Well it shouldn’t be all work, work, work now should it!?! Managed to get a free ticket to go and watch the mighty Toon in action last night, and they won (shock, horror). It’s bloody freezing up here at the minute, so was rather chilly watching the game. But, no matter who you really support, you’ve got to go to St James’ Park and enjoy a game.

On the PhD work front. Well it’s really difficult to know where you are so early on. As I’ve been saying to people the end is a long way off, and the start is somewhere off in the distance too and I can’t see quite where it begins. For the time being I am quietly plodding through some of the theoretical literature and hope to start writing up some literature review sections in the next couple of days.

I think what has been useful is that I have already made some useful contacts (and hopefully one day friends). Networking is vitally important and as my field is very small, not many people researching Portuguese politics, I am grateful for the help I receive. But also they are all too pleased to help. So this is good. To that end I may be going to Hull in a couple of weeks to see a Portuguese MP. (I may not if the train journey appears too horrific!). I’m also off to the UACES conference for EU studies people in London. I shall report how I get on. Generally speaking I hate ‘the smoke’, but sure it’ll be a useful day.

But there is more to being a PhD student than just working on your thesis topic. Yesterday was our gig. The 4th Tuesday of the month is a topical roundtable discussion in politics, which I along with 2 other postgrad research students organise. It went very well and as the topic was the US Election it was something that everyone thought important so the turnout was excellent. I usually caution people who say Obama is going to win and comment about how the electoral college system will probably screw him up, but thanks to the analysis in the seminar, I think it’s fair to say he’s going to win hands down.

Anyway, despite the fact that the Politics Postgrad Society President has resigned, we have a great community with lots of student and staff organised events to enjoy. It’s not every day you get to go to a politics seminar on Buffy The Vampire Slayer now is it!!??! I know. That’s November 5th so I’ll talk about that in my next post and hopefully have my MA results by then too.

So here we go, the journey has begun!

By the way those of you who are new to the blog, follow the link to the ‘About Me’ page… https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/blogs/index.php/steven.robinson?cat=1004

Well first of all how did I get here, how did I become a PhD student and why Newcastle? Well it’s really very simple if I wasn’t doing a PhD at Newcastle I simply woudn’t be doing one (God knows what I’d be doing, something boring no doubt!). Having done my undergraduate studies here I built up a good relationship with my supervisors who were able to help me develop a proposal to go for an ESRC 1+3 funding application for the research masters and the PhD. That was unsuccessful but I did get some funding to help with my MA year on the understanding that I reapplied for the +3 and did my PhD at Newcastle. Now, that may sound like I had no choice in where to go and what to study, and to a certain degree that’s true, but Newcastle is such a great city and the facilities in the University and particularly the staff and students in politics make for an excellent learning and social atmosphere. I worked hard through my MA year and although I didn’t get the ESRC funding I got the GPS School Studentship, so I have 3 years funded for my PhD. By the way, this blog is one of the conditions of that funding!!!!

But I haven’t really answered that question – why Newcastle? Well when you are 17 and you’re browsing a university prospectus it’s hard to make a really informed decision about where to go. Especially if you have not been to the cities you are considering. Essentially it was the course that made me want to come Government and EU Studies satisfied my interest in EU Studies but also my penchant for languages and offered a year abroad. Also I know Newcastle would be a pretty good bet for a decent student life so with little more consideration than that I opted for Newcastle and here I still am. Still a student, still in the politics building (even on a Sunday when nobody else is around!).

So I’m 3 weeks into my time as PhD student. What’s changed? How is it different? Well it’s obviously important to meet with your supervisors early as they will be eager to give you some reading to go off and do but planning your time is quite difficult when, to be honest, you don’t have a timetable. At the moment it seems to be one week busy, the next week nothing to do in uni. So it’s important to get stuck into some reading and I have been set some tasks to do by Christmas, which should give me ample time to make the several visits back to Norfolk/Suffolk I plan to make in the coming weeks.

So my supervisors are Tony Zito, Jocelyn Mawdsley and Jens Hentschke. Tony was my undergrad degree programme director so I have known him for many years. Jocelyn joined the department when I was on my year abroad so I have known her for a while now too. And I remember the day I decided to do Portuguese in first year and Jens, acting as language liason with politics, took me to see Miguel who was to be my first Portuguese teacher and saviour and legend for helping me getting settled in on my year abroad in Lisbon. So it’s a real supervisory team that I know pretty well, I know there strengths and weaknesses, how they operate, how to decipher their handwriting and all this is important. If you come somewhere new, you will have to take time to get to know your supervisors, but like I said they are the reason I am able to say I am a PhD student!

We’ve had the usual induction stuff. And as I did the HASS Faculty Research Training last year as part of my Masters I don’t have to do it this year (Hooray). I admit we have a few nicknames for HASS but Robin Humphrey is such a nice guy and we know it’s good for us so we do it. Just completed the second intensive day of ‘Managing a PhD’ which was quite useful, but the afternoon dragged on rather and we were all feeling sleepy by 3:30!

Ok so that’s my first post. I will do my best to keep these coming on a regular basis.