As I have been quite a bit so far on my PhD, I find myself on a train. This time I’m actually going to Newcastle (as opposed to home, or somewhere random!).

So since my last post I have been ‘out of office’ but busy doing work. However, upon my return, which train permitting should be less than 2 hours away now, I seriously need to get my ass in gear (can I say that?!)!!!! So I shall report back on my trips to London and Hull last week and reflect a bit about what is lined up for me to do this coming week (mainly so I can get it into my head what needs doing!!). But I think this is the most productive thing I can do for the moment on the train.

London: On Monday last (November 10th) I went down to the UACES Research Students’ Conference at the European Commission and European Parliament offices in London. This is a very useful experience. Firstly, it seems that UACES is a very good organisation for me to be a part of and they seem very good at involving postgraduate researchers in their activities. The workshops at the conference looked useful and did not disappoint. As I am planning conducting fieldwork in Europe and looking to get published during my PhD I gained some useful tips and insights. The scary topic addressed at the end was what to do after the PhD! (Scary I know!) This was useful and although I am a long way from that it gave me lots to think about.

I guess the most important aspect of the conference was to meet other students at various stages of their PhDs on European studies. To that end I had a very mixed feelings moment talking to a guy at LSE doing, you guessed it, Europeanisation of Portuguese foreign policy! And being in his second year and being Portuguese and being quite well connected in Lisbon he seems to have a bit of an edge over me. But I’m sure our topics are similar but are arguments and theses will not be. This will come with time. But I have his contact details and he is someone to remember for the future!!! So this is the joy of conferencing, meeting people who know your subject! To be honest we are a bit short of EU studies people at Newcastle, so it was good to meet with other students too at the conference. Not to mention the freebies we received!

Hull: On Friday (November 14th) I made my first ever trip to Hull. Now, I have to say the University campus is quite nice, but alas the rest of the city (no offence) does suffer from considerable neglect. I have to say I don’t think it’s the kind of place I would want to live and study (especially compared to Newcastle), but each to their own. My reason for going there was to meet a Portuguese MP – António Filipe. He gave a paper on reforms of the Portuguese Parliament and there were 6 others in the room. I had tea served to me by a Lord!!! (The Prof. Lord [Philip] Norton of Louth, Head of Department). And was good to meet Cristina Leston-Bandeira a Portuguese lecturer in politics at Hull who I had been corresponding with a few weeks ago. Both her and the MP gave me some useful tips about who to talk to when doing my fieldwork. So again I was networking and it seems I have a good contact base emerging now!

So this week… I need to get my Europeanisation Literature Review largely done. I’m looking to have 25 entries by Sunday night. It doesn’t matter if the writing is a bit weak I just need a starting point for most of the articles and I can add further detail later. But I really need to lock myself away and get this done! As I don’t appear to have many empty days in my diary for the coming few weeks I really need to get most of this done this week! I think getting my head down and doing it won’t be too bad, but we shall see how I get on! Aside from that I also want to get my PhD Proposal done and dusted as that’s due December 8th and I haven’t got much more time to finish it! But it’s started and shouldn’t take too long to finish.

I have another bit of work to do and that is checking whether the undergrads have been naughty! I have to go through the work submitted this term with plagiarism software! So I think I shall devote an afternoon over a coffee and bickie looking at those this week too.

So I hope I get all these things done…!