Hello people out there!

For those of you who have just come across my blog for the first time, my name is Steven Robinson and I am a PhD student in Politics at Newcastle University. I am in my fourth year now and have been keeping a regular blog since I started my PhD back in 2008. The idea being to tell you what it is like doing a PhD, specifically in Newcastle and more generally, from my personal experiences. You can read more about me by going to my first post in the ‘About Me‘ category and by looking through my blog archive under ‘The PhD Journey‘.

The blog was previously hosted in a different location and recently the University Blogging Service has migrated to a new site run via WordPress, which means I have a shiny new blog site and this is my first post on it. So welcome new readers, and welcome loyal followers (I’m glad you found the new site by the way, and I hope that you weren’t too confused by the old site disappearing unexpectedly!).

For more info about me, you can visit my profile page on…
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/postgraduate/students/profile/1415

My PhD is entitled ‘Assessing the Europeanisation of Portuguese Foreign and Security Policy’. You can find my project page on…
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/politics/research/governance/PolRobinson.htm

So, I have been busy making sure Blog 2.0 is up and running, which it now is (as I’m sure you can tell)! I have also had my last ever, final, never to be revisited again, annual progress review. Good to have that out of the way now. It was good practice for those viva questions. The plan is to submit by Christmas/New Year at the absolute latest, so a busy few months ahead!

I hope enjoy reading about how things go in the coming months. But I should issue a warning. Future posts here may be a combination of thesis distraction and procrastination, so I may not be in the best of moods when I post! 🙂