I had the pleasure of attending the above event last week. It examined the careers and ongoing professional life of PhDs, inside and outside academia. It included four plenaries, which each took two successful PhDs from a given area (history; sociology; natural science; drama), one of whom had stayed in academia and one of whom had gone into industry. There was a very broad selection of speakers – and of doctoral students – with great discussions.

Overall observations

It was fascinating to have the chance to talk with people carrying out PhDs in areas like art and drama – how do you examine one of those? (Well, I have more of a clue than I did before.) This was not a CompSci conference: people didn’t use their laptops during sessions!

There were negative and positive themes throughout this event. Points were made about the frustration of imposed processes which stifle creativity and innovation, and the lack of investment here in the UK compared to other countries (e.g. Germany). On the other hand, there were fascinating life stories on hand, and an enormous range of diversity and openness. ‘Serendipity’ was an often-used word, and ‘don’t over-plan your careers’ was said more than once!

Detail

The opening keynote was given by Tom Docherty, an English professor at Warwick. He talked about how we have lived through the age of mechanical production and are now in the age of digital production, and ranted at great length about how we value form above content. For example, we have all seen the Mona Lisa, whether we’ve been to Paris or not – we get an aesthetic impression of its form, but don’t see the work right there in front of us, in context as the result of a historical process. Similarly, he talked about how we disconnect from stuff in the news (e.g. a dying child in Gaza) and instead look at situations in terms of how they’ll play out (say, the consequences for countries in a conflict).

Similarly, he ranted about how lecturers are expected to fill in data on the aims, objectives, goals of a taught module – and not just go and teach it. How many PhD students have courses about managing their PhDs, structuring their time? A lot of us.  But that stuff is nothing to do with the content of the PhDs!

He ended by saying that we have lost the visceral experience – we experience what we think we ought to experience, not the thing itself – how do we respond to that dying child in Gaza? How do we grieve? (Personally, I’m not convinced about all of this. He says we aren’t free to experience things as they are, but were we ever? And does this not, on some levels, just boil down to over-thinking things and “head vs heart”? He is, after all, a PhD talking to a room of PhD candidates.)

Anyway. Enough on the opening keynote.

Other things which came up were discussions of issues faced by female academics (you know the stuff – bringing up families etc – though also a point about how there is a need for the token woman on committees, which can leave us over-stretched – this resonated!). Also a point was made about inequality, not in terms of promotion and pay, but care-giving: how many husbands might drop a job to care for an ailing mother-in-law? How many wives would do likewise? Hm.

Student presentations were in parallel streams, ten to a group. I heard about visual deception in cinema, the effects of downhill walking in the elderly, implementation of policy… see how broad this conference was? Heard an utterly fantastic talk on the Battle of Mersa El Brega in 1941 – the speaker just came to life and told us a story – I forgot I was in a presentation, I was there with the speaker in 1941. Fab!

I gave my own presentation after a walk around the grounds (which were so “upper class English” it was unbelievable: of course, we were a stone’s throw from Eton and Windsor Castle). I worked really hard when putting it together to make it accessible to non-techies, and I was really pleased that I appear to have succeeded in this. I had loads of questions, and at breakfast the next day an artist from RCA and then a cinematographer separately grabbed me to talk some more. Win!

Of course, the Q&A session following my presentation was very broad, reflecting the audience. I was really surprised to be asked by the historian, “How on earth will you write this up?” He felt it would be incredibly difficult because my work is currently in two halves (which will later, with luck and hard work, mesh together), and thus I can’t write a linear document. This hadn’t struck me as anything of note at all – perhaps a reflection of how different approaches to PhDs can be.

I was delighted to meet a fellow CompSci at the conference – by the strangest coincidence, our research areas overlap. He’s looking at online social networking, what makes some profiles popular and things like this. There was an interesting discussion following his presentation on the ethics of data collection (the data’s grabbed from the ‘net – he isn’t getting consent from the profile holders), what data mining means (clearly not a topic which many in the room were well versed in), how it can be used. Anyway, we two cheated the interdisciplinary nature of affairs by talking CompSci over dinner – CHI, hypertext, coding languages. Tee hee!

The final plenary was given by the drama people, and was very interesting. Topics included the power of the actor to create something which isn’t physically there (think invisible walking sticks), and to bring to life the (perhaps ambiguous) written word. Actors and research: how some love to research a role, others hate it and fear the research will constrain or confine them. Discussion of the obligation to publish in academia, and how that can lead to lots of second rate stuff, rather than rarer but sparkling gems. Great points about how academic research requires a rather introverted state of mind, but teaching and attending conferences demands an extroverted approach. Impostor syndrome as a consequence of always questioning everything.

The penultimate speaker discussed Nietzsche, including a quote which resonated with the opening keynote – “life in things is truer than any theory about things”. But PhDs inherently involve engaging with the theory of things!

Clearly, this conference produced a lot of food for thought. It was really refreshing to go and talk to such a broad set of people, and I found the exercise of explaining my research to such a group very valuable indeed. Good times!

Edit: a summary report by Cumberland Lodge may be found here.