things that's been taking up my time lately is learning Chinese. Back in October, I got the opportunity to take part in the AHRC 'Speaking My Language' programme.

I've always had a keen interest in learning new languages and I've blogged before about the advantages of knowing a second language for PhD students.

However, unlike Gaelic, which I've also been learning for the past six months, Chinese isn't really relevant to my PhD research and so to fit 'Speaking My Language' in to an already busy schedule, I decided to use up some of my PhD annual leave to complete the course.

The first part of the programme involved a 4-week intensive course at the Confucius Institute for Scotland, based in Edinburgh. It was a strange experience being back in a classroom environment after so many years and I found the long days of intensive learning tiring but enjoyable.

Learning a language, particularly one with a different set of characters, was a whole different kind of challenge to PhD research. I definitely found myself thinking differently and using a different part of my brain! I think this is one of the major benefits of 'Speaking My Language', it forces you out of your intellectual comfort zone.

After the first part of the course, which also involved cultural seminars and a short introduction to Chinese calligraphy (which I would very much recommend as a relaxing, almost mindful, exercise), we were sent away with the second level textbook for some self-study. It was definitely the most challenging holiday-time I've had in a while!

We are now in the second stage of the programme which is a five-month self-study period supported by monthly classes. Each month we study two units of the book and then revise these together as a class. I definitely struggle a little with the self-study element of the course, particularly finding the time to devote to really learning the characters. However, I still very much enjoy the time away from my PhD to learn something totally different.

If you are considering applying for next year's programme, I would definitely recommend it, even if it's not necessarily directly related to your PhD research. It's been such a different challenge and has really broadened my thinking. It also gives you the chance to apply for AHRC funding to spend time in China (or Brazil, if you take the Portuguese option!) which would be a fantastic opportunity.

Now I'm off to finish my homework for tomorrow's class!

The resources we've used for the 'Speaking My Language' programme are Discover China Student Book One (Discover China Chinese Language Learning Series) and Discover China Student Book Two (Discover China Chinese Language Learning Series)

I've also found Chinese Flash Cards Kit Volume 1: Characters 1-349: Hsk Elementary Level really useful!

Have you found learning a language or taking on a new challenge has helped with your PhD?

So it’s been a while since I last blogged! In fact my blog tells me that it has been exactly 71 days since my last post, which slightly ironically was all about the value and importance of blogging. Lots has happened in the past 71 days to account for my silence:

1. I’ve been learning Chinese.

‘Speaking My Language’ gives PhD students the opportunity to undertake intensive training in either Mandarin Chinese or Brazilian Portuguese. So having managed to get a last-minute place on the course, I spent three weeks learning Chinese at the Confucius Institute for Scotland in Edinburgh. I will definitely be blogging about this soon.

2. I’ve been PhDing

Lots and lots PhDing… I’ve finished my data collection for part of my thesis which was so satisfying having spent the best part of a year on this!

3. I've been interning with SGSAH.

Finally, I’ve been given the fantastic opportunity to work with the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities on their ‘Policy Stories’ training event which took place at the Scottish Storytelling Centre and the Scottish Parliament a few weeks ago. A blog post will definitely follow on this too!

So with all of the above, I’ve been super busy and I was definitely starting to notice an impact on other parts of my life. Only a little to begin with. I was becoming increasingly reliant on a daily coffee. Caffeine makes me quite cranky and anxious so it’s definitely not ideal and I had previously managed to cut it out altogether for nearly 2 years. I was also noticing a bigger and bigger impact on my health and general wellbeing.

Having now recognised this, it’s definitely time to pull back and think about re-finding some balance. The difficulty being that all of the above things that have happened in the past few months are exciting and interesting and things I want to be doing. So rather than trying to cut back on those, I need to find a way of re-introducing all of the things that usually keep me grounded, more relaxed and just generally happy: sport, hobbies, friends, reading for pleasure, blogging…

It’s difficult to fit all of those extra fun (and necessary for my general wellbeing) things into an already very busy life without just feeling even more overstretched and pulled in different directions. On Saturday I stumbled across something which could be the answer:

#TinyChallenges

#TinyChallenges was thought up by @jaimeejaimee who has accomplished an insane number of things! The concept is pretty simple. It’s easy to make a really tiny change to your daily routine, rather than trying to take on something bigger. This is something I always struggle with – I like an ambitious plan and I always try to make lots of lifestyle changes all at once which are inevitably unsustainable.

You can read more about #TinyChallenges here but the idea is that you give yourself a goal and then commit to something really small every day for a month to work towards that. The idea being that your brain is less likely to rebel if the change is so small it doesn’t really notice it’s being forced to change. Brains hate change.

It’s suggested that your start with something that takes less than 5 minutes. So, for example, if you want to write more, you start with committing to writing just one sentence a day. If you want to declutter your home, you commit to removing one unnecessary thing a day. I feel like this is a great way to make a sustainable change in your life and you can do it with anything you like.

15 Days of Christmas Yoga

Something I’ve really noticed the past few weeks, with intensive writing and sitting in one place all day, is that my posture has significantly worsened. I keep catching myself sitting, standing and walking with my shoulders rolled in or hunched up to my ears. I know that going to a regular yoga or pilates class would really help but that feels like a big commitment with the limited time I have. So for my first #TinyChallenge I’m going to commit to doing one yoga pose a day, every day, for the rest of December. I found this article which describes 6 yoga poses for better posture and I’m going to try one of these for one minute a day, switching between the 6 of them (one of them is basically just standing still so if I can’t commit to that for a minute each day, I’m in real trouble!)

If my 15 days of Christmas Yoga goes well I’d like to commit to something new each month of 2016, focusing on better working practices, relaxing and health. For now I’m off to do a minute’s worth of yoga.

What would your #tinychallenge be? How do you keep a healthy balance between work and lifestyle?

Image courtesy of @LucieWhitmore. Research bloggers blogging at the SGSAH 'Research Blogging in the Arts and Humanities' workshop 19th-20th August, 2015

Research Blogging in the Arts and Humanities

Back in August I worked with a group of PhD students from Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities to run a training workshop on 'research blogging'. I'm not going to go into too much detail about the workshop here as it's been written about elsewhere - here and here with a Storify of all the tweets from the event here!

This event came about from some conversations among ourselves about the importance of blogging and having an online presence as PhD and early-career researchers. We applied for funding from the Scottish Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities and were lucky enough to receive funding to run a two-day training event for 20 students which focused on the practical skills of blogging (wordpress, copyright etc.) and the dos and dont's of blogging as an academic.

So what should an academic blog look like?

There seems to be no right or wrong answer to this. We asked a group of academic bloggers to come along and speak to us about their own experiences of blogging and answer our burning questions. A couple of my fellow workshop attendees have blogged about their approaches to their own blogs. Lucie Whitmore over at Costume & Conflict discusses her own reasons for starting a blog and Diljeet Bhachu asks what topics are suitable for blogging and what should be kept off-limit. (This is also a good excuse to check out some of the shiny blogs which were created as a result of the workshop - they're really, very good!) I think this seems to be what most PhD students ask themselves when they start a blog (or start thinking about starting a blog!) - What should I blog about? and Why am I bothering?

What should I blog about?

I have to admit that this is something I haven't quite figured out yet! I started this webpage early this year but didn't actually blog until a couple of months ago. I was largely concerned about putting too much of myself out there too soon, either too much of my research and ideas before they were fully formed, or too much of my personal life for future employers to find and judge me over!

My first blog post was a guest post for the 21st Century Book Historian blog. This reflected on a training workshop on methodologies and my own take on my methodology. I really enjoyed writing about my research but was still a bit concerned about saying too much too soon.

Since then, I have been experimenting with different types of posts and different topics. I seem to have been focusing quite a lot on PhD life and different events and conferences I've attended and I briefly flirted with a regular post about CFPs, events etc. (which I may still go back to as it does seem to get some readers) but I'm still not really sure where I'm going with it all and who or what it is for. Or how much of my personal life I should put out there.

A few weeks ago I blogged for SGSAH's social platform thegither about why I chose to research child readers. This is probably the most personal post I would be willing to put out there. I don't think there is anything in there that could come back and bite me but equally I also don't know how I'll feel about these reflections in five years time. (It still pains me slightly that there's a blog I wrote about my year abroad when I was 19 floating around the internet that I cannot get rid of, it doesn't contain anything particularly embarassing or incriminating - it just doesn't really reflect who I am anymore).

And I think it is this that worries PhD students in particular about blogging. It's that worry about what a potential employer will find when you attempt to get on to the first precarious step of the academic career ladder which puts a lot of people off blogging and definitely made me delay starting my own blog.

Someone who does read my blog regularly said that it comes across as my own take on the world and events from the perspective of someone doing a PhD on childhood reading practices which I quite liked.

Why bother blogging anyway?

So if there is so much worry about blogging and so many potential pitfalls and horror stories (This one from a couple of years ago would put anyone off...) why would you bother blogging at all?

For me, I really wanted to take control of my online presence and make sure I was putting out there what I wanted people to know (even if I'm not particularly sure what that is yet!) and I like talking to people about my research, which is why I love twitter so much.

This article from the Guardian talks a little bit about how starting a blog as a PhD student can help you feel more in control of the whole PhD process in general. Although aimed at Science PhDs, it makes a good point about how often things are outwith our control. Someone else controls whether you get funding, whether that abstract gets accepted or whether you get published. But you can control your own online presence and what you write about on your blog.

I am really interested in digital technologies and the potential of the internet in general, and particularly in academia. I love that this blog gets picked up in France, Germany, Canada, the US and Australia and that twitter allows me to talk to academics across the world working on really interesting things. Blogging and tweeting aren't additional chores that eat into my research time and that I begrudge doing; I really genuinely enjoy these activities and I think I am a better, more connected PhD student with a wider outlook for doing them.

So thanks, as always, for popping by, and thanks for your patience while I find my feet in this weird and wonderful world of academic blogging.

Do you blog as an academic? What are the advantages/disadvantages? What are your worries about blogging?