I’m not snowed in, nor am I snowed under!

But it is nice to be back home again now for Christmas and we have had a fair bit of snow down here. When I left Newcastle at the end of term we hadn’t seen any snow but looking at the Toon on the telly today it looks like they’ve had a decent amount in the North East.

I went down to London on Wednesday as the snow storms started to make their way in. I got out of the tube to a snowy view of the Bank of England. I was in the City to go and get my Portuguese bank account sorted. That was a gratifyingly straightforward process. I need to complete a bit of bureaucracy upon my arrival in Lisbon and then I can use my account and get my research grant paid into it! The snow really started to come down on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, so I’m glad I got my London trip done out of the way first. Obviously the weather resulted in travel chaos. Lots of reports on the news of villages which have been cut off from the outside world – but somehow the camera crews and news reporters seem to get there!

But I can relax now, and what better way than writing my blog update. Christmas shopping is all done, my beers have all been organised for the festive period and I have even wrapped up my presents already. The girlfriend is on holiday so we can spend some time together a couple of days next week before Christmas gets under way properly.

But I have been busy since returning home. I have done all the plagiarism checking for the School and got that out of the way. I do like doing that and it’s always interesting to see what students try to get away with! I’m nosey like that! I have also been marking the briefing papers from the module I have been teaching seminars on. I was impressed by those, and they clearly benefitted from having such a great seminar teacher!!! But it’s good to draw a line under my role as a teaching assistant – an experience I have enjoyed immensely!

At the end of term I had a good time in Newcastle. Lots of little things needed to get done, especially getting all my printing, copying etc done. Also I needed to return all my library books! We had a good Christmas lunch too, we spent the society money very wisely on good food, beer and tequila! A really enjoyable afternoon. I also had a final meeting with my supervisors where they gave me lots of interviewing tips and a final pep talk before I go away.

The next thing looming large is my field research trip to Lisbon. I fly out 5th January until the 31st March. It will be the time when my PhD gets the data it needs. I’m really looking forward to conducting interviews in the foreign ministry, but am scared by it as it’s quite daunting! But it’s never a bad thing to be spending time in Lisbon and the reason I am doing my PhD and contemplating an academic career is to do this kind of field research. It will be an experience for sure, but at least I can build on my previous time in Lisbon and finding my feet again will be a bit easier.

So it’s nice to relax and look forward to Christmas and New Year. Before I know it the suitcase will be packed and I’ll be off to Lisbon (whether I feel I’m ready for it or not!).

But it’s the time to reflect on the year and the decade which has now passed us by. Ten years ago it was the time of year for mock GCSE exams, now I am staring at the reality of going off to Lisbon to my fieldwork for my PhD! So I’ve come a long way in the last ten years and so many experiences and grown up as a person. Let’s hope the next ten are as memorable and enjoyable.

Happy Christmas to all you blog-readers. And Happy New Year!

I will be writing my next post probably some time in mid-January from somewhere in Lisbon! I’m excited but don’t want to wish away Christmas and New Year.

So until the blog goes ‘continental’, cheerio and see you in 2010!

Hmmmm, not sure… But I have been spending November answering many questions, some posed by my students, others posed by my research.

I have completed my seminars I am teaching. I have to say I have enjoyed it and, now they have had such expert tuition, I’m sure they will all go on to wonderful things! In all seriousness, I was impressed by their brightness and ability to engage with issues. But we shall see how much they have taken in soon. I have to co-mark the assessments over the next few weeks! I’m happy to have a Monday that hasn’t been dominated by teaching however today.

I have had my teaching peer-reviewed by my supervisor. While I over use the whiteboard she was happy with the relaxed atmosphere in the seminar, which made for good contributions by the students. I certainly think that I have found a style of teaching which I am comfortable with, keep it relaxed. But despite me not being too rigid, the students do seem to respect me and have asked me lots of interesting questions. Some I could answer well, others not so well. So I clearly don’t know everything, and I should freely admit that rather than dig holes for myself when I get caught out next time!

As for research questions, I have been busy working on my methodology over the past couple of weeks. Resolving some of those issues, like why am I doing my research?! What use is it?! Why am I going to Portugal?!? I have to say I think I’ve got some pretty decent answers to those and I think my methodological approach is starting to seem much clearer to me now.

Some things I just don’t know, but I’m learning. The finer points of opening a Portuguese bank account for example, not a nice headache to have! In fact, it seems like such a long time ago that I did my year abroad and first arrived in Lisbon, but soon I will be able to relive those hectic first couple of weeks of a steep learning curve and resolving bureaucratic issues in another language and being far from home and on my own! While I am prepared for a stress, that was so enjoyable and a defining moment of my life. While I don’t have all the answers, at least I can draw upon experiences of a few years ago!

Christmas is getting closer now, and that means many things… It means time at home again to eat, drink and be merry. It means the Politics Postgrad Society Christmas lunch (which I have organised!!!) is not far away. It means having to sort out all the issues regarding my fieldwork before I leave Newcastle and before I fly to Lisbon. And it means lots of assessments deadlines for me plagiarism check and my own students’ work to mark.

So I better get back to resolving these methodological issues. But at least I will have some help with that… On Thursday I am presenting my work to the other PhD students in Politics. I am hoping that they will ask me some useful questions. If I don’t have the answers, at least it won’t be too late to think about them before I go off to Lisbon!

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post, and while I have been busy I don’t think major PhD things have got done. This means that November has arrived and brings with it an impetus to really got on top of things.

But October was busy, as teaching tends to take over everything and makes it difficult to carve out proper PhD time. After today’s seminars are over there will only be two more weeks of seminar teaching! And these will be on aspects of European foreign policy, which should be easy enough for me to teach. And should be enjoyable. While I haven’t got over the knots in my stomach on Monday mornings (and Sunday nights to be honest), I do feel it’s going well and that I am enjoying it. But it’s my first attempt I can only get better with experience. Maybe the University runs an intensive training course on how to write on a whiteboard?!? That’s probably my weakest area in terms of teaching skills!!!

The last day of October, marked by many as Halloween, was one of the most useful days of my PhD to date. I went down to Oxford for the weekend to a one-day workshop on Portugal, Southern Europe and the EU. This gave me the opportunity to hear some interesting speakers, many of whom I had read and/or cited. Some others I had corresponded with in Lisbon and some people who were new to me, but producing research relevant to my own project. All in all, useful in terms of networking but also the intellectual content left me with plenty to think about for my own PhD. But, as it was Halloween, I must admit to have been frightened a little bit! Scared that my PhD fieldwork is getting closer and closer and while I am confident that I have a good understanding of the main issues, it’s always a weird feeling to meet people engaged in similar work. But all in all an enjoyable day and St John’s College Oxford was a spendid location for it. Afterwards we all went out for dinner at a local Lebanese restaurant which was nice.

I should also report back on the useful experience of meeting someone else who has influenced my work. Prof. Simon Bulmer visited Newcastle from the University of Sheffield and gave a talk on the Europeanisation of Whitehall in October. This work has influenced my methodology as I assess the Europeanisation of Portuguese government processes. I made sure I asked him a reasonably intelligent sounding question and Jocelyn made sure I got introduced to him over a glass of wine afterwards and we reflected on my research project.

Aside from the teaching drawing to a close and the project marking getting ever nearer, I will be busy plagiarism checking as the politics assignments start rolling in. But I will be busy on my own PhD, not least making sure that I am prepared for the fieldwork after Christmas. I have prepared some letters of recommendation in Portuguese and also translated my PhD abstract into PhD. In November I will also be busy preparing for the seminar I will be giving to the other PhD students. But my main plan is to get my methodology section drafted! This will definitely keep me busy!!!

So November is here, and the approaching cold, short and snowy days will be here sooner than I would like. But if I get on top of everything then what could be nicer than having a cup of gluhwein at Newcastle’s continental Christmas market at the end of this month.

Today I booked my plane ticket to Lisbon! It hit home when I went down to pick up my TAP print-out and it had the time and dates of my flight to Portugal. And of course I have to get all my fieldwork done by the time it’s time to come home again…March 31st! Scary, scary, scary!

So between now and Christmas so much to do. But it’ll be good and I’m looking forward to it. I am in the process of sorting out all those annoying little things which I need to sort out now before I leave and then have a sort of methodology drafted by the end of term. I will make the most of this weekend to really make some dents in my to do list.

But I have met with my supervisors and all seems ok, it’s just a question of me finding the time to get ahead. Motivation shouldn’t be a problem, and the closer it gets to that day when I step onto the plane the more motivated I need to be to get everything sorted and in place. Can’t wait! Although not looking forward to the hassle of setting up a Portuguese bank account, something I avoided doing during my year abroad in Lisbon before.

The teaching is going well. I enjoyed my first proper seminars with my three groups. But as of Monday it’ll only be two groups as we’ve merged them together. Which is a shame because I liked the small group and it worked well, but it’s a necessary evil in order for them to do the group projects. Slowly getting used to the idea that I’m the seminar teacher, but I have a bright group of students who seem to ask just the sort of questions I wished they wouldn’t! But it’s fun to think on your feet.

Anyway, I promise to update soon. But right now I better be off… got lots of sun cream to buy and pack 😉

Not that I’ll be needing any in January, February and March!

Sounds strange, but it’s true. Or at least by tomorrow morning I will be!

I went along to the first lecture of the module and got my first look at the second year undergraduates I will be teaching. They seemed a nice bunch. They did all the same things like what I used to do when I was a second year, i.e. not sit in the front two rows of the lecture theatre and at least pretend to take notes of what the lecturer is saying. It seems strange to think that a mere five years ago I was taking this module, and now I’ll be teaching it. But, luckily for me, the EU has changed so much in that time that it’s like taking a completely different module.

Now, with news of the Irish referendum approving the Treaty of Lisbon on Friday, I know what I’m supposed to be teaching. You can always rely on the EU to leave it until the last minute before letting us people, who have to teach the young people of the world how the EU works, know until the last minute quite what treaty is supposed to be in force!

Anyway with that headache just about resolved there remains the main issue… How am I going to handle this? What if they ask me really awkward questions? What if I don’t know the answers? What if they undermine my authority? What if they destroy what confidence I have in a matter of seconds? The best I can do is just to do my best. If I don’t know an answer, I’ll look it up and get back to them. Hopefully they’ll be able to accept that and I’ll be able to give them the benefit of my many years of experience of studying and living in the EU.

So once I get over that surreal experience of walking into the room and occupying that teacher’s chair, I’ll have to get to know my group and work through what I have planned (which isn’t as well planned as I would like at this stage, so may require more work later tonight). An hour will soon fly by and once the first group is done, the next two tomorrow will be easier to deal with. But I will definitely have earned a pint at the end of the day and some film night pizza!

Right, I shall report back how I get on later in the week. Together with an update on how my PhD is going in general since I’ve been back for the new term.

I’m not going to reflect on the year that has been and gone all too quickly. But it has been enjoyable!

The real work starts on Monday as the second year of my PhD begins. It should be a year full of new experiences, in particular the fieldwork in Lisbon and Brussels should be the main highlight. There will also be conferences to look forward to and I hope to be presenting my work outside of Newcastle some time soon. More on these developments when they happen.

In preparing for the year ahead, I have been busy recently getting in contact with people in Lisbon and seeing if I can have an institutional base at a university for my time out there. Also I have been giving thought to the practicalities of the trip and trying to budget accordingly. Not easy.

But before I can get to Lisbon, the is another new experience for me. I will be a seminar teacher for the first semester on the module EU Politics and Policy. This is a module which I last encountered, albeit in a sleepy state from the back row of the lecture theatre, some five years ago!

I’m quite nervous about leading the seminars and getting to know my own little groups of undergrads, but equally excited about it and relishing the challenge. My supervisor told me that once I get over the surreal experience of walking into the room and occupying the teacher’s chair then I should be fine! The module and the EU have changed quite a bit since I took this module, but I will be up to speed with the lecture notes via Blackboard and I’m sure Jocelyn will have lots of useful advice for me.

It’s even been a long time since I took the University’s two-day course on seminar teaching, way back in February! I will have to familiarise myself again with my notes and the teaching theory that I was told on that course. It was useful, but I guess nothing is as useful as doing it for real! Anyway, it’s looking like October 5th for my first seminar, so I shall report back on how that goes.

It’s induction week next week, which means a new bunch of postgrads to welcome to politics, MAs and PhDs. I gather that they are being entertained with wine and nibbles at the Trent House. I shall attend after what should be an interesting seminar given by one of the staff. Also on Wednesday, the Politics Postgrad Society will meet to try and organise itself for the coming year. I will be happy to help out, but am not sure if I want to continue with the roundtable discussions, especially as I’ll be out of the country for most of semester 2. Maybe, perhaps, I shall help with the film night. I have a couple of Portuguese films I could show and will always be keen to help finish off any of the remaining free slices of pizza.

But before all that I need to gather all my things together and catch the train to Newcastle on Monday. Oh and I’ll have a new set of housemates to meet upon my return which should be exciting!

So the summer is drawing to a close. Now, although I have been busy enough it has been fairly leisurely. My own fault I guess but it’ll be much easier to be motivated when I have some SERIOUS writing up to do, which this time next year I should be in a position to do having finished my fieldwork. But I like ‘leisurely’ as it’s not been the worst summer in history in terms of weather!

The Ashes distractions are now all gone and the celebrations are over!!! Was a great series and so good to see England win. Sadly the football season has started with a couple of defeats for Liverpool. But I’m looking forward to being back in Newcastle and making a visit to St James’s Park and watching some Championship football. Now they aren’t in the Premier League any more it’ll be easier for the fair-weather supporters to get a ticket and hopefully cheaper ticket prices. I’ve promised to take my Dad to a game by Christmas.

As for the PhD work, well I am busy looking ahead to the new year and the fieldwork after Christmas. I’m trying to plan and budget for my trips to Lisbon and Brussels. Which is a handy thing to do anyway, but I am doing it mainly to apply for some scholarship money which would mean that it won’t be such a struggle to do the fieldwork. It’s scary to think that I’ll be interviewing people soon and I don’t feel dangerously prepared for it at the moment!

Next week I shall be busy tidying my office and organising my paper filing, books and journals. Everything needs to ship shape etc for the start of the year! And of course working some more on this scholarship application. Another aspect of my preparations for the new academic year will be getting psyched up for the seminar teaching I’ll be doing. More thoughts on that in my next post in a couple of weeks’ time!

I’ve had the last couple of days free to do some actual work, as opposed to getting wrapped up in the first two Ashes test matches. Exciting stuff but the extended gap between the 2nd and 3rd tests means I have a window to get some work done!

So what shall I be doing…? Again, research design issues. I am currently working on a short paper on the Europeanisation of Whitehall. I’m trying to learn from that study and see what useful things I can take out of it for my case study. Hopefully it will help me resolve the issues of what Europeanisation is and how am I going to ‘measure’ it, what are the conditions and the signs to look for. Also I need to think about a couple of case studies for my thesis so will try and construct a timeline of the critical junctures of Portuguese foreign policy next week. That will be tricky, so I think I’ll go back to old-fashioned paper and pens and try and scribble something out.

I have been at home for the past couple of weeks but made a trip up to Newcastle to see my supervisor. However I wasn’t aware of the building work going on in the Politics building. Of course this is the time of year to do it, very sensible, but getting into and out of my office was a bit of a mission and me and my supervisor had to relocate to the cafe down the road for our meeting. Oh and the weather was awful, so much rain that Jesmond Metro station was flooding when I arrived!

I’ve also made some more contacts and am planning my fieldwork. I’m really looking forward to that and also looking forward to the new academic year. Will be nice to see some old faces again and I am looking forward to teaching. But, so I gather, I won’t be teaching royalty next year. It seems that Princess Eugenie, who is coming to Newcastle in September, will be doing English and History of Art. Shame, I would have enjoyed checking her essays for plagiarism and reporting her! Heheheh

So I better get on and get this work done. I have until Thursday next week before the Ashes distractions start again. Then, during the first week of August, I will be away on holiday (much deserved I think! OK, maybe not). My girlfriend’s family are taking us to Cornwall. So that should be really nice, I have never been to that part of the world before. Before I know it, I’ll be another year older and the 2nd year of my PhD will be upon me. But before all that the small matter of regaining the Ashes!!! Come on England!!!!!

Since the last post I made, where I let you all know that I have at least progressed to the second year of my PhD, I have been very busy. Crucially, I have been trying to resolve quite what I am going to do next year, now I know it’ll definitely happen. To that end the past month has been a great opportunity to think about some of the details of conducting my PhD fieldwork and trying to anticipate the problems I may encounter. This update shall serve as my own account of what I did in planning my fieldwork and what issues I encountered and/or resolved. When I look back on my research, having hopefully completed my PhD, I shall discover that this is where everything went well and the project took real shape! (Or if I don’t pass, this is where the project started to unravel and it was down hill from this point onwards!)

Now at the start of June I had a summit meeting with my three supervisors to discuss my research design and what work I shall do between now and September. That meeting also served as a debriefing of my first year as a PhD student and the feedback was positive in that respect. The main outcome of the meeting was that I trot off into the sun and think about how I am going to operationalise my research questions. I need to get a clear idea of what I am going to achieve in my fieldwork, partly so I know what questions to ask and who to ask them to, but also to have a detailed plan of attack for the fieldwork, detailed enough to impress potential sources of additional funding so that I can get some extra cash to cover my flights, accommodation, steaks, mussels, beer, waffles, pasteis de nata etc in Lisbon and Brussels (mmmm can’t wait!).

Now the great thing about being detailed with this task, as opposed to writing a literature review or writing-up chapters, is that actually I don’t have to do that much. In fact it is preferable to DO very little! Not that I have been idle or concentrating on other things, but working through issues of research design requires the time off to get things clear in my own head. I have used the past few weeks to refine my research questions, think up some interview questions and look into the practicalities of getting to Lisbon. Where can I be based? Where is cheap to stay given that I’ll be there for 3 months? All these kinds of things can, with a bit of luck, be resolved simply by sitting in the garden and soaking up the sunshine. I’m a firm believer that those extra vitamins absorbed have helped me improve my research design! And with the joys of having a laptop with a decent battery life and wireless internet, I can do my work in the garden – surfing for books to buy, downloading some journal articles and searching for Lisbon halls of residence.

So I have appreciated having the head space to think about these issues but I have also had a few pressing matters. I have made new contacts with Portuguese people who will help me get this fieldwork sorted and have also completed a funding application to the Instituto Camoes, I shall have to wait and see as to whether I get lucky there!

Alas only another week of enjoying the luxury of having head space before I meet my principal supervisor and she brings me down to Earth and tells me to buck my ideas up! I expect I will need shaking out of my lazy summery daze.

I have progressed! Officially and it feels that I have come a long way and perhaps even have the makings of my being a Portuguese expert lecturer.

So Thursday I had my progress review. Which was relatively painless. It’s nice to have some feedback on my research from people not involved directly in it. But with that comes questions that you don’t really expect and you have to try and explain your research in terms which are easy to understand and not talk in specialist jargon, which is really difficult!

But the major terror on Thursday was giving my presentation. Once I’d got through the progress review panel, it was off into the unknown. My own slot, my own room and my own audience! But I got through it and talked for a good 45 minutes and then had some questions to answer afterwards, although thankfully not too many questions! Then off for a couple of well deserved beers care of one of my supervisors. I have had some informal feedback and seems positive but I’m sure I shall be debriefed fully and have my presentation skills politely pulled apart by my supervisors! But Friday and Saturday were well deserved days of relative rest and relaxation.

And the presentations aren’t over, I have to give another one to the Faculty Research Students’ Conference on Thursday. But at least I have the experience under my belt and the insight of the recorded presentation a couple of weeks ago. Roll on next Thursday and from then on I will be able to get back to the day-to-day researching of a PhD and work out how I’m going to organise my time over the summer and what I want to achieve.

So I have progressed but I do feel I have made progress (which is more important!)

Eight months in to the PhD and maybe I am a little confused with exactly quite what I am doing, but I definitely feel that the last 8 months have added something huge to the project and to me personally. So bring on the challenges of the summer and next year!