Beyond Your Research Degree

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode we talk to Dr. Demelza Curnow, Quality Enhancement Manager for the QAA! Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Transcript   1 00:00:10,890 --> 00:00:23,850 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter Doctoral College. 2 00:00:23,850 --> 00:00:27,450 Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Beyond Your Research Degree. 3 00:00:27,450 --> 00:00:28,890 I'm your host, Kelly Preece 4 00:00:28,890 --> 00:00:39,330 and today I am talking to Dr Demelza Curnow and Demelza works in one of those many sort of academic related jobs or academic related fields, 5 00:00:39,330 --> 00:00:46,020 but this time at an organisation outside of academia called the quality assurance agency. 6 00:00:46,020 --> 00:00:51,720 So Demelza, are you happy to introduce yourself? My name's Demelza Curnow 7 00:00:51,720 --> 00:00:56,610 My Ph.D. was in mediaeval English. 8 00:00:56,610 --> 00:01:03,330 The title of it was five case studies in the transmission of popular middle english birth romance 9 00:01:03,330 --> 00:01:07,830 Possibly not the most catchy and as where I am now. 10 00:01:07,830 --> 00:01:12,630 I'm based in the far tip of Cornwall, down near Penzance in. 11 00:01:12,630 --> 00:01:23,220 a little village called Ludford and I came back to Cornwall pretty close on on finishing my Ph.D. and my 12 00:01:23,220 --> 00:01:32,160 work over the last 15 years or so has been in academic quality and standards and governance. 13 00:01:32,160 --> 00:01:37,860 That wasn't what I went into immediately after my Ph.D. 14 00:01:37,860 --> 00:01:41,850 And I can say more about that, if you'd like me to. Yeah, absolutely. 15 00:01:41,850 --> 00:01:48,110 So we will get on to kind of how how you got to academic quality and standards, definitely. 16 00:01:48,110 --> 00:01:57,310 But. So what was the initial transition you made or the first role that you did after you finished your Ph.D.? 17 00:01:57,310 --> 00:02:01,420 Well, I'm from a farming family, and I finished my Ph.D. realising this, 18 00:02:01,420 --> 00:02:09,100 I knew nothing about anything apart from farming and middle English, which is an unusual combination. 19 00:02:09,100 --> 00:02:13,390 And I guess one of the big differences is I'm conscious of between 20 00:02:13,390 --> 00:02:22,570 When I did my Ph.D. 20 years ago, when they're done now, is that all I did was my Ph.D. 21 00:02:22,570 --> 00:02:29,650 There was nothing around the edges in terms of employability and other skills. 22 00:02:29,650 --> 00:02:34,900 And also, I wasn't doing lots of teaching or doing the conference rounds either. 23 00:02:34,900 --> 00:02:41,630 Just specialising in my manuscripts. And then I suppose the first. 24 00:02:41,630 --> 00:02:48,350 What if you could quote a proper job that I had outside of family really was working at the cider 25 00:02:48,350 --> 00:02:56,350 farm up near Truro where I worked for about nine months as a tour guide and tractor driver 26 00:02:56,350 --> 00:03:02,650 And in some respects, I can actually trace my career journey from that point. 27 00:03:02,650 --> 00:03:10,090 And I think one of the the really important things it did for me was forced me to stand in front of people and speak, 28 00:03:10,090 --> 00:03:13,720 which was something that was complete anathema to me. 29 00:03:13,720 --> 00:03:20,620 And one of the reasons that I didn't want to go into an academic career, I never planned to go into an academic career. 30 00:03:20,620 --> 00:03:27,490 I was simply doing my Ph.D. for the sheer enjoyment of playing with mediaeval manuscripts. 31 00:03:27,490 --> 00:03:33,820 This was quite fortunate in many respects because at the time this, I was doing my my Ph.D. 32 00:03:33,820 --> 00:03:40,240 Many of the mediaeval departments around the country and universities were closing. 33 00:03:40,240 --> 00:03:55,790 And I suppose I also felt that I wanted to have complete flexibility about where I live, so the jobs were actually reducing in my area of specialism 34 00:03:55,790 --> 00:04:03,500 And I felt that where I was mattered more to me, perhaps, than what I did, and that was coupled with this idea as well, 35 00:04:03,500 --> 00:04:08,660 that I didn't feel that I was confident about standing up to lots of people and speaking, 36 00:04:08,660 --> 00:04:14,330 and maybe I wasn't entirely convinced by my credibility as a researcher, either. 37 00:04:14,330 --> 00:04:18,350 And I don't know how unusual that is in academia. 38 00:04:18,350 --> 00:04:24,210 I suspect not that unusual, really, and particularly perhaps not in the arts and humanities as well. 39 00:04:24,210 --> 00:04:33,170 It's not that unusual at all. I think the norm rather than the rule rather than the exception. 40 00:04:33,170 --> 00:04:40,370 So I think there's just some really interesting things in there about what drives us to make career choices. 41 00:04:40,370 --> 00:04:47,120 I mean, firstly, you know what you're saying about actually, I just really loved playing with mediaeval manuscript. 42 00:04:47,120 --> 00:04:53,060 I loved doing. The thing that I researched was about the goal of getting the Ph.D. was not an academic career, 43 00:04:53,060 --> 00:04:57,290 and we do make the assumption that that's what people are kind of aiming for when they do a Ph.D. 44 00:04:57,290 --> 00:05:05,150 And that's by no means always the case. But also that our career decisions are also driven by. 45 00:05:05,150 --> 00:05:14,340 Geography. You know, where in the country may we may want or need to be for various different reasons. 46 00:05:14,340 --> 00:05:18,050 It was primarily for family reasons, really. 47 00:05:18,050 --> 00:05:27,770 Yes, this is the kind of geography and needing to be. Locally and yeah, and I think the other thing is also. 48 00:05:27,770 --> 00:05:38,950 You know, sometimes that is the priority. All our lives outside of our work are the priority rather than necessarily what you end up doing. 49 00:05:38,950 --> 00:05:42,990 And they're important factors to consider when making career decisions. 50 00:05:42,990 --> 00:05:51,770 You know, we don't think enough about our lives and what we want out of our lives and how our jobs or careers might fit into that. 51 00:05:51,770 --> 00:06:01,490 So kind of having finished the PhD and doing a kind of a range of different things, forcing yourself into decent public speaking. 52 00:06:01,490 --> 00:06:11,540 Going back to your roots a little bit and. How did you go from there to where you are now? 53 00:06:11,540 --> 00:06:20,480 Well, my work at the cide fram being in the sort of tourism industry took me to working at Tate, 54 00:06:20,480 --> 00:06:33,050 and that's where I began to get much more experience around governance and in turn, that led to a job working in the Cornish branch of Sport England. 55 00:06:33,050 --> 00:06:37,400 And I suppose again, there I was, specialising in governance a little bit more. 56 00:06:37,400 --> 00:06:47,750 And I was also working around local partnerships, and it was some of that work and some of the skills I was picking up there, 57 00:06:47,750 --> 00:06:53,840 which led to me getting a position as a graduate trainee in the quality and standards 58 00:06:53,840 --> 00:06:59,950 team at what was then University College Falmouth and later became Falmouth University. 59 00:06:59,950 --> 00:07:05,480 I think one of the interesting things to me was that really by sheer chance, 60 00:07:05,480 --> 00:07:10,760 I ended up doing a lot of the accounts whilst I was working at that sports partnership. 61 00:07:10,760 --> 00:07:15,110 And certainly, that sort of maths was not my background at all. 62 00:07:15,110 --> 00:07:23,390 I did maths up to A-level, but certainly wouldn't consider myself someone who could work with accounts 63 00:07:23,390 --> 00:07:32,350 But in preparing the organisation's accounts for audit with the county council accountants. 64 00:07:32,350 --> 00:07:40,750 One of the things I noticed was that looking for anomalies in numbers wasn't so different to looking for anomalies, 65 00:07:40,750 --> 00:07:49,750 in words, in manuscripts, so I could see how I was transferring what I had done in my Ph.D. to quite a different situation. 66 00:07:49,750 --> 00:07:54,760 And I remember picking out that example when I was being interviewed for my 67 00:07:54,760 --> 00:08:00,040 graduate traineeship and that that graduate traineeship was only a 12 month post 68 00:08:00,040 --> 00:08:09,460 And I think that something which did characterise all my early posts, I was applying for jobs which simply interested me. 69 00:08:09,460 --> 00:08:14,110 I was in a very, very fortunate position because I was living at home. 70 00:08:14,110 --> 00:08:18,970 So and I always knew that if the worst came to the worst, I could go to work on the farm. 71 00:08:18,970 --> 00:08:25,960 So I wasn't going to get bored, but I just I just looked for jobs where I thought I could give it a decent stab. 72 00:08:25,960 --> 00:08:35,530 I could argue my case and I thought I'd enjoy it, and it didn't bother me at all to be applying for short term posts 73 00:08:35,530 --> 00:08:41,530 So my very first job at the cider farm was a seasonal one, but they kept me on. 74 00:08:41,530 --> 00:08:47,560 My next one at Tate was a maternity cover and I think maternity cover I saw absolutely brilliant. 75 00:08:47,560 --> 00:08:57,970 But giving you experience in a role which might not look natural, fit that if you can argue a case, people will often take a chance on you. 76 00:08:57,970 --> 00:09:03,110 It gets you some interesting experience and very often it opens up mor

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode we talk to Dr. Holly Prescott, Careers Advisor of Postgraduate Researchers at the University of Birmingham! Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Transcript   1 00:00:10,890 --> 00:00:23,630 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter Doctoral College.   2 00:00:23,630 --> 00:00:27,020 Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Beyond Your Research Degree.   3 00:00:27,020 --> 00:00:32,870 I'm your host, Kelly Preece, and in this episode, I'm going to be talking to one of my colleagues from the University of Birmingham.   4 00:00:32,870 --> 00:00:36,830 Dr. Holly Prescott, about her career beyond her research degree.   5 00:00:36,830 --> 00:00:49,100 Holly, are you happy to introduce yourself? Yeah, sure. So I'm Holly Prescott, and I did my Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham.   6 00:00:49,100 --> 00:00:54,800 I did it between 2008 and 2011. It's tough to get my head around.   7 00:00:54,800 --> 00:01:03,050 The fact that it's nearly 10 years since I finished my Ph.D. was a crossover between literature and cultural geography.   8 00:01:03,050 --> 00:01:14,200 So I was looking at the effective, and narrative agency of abandoned spaces in contemporary British fiction.   9 00:01:14,200 --> 00:01:18,200 And once I'd completed that.   10 00:01:18,200 --> 00:01:25,520 I felt like I'd taken research as far as I wanted to take it.   11 00:01:25,520 --> 00:01:34,760 And so from then, I forged a career in what we might call higher education professional services,   12 00:01:34,760 --> 00:01:43,780 and I'm currently the careers advisor for postgraduate researchers at the University of Birmingham.   13 00:01:43,780 --> 00:01:47,980 Amazing. I just want to pick up on a phrase that you use, though, which I thought was really interesting,   14 00:01:47,980 --> 00:01:52,630 which is that you came to the end of the PhD and you'd taken research as far as you wanted to take it.   15 00:01:52,630 --> 00:01:58,510 Can I ask you more about what you mean by that? Absolutely, yes.   16 00:01:58,510 --> 00:02:07,240 And I think what I mean by that would be in comparison to how I felt after I finished my master's degree.   17 00:02:07,240 --> 00:02:13,570 So I did, a taught MA and in literature and culture at the University of Lancaster.   18 00:02:13,570 --> 00:02:18,760 And I just got really into it, got really into my dissertation.   19 00:02:18,760 --> 00:02:26,050 And one of the main reasons I progressed to the Ph.D. was because after I've done that MA dissertation, I thought I'm not done yet.   20 00:02:26,050 --> 00:02:32,210 I felt like there was more mileage in the ideas and the research I was doing.   21 00:02:32,210 --> 00:02:34,000 So just to give you some context.   22 00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:46,570 My master's dissertation was looking at uh urban exploration photography and say where people go into abandoned buildings, take photographs,   23 00:02:46,570 --> 00:02:50,860 display them online and especially of maternity hospitals,   24 00:02:50,860 --> 00:03:00,370 and crossover between the online display of these images of these abandoned maternity hospitals and birth narratives.   25 00:03:00,370 --> 00:03:10,390 And and yeah, I felt like and the more I was reading, the more I was seeing abandoned hospitals,   26 00:03:10,390 --> 00:03:16,570 especially cropping up in and in novels that I was looking at.   27 00:03:16,570 --> 00:03:21,640 And so I think there's more I can get out of this.   28 00:03:21,640 --> 00:03:28,390 And and that was one of the main reasons I went on to do something I think kind of served   29 00:03:28,390 --> 00:03:38,320 me relatively well throughout the process was that I was treated like a fixed term job,   30 00:03:38,320 --> 00:03:45,880 if you like. I was very lucky and privileged to have funding from Research Council.   31 00:03:45,880 --> 00:03:51,150 But I, yeah, I treated. It really is kind of a fixed term job.   32 00:03:51,150 --> 00:04:00,780 And and when I was coming towards the end of it, where after my master's, I saw.   33 00:04:00,780 --> 00:04:06,470 I still feel like there's some mileage in these ideas, I want to keep going with the research.   34 00:04:06,470 --> 00:04:09,800 That sort of came to a natural end for me.   35 00:04:09,800 --> 00:04:20,540 And as I was going to say, it was actually in my second year, I really started to think I will probably do something different after this.   36 00:04:20,540 --> 00:04:29,150 And I started to, on a small scale, explore what that something different might be.   37 00:04:29,150 --> 00:04:33,410 Yeah, I think that's really interesting and just that kind of concept of the research   38 00:04:33,410 --> 00:04:39,130 coming to sort of this or your your motivation coming to the natural conclusion.   39 00:04:39,130 --> 00:04:48,780 And so when you kind of when your second year when you were starting to investigate what that might be, how how did you go about that?   40 00:04:48,780 --> 00:04:56,390 How did you go about the process of going? What else is there and what might what might be suitable for me?   41 00:04:56,390 --> 00:05:03,290 Hmm. I think it's important to point out that I don't think I did this completely consciously, right?   42 00:05:03,290 --> 00:05:09,590 I don't think this was a conscious, purposeful career planning process.   43 00:05:09,590 --> 00:05:19,250 I don't think my line is so difficult, isn't it, to put yourself back in the past situation, actually think what your line of thought was?   44 00:05:19,250 --> 00:05:27,670 But I don't think it was. Oh, I have to start career planning now, so I'm going to try some things and see what's right for me.   45 00:05:27,670 --> 00:05:33,100 It was much more and it was much more.   46 00:05:33,100 --> 00:05:37,430 I don't think I'm going to be continuing with research after this.   47 00:05:37,430 --> 00:05:47,420 So feeling like that gave me the freedom to dip my toe into a couple of other things and try some things out.   48 00:05:47,420 --> 00:05:53,030 And I think another big part of it was what I was naturally drawn to.   49 00:05:53,030 --> 00:05:59,420 I think what I ended up doing from second year onwards was following my interests a lot more.   50 00:05:59,420 --> 00:06:09,660 And so just to put that into some context, my interests ended up being things like teaching anything where I was in an advisory work,   51 00:06:09,660 --> 00:06:20,360 in an advisory capacity and anything where I was doing things like training or mentoring other people.   52 00:06:20,360 --> 00:06:23,600 And those were things that I was naturally drawn to.   53 00:06:23,600 --> 00:06:30,620 So that meant I picked up quite a bit of undergraduate teaching, some master's level teaching as well.   54 00:06:30,620 --> 00:06:39,050 And it meant that I worked as postgraduate student ambassador in the Post Graduate Recruitment Office.   55 00:06:39,050 --> 00:06:44,960 So helping organise post-grad open days, doing campus tours, things like that.   56 00:06:44,960 --> 00:06:53,630 And it was actually that part time role that led to my first full time job after the PhD as well.   57 00:06:53,630 --> 00:07:01,220 And then some of the things I did was I did a stand up comedy course, random, I know.   58 00:07:01,220 --> 00:07:12,500 And but that has been so useful and in my work now because I felt like if I could stand up in front of the lamp tavern in Dudley and tell jokes,   59 00:07:12,500 --> 00:07:16,790 I could probably cope with any audience and whatever was thrown at me in any job.   60 00:07:16,790 --> 00:07:20,330 So. And yeah, that that was what I did.   61 00:07:20,330 --> 00:07:30,380 I think it was that I became very aware quite quickly about what and what I was drawn towards what I wanted to do more of.   62 00:07:30,380 --> 00:07:33,800 So when I spotted opportunities like those,   63 00:07:33,800 --> 00:07:45,510 I took them and as much as I could and and it was doing that and especially the post-grad ambassador work, It ended up really showing me.   64 00:07:45,510 --> 00:07:57,170 How broad the range of. University based careers is and it started to spark thought in me as well,   65 00:07:57,170 --> 00:08:04,070 if I do still want to be student facing, I want to be teaching or advising students in some way.   66 00:08:04,070 --> 00:08:11,820 I still want to be in a university environment and I want to keep that feeling of being an expert in something   67 00:08:11,820 --> 00:08:19,220 some someone people come to and for for expertise in a certain area.   68 00:08:19,220 --> 00:08:30,820 That was when I started to realise there were other avenues that could give me that that weren't traditional academic research or teaching.   69 00:08:30,820 --> 00:08:39,670 Yeah. I think the things I'm really picking up on there is follow it following your interests and continuing to do the things that interests you,   70 00:08:39,670 --> 00:08:49,900 because they will they will lead you to kind of something that's more perhaps more fitting to interests and values,   71 00:08:49,900 --> 00:08:53,830 but also kind of getting involved with stuff.   72 00:08:53,830 --> 00:09:02,590 It raises your awareness, it raises your awareness of what other opportunities and what other options are available to you career wise.   73 00:09:02,590 --> 00:09:09,190 Because I think, you know, I I was an academic for seven years, six years, six years and,   74 00:09:09,190 --> 00:09:13,600 you know, until I decided I didn't want to do that anymore and start signing up for job alerts.   75 00:09:13,600 --> 00:09:20,080 Even working as an academic, I did

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager is interviewed by Dr. Charlotte Kelstead, University of Exeter Doctoral graduate about her career in research and Higher Education. Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Transcription 1 00:00:10,880 --> 00:00:23,790 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter, Doctoral College. 2 00:00:23,790 --> 00:00:29,550 Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Beyond Your Research Degree, I'm your host, Kelly Preece for this episode. 3 00:00:29,550 --> 00:00:34,800 We're going to be doing things a little bit differently. I'm delighted to be joined by Dr Charlotte Kelstead. 4 00:00:34,800 --> 00:00:41,310 Charlotte graduated with her Ph.D. in history from the University of Exeter recently and is 5 00:00:41,310 --> 00:00:46,740 currently working as an event coordinator at the European Centre for Palestine Studies. 6 00:00:46,740 --> 00:00:49,200 But I'm not going to be talking to Charlotte about her career. 7 00:00:49,200 --> 00:00:57,690 In fact, we're switching around and instead Charlotte's going to be interviewing me about my career in research and higher education. 8 00:00:57,690 --> 00:01:02,550 So take it away, Charlotte. OK, fantastic so 9 00:01:02,550 --> 00:01:10,140 I have lots of questions for you because I feel like you've been part of my experience at Exeter for quite a long time. 10 00:01:10,140 --> 00:01:19,890 So I remember when I was when I was back doing an undergraduate doing the Exeter The X Factor introductory thing about seven years ago. 11 00:01:19,890 --> 00:01:23,370 I remember you being there and having a wonderful personality and brightening up, 12 00:01:23,370 --> 00:01:31,170 brightening up the end of the day when we were all starting to flag a bit. So I'm just really interested to hear all about your career, 13 00:01:31,170 --> 00:01:40,080 especially because I've just submitted my corrections and I'm now starting to think about careers beyond academia and within academia. 14 00:01:40,080 --> 00:01:46,110 And I'm just really interested to hear today about how your career has progressed, things that you've learnt along the way. 15 00:01:46,110 --> 00:01:51,330 Any advice you might have and how it's all come together to be where you are now. 16 00:01:51,330 --> 00:01:56,320 So perhaps you could start by just giving us a bit of background on your career. 17 00:01:56,320 --> 00:02:05,220 So how you got to where you are now? Yes, so am I. 18 00:02:05,220 --> 00:02:16,950 I always say, like my, my career has been incredibly eclectic in every possible way, so I actually started working professionally when I was 14, I. 19 00:02:16,950 --> 00:02:22,080 So I was a theatre kid in all of its stereotypes. 20 00:02:22,080 --> 00:02:24,330 And I was a dancer and an actor and a singer. 21 00:02:24,330 --> 00:02:31,560 And so I was in the the youth company actually at the Northcott Theatre on the University of Exeter campus when I was a teenager. 22 00:02:31,560 --> 00:02:37,570 And so I was working all through secondary school and then. 23 00:02:37,570 --> 00:02:43,160 Decided kind of had a decision to make between going to stage school and going to university, I was always quite academic, 24 00:02:43,160 --> 00:02:52,720 so I thought I'd go down the university route, but I did a degree in dance and theatre, perhaps unsurprisingly. 25 00:02:52,720 --> 00:03:02,290 And I always say, look, that within about a week of starting my undergraduate degree, I met a Ph.D. student who I just actually, 26 00:03:02,290 --> 00:03:10,070 I think just passed his viva called Martin Hargreaves, who was one of our what at Exeter would be a PTA, 27 00:03:10,070 --> 00:03:15,100 I guess, but he was our seminal teacher and one of our modules and. 28 00:03:15,100 --> 00:03:23,260 He was great, you know, made a really great impression on me, but also he talked to us about his Ph.D. and about his research. 29 00:03:23,260 --> 00:03:29,920 And I had this kind of moment of of clarity, you know, like clouds parting kind of aha. 30 00:03:29,920 --> 00:03:34,840 Where I went. Oh, so this this you know, this discipline, this art that I love, 31 00:03:34,840 --> 00:03:39,630 I can actually combine that with kind of my love of learning and my love of knowledge. 32 00:03:39,630 --> 00:03:47,980 And I could become a researcher and I could become an academic. And even though I was going to university to do a degree in in that subject, 33 00:03:47,980 --> 00:03:53,380 it hadn't occurred to me that that was even a job that somebody could have say. 34 00:03:53,380 --> 00:03:54,460 Right, right. 35 00:03:54,460 --> 00:04:01,720 From that beginning point in my undergraduate degree, I was like, right, I want to be an academic, wanted do a PhD, want to teach at university. 36 00:04:01,720 --> 00:04:10,600 That was kind of so I made that decision really early on. And I'm kind of I'm quite a quite stubborn and relentless. 37 00:04:10,600 --> 00:04:15,880 So, you know, once I make a decision to stick to it. So, you know, I I did my undergraduate degree. 38 00:04:15,880 --> 00:04:20,650 I did a research master's, and then I got a post at the University of Leeds, 39 00:04:20,650 --> 00:04:28,180 which was to do my PhD part time and to be a member of academic staff in the department part time. 40 00:04:28,180 --> 00:04:34,710 They called it a research associate and and. 41 00:04:34,710 --> 00:04:38,520 And yeah, and that's how I that's how I became an academic, really. 42 00:04:38,520 --> 00:04:45,110 And so I did that for six years. And during those six years, I. 43 00:04:45,110 --> 00:04:52,460 Did a myriad of things, I ended up leading undergraduate degree programmes and developing master's programmes and moving institutions, 44 00:04:52,460 --> 00:04:57,680 but the one thing I didn't do in that period is complete my Ph.D. 45 00:04:57,680 --> 00:05:04,750 So I. Really struggled. And with. 46 00:05:04,750 --> 00:05:17,430 Work life balance and mental health and wellbeing, and worked far more than a 1.0 on kind of 0.5 research, 0.5 teaching, 47 00:05:17,430 --> 00:05:31,980 and made myself very poorly and as a result, decided to withdraw from the PhD and concentrate on on on my teaching and. 48 00:05:31,980 --> 00:05:41,560 And. That's sort of over time, I kind of I think I naively thought if I kind of let the structure and the time pressures of the PhD go 49 00:05:41,560 --> 00:05:48,940 it might alleviate a bit. But it didn't because there's a cultural issue in He but  there's also a me issue in this. 50 00:05:48,940 --> 00:05:56,740 I am a perfectionist. I am an overworker and I'm not very good at work life balance. 51 00:05:56,740 --> 00:06:03,320 And so I. Ended up in that position again once I moved to the University of Northampton, I did the same thing. 52 00:06:03,320 --> 00:06:13,370 I was on a four day week lectureship and I was working. Six, if we're being conservative days a week, you know, eight in the morning till eight, 53 00:06:13,370 --> 00:06:20,960 nine at night, and I did the same thing, I worked myself until I was ill and completely burnt out. 54 00:06:20,960 --> 00:06:26,060 And it was that second time that I had to take a step back and go, something's not working here. 55 00:06:26,060 --> 00:06:29,570 I love teaching. I love research. I love working with students. 56 00:06:29,570 --> 00:06:34,940 Love, love working in HE. But something about this just does not work for me. 57 00:06:34,940 --> 00:06:41,390 And it brings out qualities in me that make me unwell, you know, those kind of perfectionism and that sort of stuff. 58 00:06:41,390 --> 00:06:51,020 So I. Oh. Sorry, cats just appeared and she wants to get involved I yeah, 59 00:06:51,020 --> 00:06:55,900 so I kind of I reached this kind of crisis point and I always say, like, these things aren't just professional. 60 00:06:55,900 --> 00:07:04,450 These are personal as well as a part of that crisis point was that my my grandmother, who pretty much raised me, passed away unexpectedly. 61 00:07:04,450 --> 00:07:12,430 And I was, you know, on the other side of the country marking undergraduate essays when I could have been with her. 62 00:07:12,430 --> 00:07:19,620 And I think the whole thing kind of came to a head and I realised that I was doing the wrong thing. 63 00:07:19,620 --> 00:07:28,510 And so I started to kind of have an existential crisis of, you know, I said when we started like I wanted to do this since I was 18. 64 00:07:28,510 --> 00:07:34,810 I've never tried to get any experience and anything else, I'd had a part time job in a bookshop which was wonderful and gave me all sorts of skills, 65 00:07:34,810 --> 00:07:38,440 but nonetheless, you know, what the hell was I going to go on to? 66 00:07:38,440 --> 00:07:43,840 And people said, well, why don't you retrain as a secondary school teacher? I didn't want to retrain. 67 00:07:43,840 --> 00:07:48,490 I'm not a fan of teenagers, certainly not en masse individually. 68 00:07:48,490 --> 00:07:55,490 They're fine. And so there was all sorts of things and I just sort of signed up for lots of job alerts jobs.ac.uk 69 00:07:55,490 --> 00:08:00,250 all of that sort of stuff. And up comes this job at the University of Exeter. 70 00:08:00,250 --> 00:08:04,870 And I knew I wanted to move back to Devon cause it's where I'm from for researcher development. 71 00:08:04,870 --> 00:08:11,680 Programme manager for PGRs was what it was called at the time to run training and development for PhD students. 72 00:08:11,680 --> 00:08:21,940 And I thought, well, given my experience as an academic, given my experience as a Ph.D. stu

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks to Dr. Ruth Gilligan, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Birmingham University and author of The Butchers. Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,910 --> 00:00:23,720 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter. 2 00:00:23,720 --> 00:00:26,600 Hello and welcome back to Beyond Your Research Degree. 3 00:00:26,600 --> 00:00:33,830 I'm really delighted to be back with you after our summer hiatus and to be bringing to you a conversation with Dr. Ruth Gilligan. 4 00:00:33,830 --> 00:00:38,810 Ruth is a senior lecturer and academic, but also because she's in creative writing. 5 00:00:38,810 --> 00:00:46,010 She is a published author. And so I thought it would be interesting for us to have a conversation with someone who is an 6 00:00:46,010 --> 00:00:52,820 academic but maintains a professional profile and creative practise alongside their academic work. 7 00:00:52,820 --> 00:00:57,890 So Ruth, happy to introduce herself, certainly. Well, firstly, thanks so much for having me. 8 00:00:57,890 --> 00:01:04,400 It's lovely to be chatting to you and reminiscing a little bit about my time at Exeter. 9 00:01:04,400 --> 00:01:12,650 I came to Exeter in two thousand and eleven to start my PhD in creative writing, 10 00:01:12,650 --> 00:01:18,110 and then I actually went straight for my PhD into my first academic job. 11 00:01:18,110 --> 00:01:24,860 I the first interview I went for my creative writing role had come up at the University of Birmingham. 12 00:01:24,860 --> 00:01:31,010 So despite the fact that I was still finishing my PhD, I was like, ah sure, I'll apply and see what happens. 13 00:01:31,010 --> 00:01:40,790 And anyway, I got offered a job. So I started as a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Birmingham in kind of August twenty fourteen, 14 00:01:40,790 --> 00:01:44,690 at which point I was still in the final two or three months of my PhD. 15 00:01:44,690 --> 00:01:50,900 So I was kind of trying to pretend that I was a lecturer and seem very grown up and important to my students, 16 00:01:50,900 --> 00:01:58,880 despite the fact that I was secretly still a student myself and trying furiously to dot all the T's and cross all the I's on my thesis. 17 00:01:58,880 --> 00:02:07,040 So yeah, it was a bit of a mad time, but yeah, then I started out at Birmingham and seven, maybe eight years later I'm still there. 18 00:02:07,040 --> 00:02:16,610 So I'm now a senior lecturer. Since that time, I've also published two more novels and I had published three novels before my PhD at Exeter, 19 00:02:16,610 --> 00:02:23,660 but I went on to publish two more, one of which was the novel that I wrote as part of my creative writing PhD. 20 00:02:23,660 --> 00:02:26,960 And then my most recent book The Butchers came out last year. 21 00:02:26,960 --> 00:02:35,300 So yes, I am now kind of fully fledged novelist, academic, creative writing lecturer and still very much in touch with Sam 22 00:02:35,300 --> 00:02:41,090 And Sinead my two wonderful supervisors and have very, very fond memories of working with them. 23 00:02:41,090 --> 00:02:43,490 There's a number of things I think I want to pick up on in that. 24 00:02:43,490 --> 00:02:50,120 And the first is something that comes up a surprising amount, actually, in talking to people for this podcast, 25 00:02:50,120 --> 00:02:58,430 which is about kind of seeing an opportunity when you've not actually finished the PhD and going for it and getting it, 26 00:02:58,430 --> 00:03:05,060 and then how you go about juggling, working and finishing up. 27 00:03:05,060 --> 00:03:13,820 Could you talk a little bit about what that experience was like, kind of managing the workload of working whilst also finishing the PhD? 28 00:03:13,820 --> 00:03:21,350 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, part of me looks back at that and thinks, what did I eat for breakfast that morning? 29 00:03:21,350 --> 00:03:26,870 That I had the kind of gumption to apply for a job, despite the fact that I hadn't even finished the PhD. 30 00:03:26,870 --> 00:03:34,940 In the spirit of full disclosure, the job was actually a senior lecturer role, which I definitely wasn't qualified for, 31 00:03:34,940 --> 00:03:42,620 but I applied and they ended up basically giving the senior lectureship to someone else who was duly qualified, 32 00:03:42,620 --> 00:03:46,820 but then creating a new lecturer in creative writing role, which they offered to me. 33 00:03:46,820 --> 00:03:55,700 So I'm a big believer in. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If I hadn't applied and taking my punch, yeah, that wouldn't have played out that way. 34 00:03:55,700 --> 00:04:01,760 So, yeah, I'm a big believer. Just throwing your hat in the ring and see what happens in terms of managing the workload. 35 00:04:01,760 --> 00:04:05,360 I mean, you know, realistically, I was at the tail end of the PhD. 36 00:04:05,360 --> 00:04:12,080 Like, I'm not someone who had kind of left all the work at the last minute, like both Sam and Sinead, my supervisors, 37 00:04:12,080 --> 00:04:16,130 like they've been very good about making sure that I was making steady progress 38 00:04:16,130 --> 00:04:20,090 and I'd already written multiple drafts of both the creative and the critical. 39 00:04:20,090 --> 00:04:25,640 So although those last few months are always going to be quite panicked and quite frantic, 40 00:04:25,640 --> 00:04:29,750 just because you are about to submit this thing that you've been working on for three years, 41 00:04:29,750 --> 00:04:33,500 it wasn't like I still had kind of half the thing to write. Like I had. 42 00:04:33,500 --> 00:04:39,860 I had written multiple drafts. I was just kind of finessing and going through my bibliography and all that kind of boring stuff. 43 00:04:39,860 --> 00:04:41,340 So, yeah, it was a lot. 44 00:04:41,340 --> 00:04:50,270 But it also coincided with me like I moved to Birmingham and when I first started the job, so I kind of was in a new city, my my partner. 45 00:04:50,270 --> 00:04:54,050 Who's that at the time He was my boyfriend. Now he's my husband. he at that same time 46 00:04:54,050 --> 00:05:01,640 Ictually moved to Singapore for six months. So I just kind of find myself living in this little flat in Birmingham on my own. 47 00:05:01,640 --> 00:05:06,740 I didn't really know anyone in the city. I was starting a new job. I was also finishing my Ph.D. 48 00:05:06,740 --> 00:05:10,660 So, yeah, I probably wasn't the most social time of my life. 49 00:05:10,660 --> 00:05:15,130 Fundamentally, I managed to get it all done, and I'm delighted that it played out the way it did. 50 00:05:15,130 --> 00:05:19,630 You know, my my big fear, the reason I kind of pursued doing it that way, 51 00:05:19,630 --> 00:05:24,610 even though it was a bit nuts, was I think like so many people in academia, the fear of, like, 52 00:05:24,610 --> 00:05:31,510 not knowing what the next step is going to be or the idea of kind of having a gap before you figure out the next thing you know, 53 00:05:31,510 --> 00:05:36,850 have plenty of friends and colleagues who've had that situation where there is a gap when they go from one thing to the other. 54 00:05:36,850 --> 00:05:42,400 But I know from my own personality type that I would have just been absolutely freaking out if I didn't have something lined up. 55 00:05:42,400 --> 00:05:48,850 So I would rather kind of take on too much in there, be perhaps a bit of overlap rather than being in the desert, not knowing. 56 00:05:48,850 --> 00:05:54,340 So, yeah, it was worth it in that regards. I wanted to kind of take a step back, 57 00:05:54,340 --> 00:06:03,580 step back to that point of applying now and I'm really interested when you said that it was kind of a it was a senior lecturer role, 58 00:06:03,580 --> 00:06:06,400 but you kind of nothing ventured, nothing gained, kind of went for it. 59 00:06:06,400 --> 00:06:09,850 And actually, you may not have got that role, but something else came out of it. 60 00:06:09,850 --> 00:06:16,250 Were there any particular challenges that you felt that you were coming up against because you were still a Ph.D. student? 61 00:06:16,250 --> 00:06:23,990 Yeah, and it's a it's a great question, I think I should say, again, in the interest of full disclosure, like I mentioned briefly, 62 00:06:23,990 --> 00:06:29,780 but like despite the fact that I was still finishing my PhD, I had published three novels before I did the book. 63 00:06:29,780 --> 00:06:36,110 So I, um, I do appreciate that that might not be the case with all PhD students. 64 00:06:36,110 --> 00:06:38,750 So I kind of had the publishing track records. 65 00:06:38,750 --> 00:06:47,600 I think the big gap and this is where kind of Sam and Sinead were particularly helpful was because it was my first academic application 66 00:06:47,600 --> 00:06:57,350 interview and ultimately post just kind of plugging in a little bit to university speak like I didn't really know at that point, 67 00:06:57,350 --> 00:07:09,230 having only been a student albeit a Ph.D. students, I learnt phrases like REF and outputs and impact and all these kind of buzzwords that 68 00:07:09,230 --> 00:07:18,080 we're going to come up in my interview and I and they were going to quiz me on. So kind of swotting up a little bit on that vernacular. 69 00:07:18,080 --> 00:07:22,550 But yeah, I think, you know, in those situations, I'm kind of like, what's the worst thing that could happen? 70 00:07:22,550 --> 00:07:30,950 I just think that, as you said, j

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks Dr. Katie Finning, who recently made the transition from a postdoc to a research role outside of academia.  In the podcast Kaite mentions the Civil Service Job site and the Glassdoor repository of interview questions. Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Podcast transcript 1 00:00:10,890 --> 00:00:23,730 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter College. 2 00:00:23,730 --> 00:00:32,340 Hi, it's Kelly Preece and welcome to the latest episode of Beyond Your Research Degree, continuing our series on getting jobs during covid. 3 00:00:32,340 --> 00:00:35,190 I'm really excited to be talking to Dr Katie Finning. 4 00:00:35,190 --> 00:00:44,220 So Katie was up until recently a postdoc at the University of Exeter and has during the pandemic made the transition into a non-academic role. 5 00:00:44,220 --> 00:00:49,680 So are you happy to introduce yourself? Sure. So I'm Katie Finning. 6 00:00:49,680 --> 00:01:01,540 I am. I'm currently working as a senior researcher at the Office for National Statistics, so I was in academia for about nine years before I left. 7 00:01:01,540 --> 00:01:11,790 I'm originally joined not long after I finished my undergraduate degree, I took a job as a research assistant to university. 8 00:01:11,790 --> 00:01:18,810 So I was working on a clinical trial of a behavioural therapy for adults with depression. 9 00:01:18,810 --> 00:01:23,130 And I kind of worked on that project from start to finish when I joined. 10 00:01:23,130 --> 00:01:27,070 And we were still kind of gaining all of our ethical approvals. 11 00:01:27,070 --> 00:01:33,870 And I stayed working in that job right up until the end where we published the results of the study. 12 00:01:33,870 --> 00:01:43,530 So that was a really great experience because I kind of saw the whole research lifecycle from start to finish. 13 00:01:43,530 --> 00:01:48,780 And in that job, my main job for most of that time was data collection and recruitment. 14 00:01:48,780 --> 00:01:56,910 So that was great. I spent most of my job kind of going out and meeting people and interviewing them and talking to them about their experiences, 15 00:01:56,910 --> 00:02:02,160 which was was a really interesting and fun job. And then I did my PhD. 16 00:02:02,160 --> 00:02:06,510 I moved over to child mental health, so I was still at Exeter university. 17 00:02:06,510 --> 00:02:13,230 So I'd always been kind of interested in mental health from a research perspective, but particularly child mental health. 18 00:02:13,230 --> 00:02:18,910 And a PhD opportunity came up just as my contract on that clinical trial was coming to an end. 19 00:02:18,910 --> 00:02:27,150 So it was kind of perfect timing. It was in a team I was really keen to kind of make my way into and the topic was really interesting. 20 00:02:27,150 --> 00:02:35,700 So it was advertised as a job rather than me kind of submitting my own PhD proposal. 21 00:02:35,700 --> 00:02:39,090 And my PhD was kind of epidemiological. 22 00:02:39,090 --> 00:02:51,150 So it looked at kind of patterns and trends in data, looking at the association between anxiety and depression in young people and school absenteeism. 23 00:02:51,150 --> 00:03:00,690 And so I used a variety of different research methods during my PhD, did a bit of systematic review, some quantitative work, some qualitative work. 24 00:03:00,690 --> 00:03:02,520 So it was a really kind of nice, 25 00:03:02,520 --> 00:03:10,410 well-rounded project that gave me experience and methods that I hadn't experienced when I was working as a research assistant. 26 00:03:10,410 --> 00:03:16,530 And I think it kind of the whole time that I was in academia, there were things I loved. 27 00:03:16,530 --> 00:03:21,000 I loved working on research. I loved working with data. 28 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:25,140 And but I always kind of questioned whether academia was the right place for me. 29 00:03:25,140 --> 00:03:30,210 And the only reason really that I think I stayed for so long was just because the opportunities were there. 30 00:03:30,210 --> 00:03:38,880 And so I had no real reason to leave. I had it funded post for about five years, and then I had a great PhD opportunity for three years. 31 00:03:38,880 --> 00:03:48,930 And then I did a couple of years of postdoc work as well. And it was, to be honest, by complete luck that I was contacted about my job now. 32 00:03:48,930 --> 00:03:55,740 So towards the end of my PhD, I was starting to get a little bit anxious about kind of what was going to come next, 33 00:03:55,740 --> 00:04:02,670 whether I'd be able to get any funding for postdoc work. And I started quite seriously looking at jobs outside of academia. 34 00:04:02,670 --> 00:04:11,520 But there was never really anything that I saw that I felt was a good enough match for my skills and for what I was interested in. 35 00:04:11,520 --> 00:04:15,610 And and so I signed up for kind of hundreds of job alerts every week. 36 00:04:15,610 --> 00:04:20,100 I get all these alerts about various different jobs and I'd scroll through them and think, 37 00:04:20,100 --> 00:04:24,480 oh, I just don't I just don't think there are any jobs outside of academia for me. 38 00:04:24,480 --> 00:04:29,010 And kind of felt a little bit hopeless at that point because I was worried about my job security in academia, 39 00:04:29,010 --> 00:04:34,110 but also didn't feel like there was anything outside of academia for me. 40 00:04:34,110 --> 00:04:38,280 And so then I applied for some postdoc funding and was awarded postdoc funding. 41 00:04:38,280 --> 00:04:43,920 It was about a year and a half of funding. So I really stopped looking for alternative jobs. 42 00:04:43,920 --> 00:04:45,750 And then by complete coincidence, 43 00:04:45,750 --> 00:04:54,990 I was contacted by someone at the Office for National Statistics on LinkedIn about a job that they had and kind of encouraging me to apply. 44 00:04:54,990 --> 00:05:00,750 And I looked at this job description and I remember saying to my husband, 45 00:05:00,750 --> 00:05:04,710 I feel like this job's got my name on it and it just kind of ticked every box. 46 00:05:04,710 --> 00:05:08,950 It was a research role. It was a permanent job, which was really important. 47 00:05:08,950 --> 00:05:15,010 For me, it was a homeworking contract, which this was all happening during the pandemic, 48 00:05:15,010 --> 00:05:21,760 and I really benefited from homeworking, so I was quite eager to apply for jobs and that would be permanently home based. 49 00:05:21,760 --> 00:05:25,900 And yes, that's kind of how I got to where I am now. One thing led to another. 50 00:05:25,900 --> 00:05:31,510 I thought I'll just put in an application and see what happens. But I've got this postdoc funding, so it's no big deal if I don't get it. 51 00:05:31,510 --> 00:05:37,840 Let's just see what happens. And I had an interview, was offered the job. 52 00:05:37,840 --> 00:05:42,610 And so here I am. I've been in this job for about three and a half months now. 53 00:05:42,610 --> 00:05:50,830 Thank you so much for that. I think just a story that will really resonate with so many of our listeners about the 54 00:05:50,830 --> 00:05:54,940 the getting towards the end of the research degree in that kind of anxiety where, 55 00:05:54,940 --> 00:06:01,120 you know, where the hell am I going next? Is academia right for me? 56 00:06:01,120 --> 00:06:09,130 I can't see anything outside of it that really feels like it speaks to my interest or my knowledge or my skills. 57 00:06:09,130 --> 00:06:16,020 And I think it's really important just to. Acknowledge how normal that feeling is. 58 00:06:16,020 --> 00:06:21,020 Yeah, and and I think as well, we're not very good in academia about talking about that. 59 00:06:21,020 --> 00:06:27,170 So I always kind of felt like I wasn't I wasn't sure if academia was right for me, 60 00:06:27,170 --> 00:06:32,220 but no one ever really talked about, well, if not academia than what 61 00:06:32,220 --> 00:06:39,500 And I always kind of felt like everybody else in academia was so committed and so sure that this was where they wanted their careers to be. 62 00:06:39,500 --> 00:06:41,900 And actually now, on reflection, I don't know that that's true. 63 00:06:41,900 --> 00:06:48,030 I think that we just a lot of people have those doubts, but it's for whatever reason, it's not really talked about. 64 00:06:48,030 --> 00:06:54,320 And the trouble with that is that it means that it is difficult to know what else there is. 65 00:06:54,320 --> 00:07:03,260 And so I think it's really great that you do this podcast. And I think that needs to be more resources like this for, you know, pre docs, 66 00:07:03,260 --> 00:07:09,050 PhD students, postdocs, just to kind of get an understanding of what else is out there. 67 00:07:09,050 --> 00:07:16,940 Because I the thought of leaving academia was really quite scary for me because I felt like nobody was talking about what happens when you leave. 68 00:07:16,940 --> 00:07:25,070 You know if I hate it. Can I come back? Will I be seen as kind of an outsider or a traitor for leaving? 69 00:07:25,070 --> 00:07:30,890 And I found that really unsettling because I felt like I was the only the only one who. 70 00:07:30,890 --> 00:07:38,150 Wasn't completely sure that I wanted to stay on this career path and kind of aspire to become a professor, 71 00:07:38,150 --> 00:07:42,380 so I think it's really great that we're having this conversation and that you're kind of 72 00:07:42,380 --> 00:07:47,870 pushing forwa

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks Alexandra Smith, who is finishing up her PhD and has just started a job as Public Health Research Support Officer at Devon County Council.   Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses     Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,840 --> 00:00:15,700 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter, Doctoral College 2 00:00:15,700 --> 00:00:27,660 Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Beyond Your Research Degree. 3 00:00:27,660 --> 00:00:36,820 I'm your host, Kelly Preece, and in this episode, we are continuing our series on securing jobs during covid-19. 4 00:00:36,820 --> 00:00:44,460 I'm speaking to another of our current PGRs who's not quite finished writing up, but has started a job in a local authority. 5 00:00:44,460 --> 00:00:54,810 So, Alexandra, you happy to introduce yourself? So my name is Alexandra Smith and I'm a student at the University of Exeter. 6 00:00:54,810 --> 00:01:00,720 I based in business school, but my PhD is on what I call the holistic health benefits of working groups. 7 00:01:00,720 --> 00:01:05,820 So essentially I'm looking at five different variables organisational landscape, physical health, 8 00:01:05,820 --> 00:01:14,430 mental health and social capital and their influence on working group participant motivation for joining, remaining and leaving. 9 00:01:14,430 --> 00:01:18,210 So at the moment, I am working with Devon County Council. 10 00:01:18,210 --> 00:01:23,790 I'm a public health research support officer and it's a role funded by the NIHR. 11 00:01:23,790 --> 00:01:31,320 That's the National Institute of Health Research, and it sits within the the CRN the Clinical Research Network. 12 00:01:31,320 --> 00:01:37,560 So essentially, NIHR is really interested in expanding its public health portfolio. 13 00:01:37,560 --> 00:01:45,990 So my role is to sort of link up researchers to populations to to get data from so I can 14 00:01:45,990 --> 00:01:50,880 do that through Connections that I have through the team within Devon County Council, 15 00:01:50,880 --> 00:01:58,440 but also to to create spaces for collaboration for public health. 16 00:01:58,440 --> 00:02:09,780 So I work across lots of different teams, so I will work with different individuals in D.C.C public health, but also broader DCC. 17 00:02:09,780 --> 00:02:15,060 So I'm also linking up with people in sort of who work more in the environment who are 18 00:02:15,060 --> 00:02:22,140 interested in working in transport and also working with sort of more partners as well. 19 00:02:22,140 --> 00:02:31,500 So community and voluntary sector NHS CCG Trust those different kind of partnerships, academics as well. 20 00:02:31,500 --> 00:02:39,180 And at the moment I'm working towards creating a webinar which DCC will be hosting on the 8th of July, 21 00:02:39,180 --> 00:02:46,650 and that's really a great collaborative forum to get academics and other partners together, 22 00:02:46,650 --> 00:02:54,660 to really talk through some of the pressing public health issues that we have in public health is such a huge area, 23 00:02:54,660 --> 00:02:58,770 really covers all aspects of life, really. 24 00:02:58,770 --> 00:03:03,150 It's very interconnected. So it's really important to have those collaborative spaces. 25 00:03:03,150 --> 00:03:08,100 And currently what I'm designing is a kind of like a platform. 26 00:03:08,100 --> 00:03:17,220 I'm looking to do this through sort of SharePoint and also through Microsoft teams to enable 27 00:03:17,220 --> 00:03:25,560 researchers and other collaborators to get together to put together grant applications. 28 00:03:25,560 --> 00:03:35,250 The role that I have public health research support of is a new role. And there are about 20 of me across the UK with this title. 29 00:03:35,250 --> 00:03:41,430 And next week I have my first meeting to meet the rest of the team on that. 30 00:03:41,430 --> 00:03:45,930 So I am new to a local authority. 31 00:03:45,930 --> 00:03:52,560 I'm new to public health, I'm new to NIHR, are very much started off like I did. 32 00:03:52,560 --> 00:03:57,600 I did a bachelor's in human psychology. I did a Masters in psychological well-being and mental health. 33 00:03:57,600 --> 00:04:03,270 And I worked as a research assistant to the University of Nottingham in the nursing, midwifery and physiotherapy department. 34 00:04:03,270 --> 00:04:08,820 And from there, I kind of thought clinical perhaps isn't quite for me, but I've got more. 35 00:04:08,820 --> 00:04:13,050 I really wanted more of a holistic perspective to individuals. 36 00:04:13,050 --> 00:04:22,080 So that's when I moved to Exeter to do my PhD. And then it just started shaping more into a kind of public health policy, 37 00:04:22,080 --> 00:04:29,940 kind of feel to it  then my supervisor suggested actually public health and maybe a local authority might work for you. 38 00:04:29,940 --> 00:04:36,690 And this really this is a fantastic opportunity because it kind of brings those two things together. 39 00:04:36,690 --> 00:04:41,640 It brings up public health interests and it brings that research element as well. 40 00:04:41,640 --> 00:04:48,600 So what I've been doing is engaging with different people. So I've been having one to ones with different members of the D.C.C public health 41 00:04:48,600 --> 00:04:54,900 team to understand their research about their area that they're working on. 42 00:04:54,900 --> 00:04:57,690 And these could be really broad themes, you know, 43 00:04:57,690 --> 00:05:04,200 that there could be children and young persons or it could be mental health or it could be planetary health. 44 00:05:04,200 --> 00:05:05,910 And they've been working on this for years. 45 00:05:05,910 --> 00:05:14,430 And I have to understand what it is that they're doing and what specific research element could be within that. 46 00:05:14,430 --> 00:05:21,270 So it's been a big learning curve if you don't if you don't know anything about that particular field to begin with. 47 00:05:21,270 --> 00:05:23,370 So it's very much you've gotta swap your 48 00:05:23,370 --> 00:05:31,110 head from learning about one topic and then something, you have to give somebody else an entirely different project and an entirely different topic, 49 00:05:31,110 --> 00:05:38,070 and it's just understanding those kind of connections that you can make to have like a broad you know, 50 00:05:38,070 --> 00:05:43,590 we need something researched into this or we need this really specific kind of population. 51 00:05:43,590 --> 00:05:49,080 So it's it's been a steep learning curve. I wouldn't have it any other way. 52 00:05:49,080 --> 00:05:52,140 Yeah. And I think that's a really important thing. 53 00:05:52,140 --> 00:06:00,990 to acknowledge that quite often when you're moving from research into any other sector, but particularly kind of, 54 00:06:00,990 --> 00:06:07,290 you know, the public policy kind of area that you're working in, it's going to be a steep learning curve. 55 00:06:07,290 --> 00:06:14,220 But that doesn't mean that you don't have valuable knowledge and skills and expertise to apply in those areas. 56 00:06:14,220 --> 00:06:14,820 Exactly. 57 00:06:14,820 --> 00:06:25,390 And it is really just about, you know, that that frame of mind when you start applying for jobs that are outside of academia because I don't know, 58 00:06:25,390 --> 00:06:32,130 certainly certainly I found that I perhaps didn't want to work in academia, although I did really still like research. 59 00:06:32,130 --> 00:06:34,560 But I wanted to get more into public health and understand that. 60 00:06:34,560 --> 00:06:41,730 But I don't have a public health master's, and that's just not something that I could go straight into, you know, to get a job. 61 00:06:41,730 --> 00:06:46,950 And I need to get some money. I can't just go study again. 62 00:06:46,950 --> 00:06:52,110 And it is really just about I found LinkedIn incredibly helpful for that process, actually, 63 00:06:52,110 --> 00:06:58,230 because you can follow different organisations and you can follow different people who are interesting to you. 64 00:06:58,230 --> 00:07:03,720 Interesting to you. And you can learn about opportunities that you never would have thought about. 65 00:07:03,720 --> 00:07:09,420 And that there is a learning to and where you have to understand and unpick some of that language. 66 00:07:09,420 --> 00:07:13,810 But some of it is just about immersing yourself in it. 67 00:07:13,810 --> 00:07:20,310 And for me, It's just constant exposure. The more exposure you get to it, over time, you pick it up. 68 00:07:20,310 --> 00:07:27,840 And I found that incredibly invaluable because then I broke out of my understanding the language 69 00:07:27,840 --> 00:07:33,540 of academia and the language of other organisations and therefore what they were looking for. 70 00:07:33,540 --> 00:07:42,690 And that actually I had those skills. I just needed to understand it in different words and they needed to sell it in different words. 71 00:07:42,690 --> 00:07:48,150 So I would say LinkedIn was actually invaluable for that it really was 72 00:07:48,150 --> 00:07:52,470 And then, you know, it's just about going through those applications. 73 00:07:52,470 --> 00:08:03,900 Give yourself enough time for it. So I suppose I take like I took two different strategies to it, like applying for loads of jobs, 74 00:08:03,900 --> 00:08:08,430 but also like I really want this one, or I think I could really get that one. 75 00:08:08,430 --> 00:08:14,970 And I would probably say if you h

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks Dr. Joanna Alfaro, a University of Exeter doctoral graduate who is now the Director of the Peruvian conservation organisation Pro Delphinus.   Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,880 --> 00:00:23,270 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter, Doctoral College 2 00:00:23,270 --> 00:00:28,070 Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Beyond Your Research Degree. I'm your host, Kelly Preece 3 00:00:28,070 --> 00:00:32,150 And for this episode, I'm delighted to be talking to Dr Joanna Alfaro, 4 00:00:32,150 --> 00:00:38,090 who is the president and director of the Peruvian conservation organisation Pro Delphinus 5 00:00:38,090 --> 00:00:41,780 So, Joanna. Are you happy to introduce yourself? Yeah. 6 00:00:41,780 --> 00:00:45,770 Well, my name is Joanna Alfaro and I am Peruvian. 7 00:00:45,770 --> 00:00:57,290 I work in Pro Delphinus and Universidad Científica del Sur. So in 2008 I joined in the programme for PhD 8 00:00:57,290 --> 00:01:03,380 My advisor was Brendan Godley and Annette Broderick at Exeter 9 00:01:03,380 --> 00:01:16,670 And I was. That's probably my favourite years as being back a student in the U.K., a dream that I was able to fulfil. 10 00:01:16,670 --> 00:01:25,460 And for my the theme of my PhD was ecology and conservation of marine turtles. 11 00:01:25,460 --> 00:01:34,270 And that was also great because it allowed me to to apply the knowledge and the 12 00:01:34,270 --> 00:01:41,080 experience that I got to working with sea turtles in Peru towards my PhD. 13 00:01:41,080 --> 00:01:45,210 It's brilliant. Thank you. And what are you doing now? 14 00:01:45,210 --> 00:01:56,700 So when did you graduate? So the though after the PhD, the I was able to to be back at home and and keep working. 15 00:01:56,700 --> 00:02:04,710 And what I love, which is marine conservation. So the projects we we have right now are focus. 16 00:02:04,710 --> 00:02:13,470 It was a very interesting transition because we started our careers being a species oriented. 17 00:02:13,470 --> 00:02:21,330 And by that I mean that I was I love dolphins and whales and sea turtles. 18 00:02:21,330 --> 00:02:25,110 So that was my interest. But we learnt over time. 19 00:02:25,110 --> 00:02:34,880 And and my PhD was a big lesson learnt that is not only about the animals that we were, 20 00:02:34,880 --> 00:02:42,360 that we're when we're working with animals, we should also look at the people that is related to the animals. 21 00:02:42,360 --> 00:02:49,630 So in my case, these people were fishermen. And mostly small-scale fishermen. 22 00:02:49,630 --> 00:02:59,020 And so the the the current work we do now is trying to support fishermen, to keep fishing. 23 00:02:59,020 --> 00:03:09,520 But in a more clean way, in a sustainable way, in a way that they can keep fishing for the for many, 24 00:03:09,520 --> 00:03:15,010 many years to come, but also in a way that we are helping animals. 25 00:03:15,010 --> 00:03:23,300 And in this case, it'll be the ones that we have this passion for the dolphins, the whales, the sea turtles. 26 00:03:23,300 --> 00:03:33,580 So it's it's a very good combination to be able to to be in the middle between biodiversity 27 00:03:33,580 --> 00:03:43,600 and economic activities as fisheries and also communities and engaging the main users, 28 00:03:43,600 --> 00:03:54,900 which are fishermen. That's great and really interesting how, like you say, that you've moved from thinking about particular species to. 29 00:03:54,900 --> 00:04:05,550 To fishermen. And that sort of shift in focus. So can you tell me a little bit about when you were doing your PhD? 30 00:04:05,550 --> 00:04:10,110 Did you know that you want to move on to this kind of role? Oh, yes. 31 00:04:10,110 --> 00:04:18,360 Well, that's a great question. And that's a question that I mention when when I have the chance. 32 00:04:18,360 --> 00:04:28,910 When we started the PhD, we had no idea that we will end up working with fisheries and with people. 33 00:04:28,910 --> 00:04:35,400 And I think that's an idea that a lot of young people start with. 34 00:04:35,400 --> 00:04:46,950 I mean, you go with with with this love for the ocean and the creatures, but then it's it's important to realise that it's. 35 00:04:46,950 --> 00:04:56,310 It will give you have to become useful. It's a bad way to say it, but you have to become useful for society. 36 00:04:56,310 --> 00:05:02,700 And and it's great if you can, because, well, that's a role we all have. 37 00:05:02,700 --> 00:05:13,050 But but it and in a way, our careers as  researchers and biologists are key to to to make this transition 38 00:05:13,050 --> 00:05:22,260 between nature and wildlife and maintain the livelihoods of of people like fishermen, 39 00:05:22,260 --> 00:05:28,820 in my case, for example. So can you tell me a bit more about. 40 00:05:28,820 --> 00:05:36,620 The conservation organisation you work for. And what kind of what sort of work that you're doing and how you're drawing on 41 00:05:36,620 --> 00:05:46,170 your experience as a as a researcher and and particularly during your PhD 42 00:05:46,170 --> 00:05:55,150 Yes, sure. So my PhD was on sea turtles and most of my chapters had to be on sea turtles. 43 00:05:55,150 --> 00:06:01,710 And I did my PhD with my husband, which is which it was a great challenge. 44 00:06:01,710 --> 00:06:10,340 At some point, we were we were sharing the same. 45 00:06:10,340 --> 00:06:14,830 Stress, and it's but we made it through somehow. 46 00:06:14,830 --> 00:06:20,680 And the we are we can we evolve from being a species oriented. 47 00:06:20,680 --> 00:06:25,000 So my my focus was marine turtles 48 00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:32,290 workingwith Brendan and and my husband  was working on seabirds and marine mammals. 49 00:06:32,290 --> 00:06:41,380 So we shifted a little bit once being back at home in Pery to work to to apply what we learnt and 50 00:06:41,380 --> 00:06:49,030 apply it to improve fisheries and support fishermen to continue to be able to continue fishing. 51 00:06:49,030 --> 00:06:54,820 So that has changed just slightly or like I don't know. 52 00:06:54,820 --> 00:07:00,310 And the thing is, that is it continues changing, especially now with COVID 53 00:07:00,310 --> 00:07:05,770 Some of our work at Pro Delphinus has changed dramatically. 54 00:07:05,770 --> 00:07:15,400 We can no longer go to the field. We do most of the stuff by phone call or Zoom or Whatsapp 55 00:07:15,400 --> 00:07:26,470 So we are where we see changes in our work during the the latest circumstances of of health worldwide. 56 00:07:26,470 --> 00:07:31,870 And that's the fun part of it. I think the to be constant changing. 57 00:07:31,870 --> 00:07:36,220 I think it it brings challenges is not always the same. 58 00:07:36,220 --> 00:07:44,500 Every day there is something new that we are learning, but it's is where we are enjoying this. 59 00:07:44,500 --> 00:07:57,490 Right. Really. And Pro Delphinus there is we have perhaps over 20 people on the staff and we keep growing, which is very good. 60 00:07:57,490 --> 00:08:05,110 And each of them have an interest and that's the that's what it reaches the the environment 61 00:08:05,110 --> 00:08:11,890 we work in because somebody else may be interested in the social side of the work we do. 62 00:08:11,890 --> 00:08:21,210 Somebody else could be interested in the economics of it. So it's it's I'm enjoying it. 63 00:08:21,210 --> 00:08:22,410 It sounds amazing. 64 00:08:22,410 --> 00:08:30,880 And not only kind of really rewarding work, but also incredibly diverse in the different things that you're gonna be doing, especially. 65 00:08:30,880 --> 00:08:37,770 And, you know, as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic and the impact that that's had on all, you know, the ways, everybody's way of working. 66 00:08:37,770 --> 00:08:42,300 So you won an award. Last October. 67 00:08:42,300 --> 00:08:48,130 Did you not Peru's highest award for conservation? Can you tell us a little bit about that. 68 00:08:48,130 --> 00:08:59,420 Oh, man, that was fun. That was that was unexpected. So they they sent me an email saying, the name of the award is Carlos Ponce 69 00:08:59,420 --> 00:09:05,080 Premio para la Conservacion which is a very renown prize 70 00:09:05,080 --> 00:09:16,160 And for Peru, for people working in conservation in Peru. The organisers is a group a consortium is Conservation International. 71 00:09:16,160 --> 00:09:25,810 WCS, Pronaturaleza  these organisations have worked for a long time in Peru. 72 00:09:25,810 --> 00:09:37,360 And when with with the e-mail when I answered, I said yes, but I haven't applied to this award and I had no idea. 73 00:09:37,360 --> 00:09:42,340 And then the lady. Well, when I was notified, it was a big surprise. 74 00:09:42,340 --> 00:09:51,460 I enjoyed it a lot. The ceremony was by Zoom and that was that was very different. 75 00:09:51,460 --> 00:09:56,830 But it was very moving. And for me personally was very moving. 76 00:09:56,830 --> 00:10:05,050 And for Pro Delphinus, I think the staff really enjoy it because it's not an award for a person. 77 00:10:05,050 --> 00:10:11,710 But to, in my opinion, is an award for an organisation that has over two decades working. 78 00:10:11,710 --> 00:10:18,540 So it was it was a very nice recognition for our work. 79 00:10:18,540 --> 00:10:27,000 Absolutely. Could you tell me a bit more about how Pro Delphinus started? 80 00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:32,460 Yes. Well, Pro Delphinus started to  so. 81 00:10:32,460 -

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks Dr. Heather Hind and Dr. Philippa Earle, who are doctoral graduates from English currently work as Digital Learning Developers in the College of Medicine and Health at the University of Exeter.    Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,890 --> 00:00:23,400 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter Doctoral College 2 00:00:23,400 --> 00:00:28,320 Hello, and a warm welcome to another episode of Beyond Your Research Degree. 3 00:00:28,320 --> 00:00:31,560 I'm Kelly Preece, the research development manager in the Doctoral College, 4 00:00:31,560 --> 00:00:38,670 and I'm continuing episodes on the theme of getting jobs and moving forward with your career. 5 00:00:38,670 --> 00:00:44,190 During COVID 19, by talking to actually in this episode, two of our doctoral graduates. 6 00:00:44,190 --> 00:00:50,880 So Dr Philippa Earle and Dr Heather Huind both of whom did their PhDs in English but are now working in professional 7 00:00:50,880 --> 00:00:58,320 services roles at the University of Exeter in roles that were created in response to the COVID 19 pandemic. 8 00:00:58,320 --> 00:01:02,880 So Heather and Philippa, are you happy to introduce yourselves? I'm Dr Heather Hind 9 00:01:02,880 --> 00:01:10,860 I did my PhD in English literature, specifically Victorian literature and things that the Victorians made out of human hair. 10 00:01:10,860 --> 00:01:20,610 And I finished in while I handed in in March 2020, just before the first lockdown's started and had my viva last year. 11 00:01:20,610 --> 00:01:26,970 And since then, I've been working for the university as a digital learning developer for the College of Medicine and Health. 12 00:01:26,970 --> 00:01:34,090 So I'm Dr Philippa Earle I finished my PhD at Exeter in. 13 00:01:34,090 --> 00:01:41,350 Summer of 2018. It seems a long time ago now. And my thesis was on John Milton. 14 00:01:41,350 --> 00:01:47,800 And I'm really interested in his material philosophy, which is commonly called monism. 15 00:01:47,800 --> 00:01:52,600 And so I've kind of been floating around since then, doing various things. 16 00:01:52,600 --> 00:01:58,590 I'd really like to get into academia. I really enjoy teaching. 17 00:01:58,590 --> 00:02:04,650 I have done some casual teaching since then to different roles at different universities, 18 00:02:04,650 --> 00:02:10,680 and I then came into doing this digital learning development role kind of last September. 19 00:02:10,680 --> 00:02:17,100 So I was kind of last minute recruits and it kind of slotted in working with Heather. 20 00:02:17,100 --> 00:02:22,560 That's fabulous. Like you say, probably it's useful just to start with, kind of back it up, back a little bit. 21 00:02:22,560 --> 00:02:30,110 What a digital learning developer is. And I think particularly as well how these roles have. 22 00:02:30,110 --> 00:02:35,670 It evolved because of the situation with the current pandemic. 23 00:02:35,670 --> 00:02:41,730 And so when they were first advertised, I think I applied last June, 24 00:02:41,730 --> 00:02:47,320 I think I started my application the week before my viva, and then I had the interview the week after my viva. 25 00:02:47,320 --> 00:02:54,390 Wow. Yes, it was the time. It was honestly really fortuitous for me as it worked out. 26 00:02:54,390 --> 00:03:02,610 But they were advertised as roles to support the shift to online teaching during the pandemic. 27 00:03:02,610 --> 00:03:04,650 And to think what the job description said. 28 00:03:04,650 --> 00:03:13,680 It said, you know, supporting teaching staff, troubleshooting online issues, helping to develop the virtual learning environment. 29 00:03:13,680 --> 00:03:18,300 ELE at Exeter. But it was it was relatively vague. 30 00:03:18,300 --> 00:03:22,950 I don't know if Philippa would agree, but it was, you know, relatively, you know, job speak sort of. 31 00:03:22,950 --> 00:03:27,330 These are all of the possible things that you might be asked to do. Vague. 32 00:03:27,330 --> 00:03:36,780 But as the role has gone on and we've been able to shape it to a certain extent to what sort of support our college needs. 33 00:03:36,780 --> 00:03:41,700 It's been a lot more about kind of project management, checking over modules and quality, 34 00:03:41,700 --> 00:03:47,040 assuring them for the online side of things to make sure that the students are properly supported. 35 00:03:47,040 --> 00:03:49,230 Have all the information they need, 36 00:03:49,230 --> 00:04:00,360 online seminars and lectures and things are running smoothly and that we're continually trying to make things better, innovate, use new digital tools. 37 00:04:00,360 --> 00:04:07,560 Yeah, I think I hadn't kind of anticipated quite how much I would learn, I suppose, because I was sort of thinking, well, 38 00:04:07,560 --> 00:04:16,650 we were both kind of chucked into the online teaching through the kind of teaching roles we were doing at the time last March. 39 00:04:16,650 --> 00:04:25,950 And I kind of needed something more stable. And these were full time roles, even though they're fixed term. 40 00:04:25,950 --> 00:04:31,350 And yeah, I think Heather and I kind of came at this from a very similar angle, really. 41 00:04:31,350 --> 00:04:39,660 We're both English PhD graduates. Both interested in it and going into academia and. 42 00:04:39,660 --> 00:04:46,860 Yeah. I suppose we kind of thought of this as a way of being sort of resourceful with the kind of options that are out there, 43 00:04:46,860 --> 00:04:52,470 but also having a bit more kind of job security. So, you know, I came to this role thinking, well, 44 00:04:52,470 --> 00:05:00,000 I can bring a little bit of my experience that I've had just from having to sort of fumble your way through and shove everything online last minute, 45 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:09,180 but actually have just learnt so much. And yeah, as has Heather was saying, about kind of quality assurance, different digital tools and the options. 46 00:05:09,180 --> 00:05:14,130 And so actually, I'm I'm really pleased that I've managed to kind of get loads out of this and 47 00:05:14,130 --> 00:05:17,400 not just for kind of improving the quality of the teaching and the college, 48 00:05:17,400 --> 00:05:26,400 but also kind of my own understanding of pedagogy and the way that you can kind of support your own teaching with digital tools and what works. 49 00:05:26,400 --> 00:05:34,480 It's just been brilliant, really. Yeah, I think it's really interesting to hear you talk about it that way and also the you know, 50 00:05:34,480 --> 00:05:39,400 the the fact that it's fitting into a kind of an aim for an academic career path. 51 00:05:39,400 --> 00:05:47,380 And because it's it's giving you obviously it's giving you some job stability in the interim, but also, 52 00:05:47,380 --> 00:05:54,770 you know, a real a range of really specialist skills that as a result of the pandemic are going to be. 53 00:05:54,770 --> 00:06:01,040 You know, the way that education is going to change in that inevitably is going to be so highly valued. 54 00:06:01,040 --> 00:06:06,470 Moving forward. And I think also, yeah. 55 00:06:06,470 --> 00:06:10,820 Because there is just so much uncertainty. These were advertised as fixed term roles. 56 00:06:10,820 --> 00:06:16,490 And, you know, the university hasn't quite decided what direction they're going in yet, whether they're going to be renewed. 57 00:06:16,490 --> 00:06:21,560 So I think we're both trying to keep an open mind and think, well, this is kind of plan A. 58 00:06:21,560 --> 00:06:26,960 But equally, you know, we're quite happy doing these roles and then they're very valuable. 59 00:06:26,960 --> 00:06:33,650 So it's a good stepping stone, really. And, you know, it's always good to have a backup plan is knowing the market as it is. 60 00:06:33,650 --> 00:06:41,990 So it's giving us a really good insight into professional services and just the other side of things at the university. 61 00:06:41,990 --> 00:06:50,540 The university structure working within kind of lots of different teams, different, introduced to different kinds of management there. 62 00:06:50,540 --> 00:06:58,620 So, yeah, really good insight. And, you know, opening up kind of alternative possibilities, you know, if Plan A doesn't work out as well. 63 00:06:58,620 --> 00:07:03,740 Yeah, I think that's that's a really, really fantastic way of looking at it and kind of, 64 00:07:03,740 --> 00:07:08,180 you know, all of the various skills that you're going to be developing. 65 00:07:08,180 --> 00:07:16,340 I wondered if you could talk a little bit about. So you both did your PhDs in English and now you're working in medicine. 66 00:07:16,340 --> 00:07:19,820 And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about what that experience is like 67 00:07:19,820 --> 00:07:24,140 and what it's like working in a different college and supporting teaching, 68 00:07:24,140 --> 00:07:25,490 learning in a discipline, you know, 69 00:07:25,490 --> 00:07:34,870 relatively far removed from your own and and what that's like and kind of what you're taking across almost from one subject to another. 70 00:07:34,870 --> 00:07:41,960 And so I think we both applied for this role, but put down our preference for working in humanities. 71 00:07:41,960 --> 00:07:50,150 I guess I had I's envisioned it, as, you know, being able to have a hand in the sorts of courses that I would be able to teach or, 72 00:07:50,150 --> 00:07:53,390 you know, captioning the sorts of lectur

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks to Charlotte Chivers, who secured a Research Assistant post at the University of Gloucestershire during COVID-19. Charlotte has started her role at the University of Gloucestershire whilst finishing writing up her PhD.   Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:23,000 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter, Doctoral College 2 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:31,000 Hello and welcome to beyond your research degree. It's Kelly Preece here, and I'm really excited to be bringing you the second in a special series that 3 00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:38,000 we're doing for Beyond Your Research Degree about securing jobs during Covid 19. 4 00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:43,000 So last time I talked to Tomir about securing a job with an NGO. 5 00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:48,000 And today I'm gonna be talking to Charlotte Chivers in a very similar position to Timur, 6 00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:55,000 writing up herPhD and starting a new job, but this time as a postdoctoral research associate. 7 00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:59,000 So we normally on Beyond your Research degree, we focus on non-academic careers. 8 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:03,000 But given the real challenges our PGRs are facing at the moment, 9 00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:10,000 it seemed really pertinent to talk about securing academic and research jobs as well. 10 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:20,000 Yeah, hi. So I'm Charlotte Chivers and I have been doing my PhD at the University of Exeter since twenty seventeen. 11 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:26,000 My research is within the Centre for Rural Policy Research. 12 00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:37,000 So it's a social science. PhD and I have been exploring the efficacy of agriculture advice surrounding diffused water pollution. 13 00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:47,000 So I have now finished a draft of my entire thesis and congratulations. 14 00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:52,000 And I'm making revisions based on my supervisor's comments at this stage. 15 00:01:52,000 --> 00:02:00,000 However, back in September, I started a research position at the University of Gloucestershire. 16 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:05,000 So I now work in the Countryside and Community Research Institute. 17 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:12,000 So I've been juggling, working full time and finishing off my PhD. 18 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:18,000 And again, I'm working in social science, but mostly looking at environmental stuff. 19 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:25,000 So I now work on two big EU projects. One is called Soil Care, which it's soil health in agriculture. 20 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:32,000 And the other is called Spint and we are looking at pesticides in agriculture. 21 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:38,000 That's brilliant. Thank you. So there's a number of lots of different things to pick up on within that. 22 00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:43,000 But I think so firstly. So if we can go back to September last year. So was it September you started the job? 23 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:48,000 Yes. I started in September. So when when did you when did you apply? 24 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:55,000 What were the sort of timescales? So I applied in June last year. 25 00:02:55,000 --> 00:03:07,000 OK, yeah. So. So I wasn't. Sorry. No i was just going to say so this is so all of the application process, everything, it's all happened during COVID. 26 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:12,000 Yes. Yes. OK. So I. 27 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:15,000 Let's start at the beginning of that process that I'm thinking about, how it might have been affected by it. 28 00:03:15,000 --> 00:03:21,000 So how? First of all, how did you how did you find this role? 29 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:26,000 So I had sort of had my eye on the centre 30 00:03:26,000 --> 00:03:32,000 I now work for for the last couple of years and I recognised that it would potentially be a good fit for me. 31 00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:38,000 So I kept my eye on their website and I attended one of our events. 32 00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:45,000 So they have a annual winter school, which meant that I had the opportunity to meet some of the academics working there. 33 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:49,000 And from then on, then I kind of just kept my eye out for jobs. 34 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:54,000 And although it was quite early for me to apply for a job because I still had, you know, 35 00:03:54,000 --> 00:04:00,000 my PhDi ongoing, I wanted to make sure I didn't miss out on an opportunity. 36 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:04,000 As obviously, you know, academia is competitive. So I had to kind of go for it. 37 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:09,000 When when a job came along. So, yeah, absolutely. 38 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:15,000 And I think, you know, it is that when your when you're targeting particular departments or organisations, 39 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:24,000 if you're thinking outside academia that are a really good fit for your passion, but also your kind of knowledge and skills. 40 00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:28,000 It is sometimes having to kind of make that compromise going okay. 41 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:36,000 It's not the ideal time. But is this opportunity likely to come up in six months when it is the ideal time? 42 00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:46,000 Can you talk a little bit about the. Application process, particularly thinking about what might have been different about it because of the, 43 00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:52,000 you know, the all of the restrictions that we've had in the UK for the past year or so. 44 00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:58,000 Yeah. So in terms of actually applying for the job, it was it was the same essentially because, 45 00:04:58,000 --> 00:05:04,000 you know, I had to submit an application form and a CV online. And so that was quite normal, actually. 46 00:05:04,000 --> 00:05:16,000 And that the first stage where it was quite different is that my interview had to be held online with a panel of three professors, 47 00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:24,000 which was quite interesting. You know, I had to get myself into the mindset of an interview even though I was starting my apartment. 48 00:05:24,000 --> 00:05:30,000 So that day that I just made sure that I got dressed up as if I was going to an interview. 49 00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:38,000 And I just tried to get myself in that mindset. But it was quite strange having a sort of online interview. 50 00:05:38,000 --> 00:05:47,000 But luckily for panellists were lovely, really supportive. So, you know, I felt relatively at ease despite it being an online interview. 51 00:05:47,000 --> 00:05:50,000 Yeah. And I think you've picked up on a couple of really important things. 52 00:05:50,000 --> 00:05:57,000 They're about actually kind of that sense of mindset of how do you put yourself in the frame of mind of performing, 53 00:05:57,000 --> 00:06:01,000 because that's essentially what an interview it is, isn't it? You know, it comes down to it. 54 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:10,000 You're you're kind of performing for the interview panel. And how do you do that when you're kind of in your in your everyday? 55 00:06:10,000 --> 00:06:12,000 Environments, so I think that thing you said about, you know, 56 00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:18,000 getting dressed up and doing all of those things like you would do for an interview normally are really important. 57 00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:28,000 Were there any kind of any markedly different things for having the interview online from when you've had interviews face to face? 58 00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:34,000 Was there anything kind of. I don't know. Different or challenging? 59 00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:37,000 About doing that way. Yeah, definitely so. 60 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:42,000 And the thing is, it's because there were four of us on the call. 61 00:06:42,000 --> 00:06:47,000 And you have a lag often when you're online It was incredibly difficult to not interrupt each other. 62 00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:51,000 And and being in an interview, you obviously don't want to interrupt people. 63 00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:57,000 You want to make sure that you, you know, wait your turn and speak when you can ask the question. 64 00:06:57,000 --> 00:07:03,000 But there were a couple of times. So it's quite difficult to know when to talk and when to get a word in. 65 00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:09,000 So that's something that was a bit challenging. But again, I think everyone is aware of this. 66 00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:16,000 So I didn't I didn't see it as a major issue because I assume everyone is facing the same sort of challenge. 67 00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:19,000 So it was kind of it was kind of okay. Yeah. 68 00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:29,000 And were there any kind of any positives, any things that you felt were kind of easier or or or nicer or more relaxed because of the online format? 69 00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:34,000 Yeah, I mean, I personally do prefer in-person meetings because you can build rapport a bit easier. 70 00:07:34,000 --> 00:07:40,000 You can make proper eye contact, but not having to travel was quite nice. 71 00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:43,000 I didn't have to worry about being late, unless the Internet had died. 72 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:46,000 But, you know, in general, our Internet is really strong. 73 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:53,000 So I could just kind of get up in the morning and not think, oh, my gosh, I need to make sure the train isn't late or. 74 00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:58,000 Yeah. So it was quite nice, actually, not having to worry about about that. 75 00:07:58,000 --> 00:08:04,000 So, yeah, I'd say that was a benefit. But other than that I'd say I didn't find it dramatically different. 76 00

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about non-academic careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks to Timur Jack-Kadıoğlu, who secured a job as Technical Officer - Conservation, Livelihoods & Governance at Fauna & Flora International during COVID-19. Timur had started his role at Fauna & Flora International whilst finishing writing up his PhD.   Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,890 --> 00:00:23,550 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter, Doctoral College 2 00:00:23,550 --> 00:00:28,410 Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast. 3 00:00:28,410 --> 00:00:32,160 Now, we know that there's a lot of anxiety at the moment about what it means to secure 4 00:00:32,160 --> 00:00:37,560 a job and specifically a non-academic job during the COVID 19 pandemic. 5 00:00:37,560 --> 00:00:45,430 Everything has been turned upside down. The experiences we get, how we do our research and how we apply for jobs. 6 00:00:45,430 --> 00:00:51,000 So to answer that, we are talking to some of our researchers who have got new jobs during the 7 00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:56,250 COVID 19 pandemic and talk to them about how they found those roles. 8 00:00:56,250 --> 00:01:03,240 The process of applying and in some cases, what it's like to start a new job during a global pandemic. 9 00:01:03,240 --> 00:01:10,200 So without further ado, here's the first in our series of podcasts on Moving Beyond Your Research Degree and a global pandemic. 10 00:01:10,200 --> 00:01:14,820 Timur are you happy to introduce yourself? I sure am. 11 00:01:14,820 --> 00:01:25,710 My name's Timur Jack-Kadioglu I started my PhD with University of Exeter would have been February 2018 12 00:01:25,710 --> 00:01:29,730 I'm based with the European Centre for Environment and Human Health. 13 00:01:29,730 --> 00:01:32,080 Down in Cornwall. 14 00:01:32,080 --> 00:01:40,670 My PhD is working on a project called Blue Communities and it's a interdisciplinary programme that involves various departments. 15 00:01:40,670 --> 00:01:45,930 at Exeter While also working with other academic institutions in the UK, 16 00:01:45,930 --> 00:01:54,540 some NGOs and also academic partners in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam. 17 00:01:54,540 --> 00:01:59,060 I guess so I would identify as a Marine. Social scientists. 18 00:01:59,060 --> 00:02:05,100 My work is about the marine environment. But focussing on the social science aspects. 19 00:02:05,100 --> 00:02:12,290 And for my PhD. I spent time in the Philippines on the island of Palawan. 20 00:02:12,290 --> 00:02:19,610 My research was kind of looking at the relationships between livelihoods and governance. 21 00:02:19,610 --> 00:02:25,460 And especially looking at power relations and power dynamics and looking at trade offs and equity. 22 00:02:25,460 --> 00:02:33,710 Who the winners and losers are, so to speak, in terms of coastal development and conservation processes. 23 00:02:33,710 --> 00:02:41,360 Wow. Yeah. So what we're going to talk about today is actually securing a non-academic job, 24 00:02:41,360 --> 00:02:48,550 but particularly securing a non-academic job during the time of COVID 19. 25 00:02:48,550 --> 00:02:56,030 And the additional challenges that bring say. Could you tell us a little bit about the job you're going on to? 26 00:02:56,030 --> 00:03:02,380 Sure. So I started a job in November of twenty twenty. 27 00:03:02,380 --> 00:03:08,890 So I originally I still have have time in my PhD and I'm still writing up my PhD, 28 00:03:08,890 --> 00:03:14,020 but my new employer's allowed me to originally start part time for November and December. 29 00:03:14,020 --> 00:03:17,620 So I still had two days a week working on the PhD 30 00:03:17,620 --> 00:03:27,880 And I joined the Conservation, Livelihood's and Governance team of the UK based NGO, Fauna and Flora International. 31 00:03:27,880 --> 00:03:34,150 So they work with they have various regional teams in around the world. 32 00:03:34,150 --> 00:03:40,300 But their main model is working with small local partner organisations. 33 00:03:40,300 --> 00:03:40,630 And yeah, 34 00:03:40,630 --> 00:03:51,490 my my role with them is providing technical inputs on livelihoods and governance related aspects of conservation and natural resource management. 35 00:03:51,490 --> 00:03:56,160 And as I said, my my PhD is very much on that on that topic. 36 00:03:56,160 --> 00:04:00,850 And I happen to see the job ad posted on LinkedIn. 37 00:04:00,850 --> 00:04:04,780 I think it was in September. Yes. 38 00:04:04,780 --> 00:04:11,890 September time. And it is one of those things where ideally, if this job came up six months later, that would have been perfect. 39 00:04:11,890 --> 00:04:22,870 But it was almost it was too good an opportunity to miss, given the relevance to the relevance to what I did in my PhD 40 00:04:22,870 --> 00:04:31,390 So actually, the application process is quite I got invited to an interview when I was on the way up to Scotland for a camping trip. 41 00:04:31,390 --> 00:04:36,070 And they offered the interview on a day when I was supposed to be in the back end of nowhere. 42 00:04:36,070 --> 00:04:41,050 So there was some last minute rearranging of plans to be able to accommodate it. 43 00:04:41,050 --> 00:04:47,950 But, yeah, I'm really glad I did end up doing that because I ended up getting the job. 44 00:04:47,950 --> 00:04:54,970 I think I was interested to hear you say that you found the job on linked in. 45 00:04:54,970 --> 00:04:59,590 So was it an advert that the company had posted. 46 00:04:59,590 --> 00:05:03,670 Were you following the company because you were interested in? Like, how. How did you get to see it? 47 00:05:03,670 --> 00:05:11,590 Basically, yes. As I said, it's an organisation I've really quite admired for it for a while. 48 00:05:11,590 --> 00:05:18,990 So I was following them on LinkedIn. And I saw that the job, that they posted the job on there and. 49 00:05:18,990 --> 00:05:24,110 It. Yeah, it was kind of advertised. I mean, I almost scrolled right past it. 50 00:05:24,110 --> 00:05:27,640 I mean, it just it's kind of just it was the livelihood's in governance, 51 00:05:27,640 --> 00:05:33,570 but it kind of caught my eyes when I looked at it and I kind of ummed and ahhed about whether or not to apply for it. 52 00:05:33,570 --> 00:05:42,340 And like I said, the timing could have been a bit better as I'm still in I am still in the process of writing up my PhD 53 00:05:42,340 --> 00:05:46,270 But I think what really. Yeah. 54 00:05:46,270 --> 00:05:55,180 I think that what really went through my mind was needing to be just needing to be pragmatic with the difficult times that we're in. 55 00:05:55,180 --> 00:05:59,310 And especially on the I was coming towards the end of my PhD, 56 00:05:59,310 --> 00:06:11,230 this was starting to get a little bit concerned about the economic fallout of of the of the pandemic. 57 00:06:11,230 --> 00:06:14,840 And this this is a permanent contract. So. 58 00:06:14,840 --> 00:06:20,050 Well, I would probably let's be honest, I probably would have applied for anyway if it if it wasn't for the pandemic. 59 00:06:20,050 --> 00:06:22,810 But that just really. Yeah. 60 00:06:22,810 --> 00:06:32,230 It just really gave that that just happened, realising that I really needed to be pragmatic and make the most of what opportunities are available. 61 00:06:32,230 --> 00:06:40,060 Yeah. And I think that, you know, there's simple things of actually following organisations that you admire and that you have connections to. 62 00:06:40,060 --> 00:06:45,480 And it's a really simple thing that can actually kind of bring those opportunities into your awareness when, 63 00:06:45,480 --> 00:06:54,730 like you say, you might not be thinking about it. Timing wise, but actually the the role and the organisation is it's just the right fit. 64 00:06:54,730 --> 00:06:58,570 Did you have any conversation with them in advance of applying for the role? 65 00:06:58,570 --> 00:07:03,750 About the fact that you were still finishing up the PhD 66 00:07:03,750 --> 00:07:11,340 Yes. So we spoke a little bit about it in the interview, and then afterwards, 67 00:07:11,340 --> 00:07:17,610 basically I went when they identified me, as the candidate they wanted to go for. 68 00:07:17,610 --> 00:07:25,070 They got in touch. And just before offering it to me, they just wanted to speak a little bit more about. 69 00:07:25,070 --> 00:07:32,280 About starting the role while finishing my PhD So I'd kind of thought in advance of the interview and what sort of options? 70 00:07:32,280 --> 00:07:36,520 Because I knew that I just didn't want to start full time immediately. 71 00:07:36,520 --> 00:07:45,330 And so I had kind of loosely said about options like starting part time or delaying the start until the beginning of twenty, twenty one. 72 00:07:45,330 --> 00:07:50,970 And then when we had the call, when they wanted to offer me the job. 73 00:07:50,970 --> 00:07:56,970 Yeah. They, they were they were quite willing to be somewhat adaptable. 74 00:07:56,970 --> 00:08:02,970 But while also they basically is the first time they've been able to secure 75 00:08:02,970 --> 00:08:06,660 funding to hire a new person in that team for like seven or eight years. 76 00:08:06,660 --> 00:08:13,500 They were very keen to have someone start as soon as possible. But I was really glad that they were understanding of it. 77 00:08:13,500 --> 00:08:17,220 And some of the team, some of my team members have PhDs themselves. 78 00:08:17,220 -->

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about non-academic careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks to Dr. Hannah Roberts, who works as a career coach with women in science.   Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,890 --> 00:00:23,610 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter, Doctoral College 2 00:00:23,610 --> 00:00:28,710 Hello and welcome to the first episode of Beyond Your Research Degree for 2021. 3 00:00:28,710 --> 00:00:33,710 My name is Kelly Preece and on the research develop a manager for PGRs at the University of Exeter. 4 00:00:33,710 --> 00:00:39,390 And I'm delighted for our first episode of 2021 to be bringing you a discussion with Hannah Roberts. 5 00:00:39,390 --> 00:00:43,800 Hannah did her PhD and a couple of postdocs and then became a career coach. 6 00:00:43,800 --> 00:00:51,600 So she works one to one with women in research and academia, particularly in STEM and scientific fields. 7 00:00:51,600 --> 00:00:56,490 So, Hannah, are you happy to introduce yourself? Absolutely, sir. 8 00:00:56,490 --> 00:01:00,840 Hi, everybody. I'm Hannah Roberts and Well first of all 9 00:01:00,840 --> 00:01:06,140 I have a degree master's phd postdoc in chemistry, 10 00:01:06,140 --> 00:01:11,820 and I spent eight years managing large multi-million pound projects between academics 11 00:01:11,820 --> 00:01:17,700 and industry and commercialising that research and parts of the commercialisation. 12 00:01:17,700 --> 00:01:23,160 I started a spin out company with three other female academics, 13 00:01:23,160 --> 00:01:31,410 and I was managing director of that company for two years and did all of that white having three children. 14 00:01:31,410 --> 00:01:39,460 And it was actually on my maternity leave where I decided that maybe I had outstretched 15 00:01:39,460 --> 00:01:43,410 outgrown the role that I was in in scientific project management. 16 00:01:43,410 --> 00:01:46,890 And now is the time to to make a switch. 17 00:01:46,890 --> 00:01:57,790 And so that's that was the moment where I decided I was going to be a career coach specifically for women in science. 18 00:01:57,790 --> 00:02:07,240 Amazing. So can we Take a step back from what you do now and talk a little bit about the spin out company and how it came about was. 19 00:02:07,240 --> 00:02:12,970 So that was you during your research degree, is that right? 20 00:02:12,970 --> 00:02:20,160 Mine;s a little bit more complicated, so. When I finished my PhD, I went straight into a postdoc. 21 00:02:20,160 --> 00:02:24,600 So I switch from chemistry to biotechnology at that point. 22 00:02:24,600 --> 00:02:35,080 And so I got really into the analytical side of mass spectrometry as a tool to help with sort of looking at the structures of carbohydrates at that 23 00:02:35,080 --> 00:02:39,330 time. Then I was two weeks. 24 00:02:39,330 --> 00:02:43,800 Well, I should say I was probably four weeks into my postdoc and I fell pregnant. 25 00:02:43,800 --> 00:02:49,710 So when I returned after my maternity leave and I kind of switched role at that point, 26 00:02:49,710 --> 00:02:54,450 say, when I started my postdoc, I was half project manager, half postdoc. 27 00:02:54,450 --> 00:03:01,350 But essentially that meant I was most of the time postdoc. So did the project management alongside. 28 00:03:01,350 --> 00:03:05,170 But when I returned and just came back as a scientific project manager. 29 00:03:05,170 --> 00:03:11,710 So at that point, I was managing lots of different these projects because I knew the technology really well. 30 00:03:11,710 --> 00:03:21,900 And one of the things that's a lots of funding bodies are looking for of obviously commercialisation is from these from these projects, 31 00:03:21,900 --> 00:03:29,760 whether that's licence agreements, whether that's spin out companies, whether that's patents or something like that. 32 00:03:29,760 --> 00:03:38,040 And we decided the best vehicle for this new technology in terms of the mass spectrometry was to do it through and through a new company, 33 00:03:38,040 --> 00:03:48,870 because that way we could get industry to be able to send those samples and all that kind of stuff independently of the projects. 34 00:03:48,870 --> 00:03:57,300 And that way we could start to then find our own funding and our own money to to make that a company in its own right. 35 00:03:57,300 --> 00:04:02,230 Well. I mean, it sounds impressive on paper. 36 00:04:02,230 --> 00:04:07,540 I'm not I'm not sure that's how I felt about it at the time. 37 00:04:07,540 --> 00:04:11,920 Yes, I can appreciate that. I think there's two things I want to pick up on that. 38 00:04:11,920 --> 00:04:18,880 The first is about kind of so there seems to be quite a shift in that to from kind of scientific 39 00:04:18,880 --> 00:04:23,740 research to project management and more kind of business and entrepreneurially related skills. 40 00:04:23,740 --> 00:04:29,330 How did you find that that shift in focus? 41 00:04:29,330 --> 00:04:36,060 And to be honest, I I missed out a bit from the career history because I try and make it sound succinct so that it's, 42 00:04:36,060 --> 00:04:40,050 you know, degree masters PhD Postdoc chemistry. 43 00:04:40,050 --> 00:04:49,950 So actually, between my degree and my PhD I went on a squiggly loop of not knowing what on earth I was doing. 44 00:04:49,950 --> 00:04:57,840 So I worked for Croda Chemicals on a graduate development scheme for a couple of years and tried lots of different areas of the business. 45 00:04:57,840 --> 00:05:04,230 And so I spent quite some time in sales because I thought I would be quite good at that and which I did. 46 00:05:04,230 --> 00:05:09,450 I did enjoy to degree. And and then I felt I was too far removed from the science. 47 00:05:09,450 --> 00:05:17,760 So then I got a business development, manager role in cancer studies and down at the Patterson Institute 48 00:05:17,760 --> 00:05:25,860 And that's where I learnt how to and a little bit more about how to write grants and then how to manage them and how to manage the funds of them. 49 00:05:25,860 --> 00:05:33,570 So I did that for a couple of years. Then I decided I need a vocation, so I'm going to become a teacher. 50 00:05:33,570 --> 00:05:39,120 So I did my teacher training for. Yeah. Wow. And yeah, quite a few different things. 51 00:05:39,120 --> 00:05:42,690 And then I oh this isn't for me. All the kids are stressing me out. 52 00:05:42,690 --> 00:05:48,790 They're not listening. It's not like being in university where everybody just listen because they want to be there. 53 00:05:48,790 --> 00:05:56,520 And I was on a real, a real spiral of I've got to find something because and everybody around me was 54 00:05:56,520 --> 00:06:02,490 off with their careers and I felt like I was just restarting all the time. 55 00:06:02,490 --> 00:06:10,450 And so I was actually offered a PhD by my old supervisor because it's the first time he'd had funding since since I left i was like 56 00:06:10,450 --> 00:06:16,830 Like, I'm just going to do that because that's where I where I excelled and where I could feel feel good again, 57 00:06:16,830 --> 00:06:22,280 because at that time I was quite anxious and having panic attacks and all kinds of things. 58 00:06:22,280 --> 00:06:33,180 So actually having that PhD set me back up on a path of sort of a good a good place to build a career from. 59 00:06:33,180 --> 00:06:43,320 To be honest. So and the PhD was kind of kind of a saviour for me, which is not what you hear from most people who don't necessarily. 60 00:06:43,320 --> 00:06:51,350 But I think it's really it's always really nice to have people who have the experience of do of doing a research degree. 61 00:06:51,350 --> 00:06:57,700 I mean, to end it being very much the right thing and the thing that they needed at that point in time, career wise, you know, and life, wise. 62 00:06:57,700 --> 00:06:59,070 Mm hmm. 63 00:06:59,070 --> 00:07:05,100 The second thing I wanted to pick up from what you said was about the fact that you started your postdoc within a very short space of time, you got. 64 00:07:05,100 --> 00:07:08,970 Pregnant. Yes. Went on maternity leave and the role changed. 65 00:07:08,970 --> 00:07:15,060 If you if you feel comfortable talking about it, I wondered, you know, if you could talk about. 66 00:07:15,060 --> 00:07:19,140 What that was like career wise in terms of, you know, 67 00:07:19,140 --> 00:07:24,810 going so soon into a job and then taking maternity leave and then coming back to a slightly different role. 68 00:07:24,810 --> 00:07:32,290 How what was that experience like? I think that's a concern for a lot of women. 69 00:07:32,290 --> 00:07:39,490 Absolutely. And because I'd had those different interim roles before I do my PhD at that point, 70 00:07:39,490 --> 00:07:48,970 I was 28 years old when I got married and I just finished my PhD So I really was at a time in my life where I was looking to to start my family. 71 00:07:48,970 --> 00:07:55,120 And I was in the last year of my PhD I looked ahead at the other women in the department. 72 00:07:55,120 --> 00:08:02,050 So I was in the Department of Chemistry and I found five of the women out of over 200 people. 73 00:08:02,050 --> 00:08:10,930 And I was looking carefully at what they were doing. And I think to two or three had children and I was very concerned. 74 00:08:10,930 --> 00:08:18,970 That's what what it looked like to me was that to make it work, it had to be all consuming, because in my mind, 75 00:08:18,970 --> 00:08:25,630 when I had children, I wanted to have this ki

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about non-academic careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks to Dr. Natalie Garrett, Private Secretary to the Chief Scientist at the Met Office. You can find out more about Natalie on the Met Office website, and the British Federation of Women Graduates scholarships.   Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,880 --> 00:00:23,690 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter Doctoral College 2 00:00:23,690 --> 00:00:27,050 Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Beyond Your Research Degree. 3 00:00:27,050 --> 00:00:31,490 I'm your host, Kelly Preece, and today I'm going to be talking to Dr. Natalie Garrett. 4 00:00:31,490 --> 00:00:35,900 Natalie currently works as a private secretary to the Met Office chief scientist. 5 00:00:35,900 --> 00:00:41,120 So, Natalie, are you happy to introduce yourself? My name is Natalie Garrett. 6 00:00:41,120 --> 00:00:45,980 I work at the Met office as the private secretary to our chief scientist. 7 00:00:45,980 --> 00:00:48,650 I've been in this role since January of this year. 8 00:00:48,650 --> 00:01:01,070 So more than half my time in this position has now been spent working from home, which has been an interesting kind of journey like before January. 9 00:01:01,070 --> 00:01:06,530 I was working in the international climate services team still at the Met office, 10 00:01:06,530 --> 00:01:12,480 and I had been in that position for, I think, the best part of four years. 11 00:01:12,480 --> 00:01:17,400 And the purpose of that role was essentially to manage a project that was all 12 00:01:17,400 --> 00:01:23,820 about translating climate science into actionable information for decision makers. 13 00:01:23,820 --> 00:01:31,260 But prior to all of that, I was a postdoc at the University of Exeter working in the Biomedical Physics Group. 14 00:01:31,260 --> 00:01:39,150 And you might notice that there's a bit of a Segway there from biomedical physics to climate and weather science. 15 00:01:39,150 --> 00:01:45,480 And it's not necessarily immediately apparent what exactly unifies those two areas. 16 00:01:45,480 --> 00:01:54,790 But broadly, what motivates me at work is to do something that's meaningful and that will have a positive impact on society. 17 00:01:54,790 --> 00:02:05,950 So the work I did at the university was primarily translating biomedical advances into kind of taking physical interpretations of them. 18 00:02:05,950 --> 00:02:16,650 So one of the major projects I worked on my role was to provide mechanistic validation for the claims that were being made in patents for novel 19 00:02:16,650 --> 00:02:21,210 nano medicines that were aimed to treat things like alzhiemers and brain cancer. 20 00:02:21,210 --> 00:02:27,690 And having lost a family member to brain cancer, that was obviously an area that was very close to my heart. 21 00:02:27,690 --> 00:02:33,200 So sometimes I feel like my career has been a little bit of a random walk. 22 00:02:33,200 --> 00:02:39,140 But ultimately, I've always done what I thought sounded interesting, 23 00:02:39,140 --> 00:02:46,230 and I perhaps naively assumed that job opportunities would make themselves apparent to me along the way. 24 00:02:46,230 --> 00:02:54,160 And I've been very fortunate and privileged that that has worked out for me. 25 00:02:54,160 --> 00:02:58,120 That's brilliant and really interesting to hear about that. 26 00:02:58,120 --> 00:03:06,700 That from kind of being a postdoc in researching inside inside a university to moving outside. 27 00:03:06,700 --> 00:03:11,710 I wondered if you could talk a little bit about your experience of that transition. 28 00:03:11,710 --> 00:03:17,980 So what it was like kind of moving to applying for jobs outside of academia and and how you 29 00:03:17,980 --> 00:03:26,780 find how different you find working in it in a different kind of research environment is. 30 00:03:26,780 --> 00:03:36,470 So I had been working as a postdoc at the University of Exeter since late 2009. 31 00:03:36,470 --> 00:03:42,050 And by the time I left, it was January 2016. 32 00:03:42,050 --> 00:03:48,650 So that is quite a substantial chunk of my professional career was spent working, 33 00:03:48,650 --> 00:03:55,100 doing the whole postdoc merry go round where you go from contract to contract without much job security. 34 00:03:55,100 --> 00:03:59,660 I think a lot of people in academia can empathise with that kind of situation. 35 00:03:59,660 --> 00:04:06,110 You don't have much job security. You're trying really hard to set yourself apart from your peer group to improve your 36 00:04:06,110 --> 00:04:13,170 chances of perhaps getting a lectureship or getting a fellowship or a grant and. 37 00:04:13,170 --> 00:04:18,720 I was in a situation where leaving Exeter wasn't really an option for me. 38 00:04:18,720 --> 00:04:27,470 So I was thinking about how I could give myself the best chances of securing a lectureship. 39 00:04:27,470 --> 00:04:35,490 at Exeter University and a lectureship position came up in my research group working for different P.I. and I went for it. 40 00:04:35,490 --> 00:04:45,270 And although I scored highest at interview and my presentation, I was told that I couldn't bring added value because I was already there. 41 00:04:45,270 --> 00:04:50,850 And that was quite a bitter pill to swallow at the time that I can see what they mean in hindsight. 42 00:04:50,850 --> 00:05:04,350 And if I had applied to other universities for lectureships it may have been more feasible for me to negotiate or leverage contract at the university. 43 00:05:04,350 --> 00:05:12,660 At any rate, I was encouraged to apply for fellowships and I was given the opportunity of a tenured position at the end. 44 00:05:12,660 --> 00:05:17,730 If I were successful in that. But ultimately I started looking at other opportunities. 45 00:05:17,730 --> 00:05:23,630 I saw a job at the Met office. Now, my background did not involve coding. 46 00:05:23,630 --> 00:05:32,060 It did not really involve modelling. So I was quite surprised when I saw a job advert that I felt I could apply for. 47 00:05:32,060 --> 00:05:37,410 Hence, this role was titled Senior European Climate Service Coordinator. 48 00:05:37,410 --> 00:05:45,710 This is quite a mouthful. The skills they were looking for those the usual planning organisation, 49 00:05:45,710 --> 00:05:50,330 time management, which if you have a PhD and you've actually managed to complete it. 50 00:05:50,330 --> 00:05:58,160 You have that in spades. But it also specifically said that they needed good interpersonal skills with evidence of communicating with and developing 51 00:05:58,160 --> 00:06:06,110 productive working relationships with a range of stakeholders and also communicating complex information into plain English. 52 00:06:06,110 --> 00:06:17,060 Now, interestingly, during my PhD, I had been very, very keen as an outreach ambassador of the university. 53 00:06:17,060 --> 00:06:23,750 I was in the STEM network and I participated in things like I'm a scientist get me out of here. 54 00:06:23,750 --> 00:06:32,150 And soapbox, science and three minute wonder pretty much any scientific outreach competition that you could engage in. 55 00:06:32,150 --> 00:06:36,380 I had a go at and I was very passionate about scientific outreach. 56 00:06:36,380 --> 00:06:45,890 In fact, the Institute of Physics had me as a guest lecturer and I was travelling all around the south west of the UK giving talks to some. 57 00:06:45,890 --> 00:06:49,550 I think in total it was about two thousand schoolchildren talking about my research. 58 00:06:49,550 --> 00:06:53,120 So this is something that was very, very passionate, was very passionate about. 59 00:06:53,120 --> 00:06:59,840 But my boss had said to me, you only need to do one piece of outreach a year for it to count on your CV. 60 00:06:59,840 --> 00:07:04,310 And at that point, you should stop and focus your efforts elsewhere. 61 00:07:04,310 --> 00:07:08,660 I didn't really listen to him and I just carried on doing what I wanted to, to do what I was passionate about. 62 00:07:08,660 --> 00:07:15,260 And in the end, because of that, it put me in a really good position to apply for this job at the Met office. 63 00:07:15,260 --> 00:07:17,150 Additionally, what I was doing, my postdoc, 64 00:07:17,150 --> 00:07:25,490 I founded the early career researcher network within the college and that was bringing together early career scientists 65 00:07:25,490 --> 00:07:33,800 and helping people work together to improve the quality of the jobs to improve their chances of securing funding. 66 00:07:33,800 --> 00:07:37,940 We had career workshops. We had the guest lecturers come in and give seminars. 67 00:07:37,940 --> 00:07:45,180 We had occasions where we bought pizza and blitzed the Internet trying to find funding opportunities. 68 00:07:45,180 --> 00:07:49,310 Because I built that network, I had experience of network management. 69 00:07:49,310 --> 00:07:53,670 I had experience of engagement. And I'd set up a social media channel for that, too. 70 00:07:53,670 --> 00:08:00,090 So I had all these communication stakeholder network management skills, which made me the ideal candidate for this job. 71 00:08:00,090 --> 00:08:05,620 And this is all stuff that was done in the margins. I was discouraged from doing so. 72 00:08:05,620 --> 00:08:12,800 Yeah, it's an interesting one. I don't know if it would always work out that way. But ultimately, do things that matter to you? 73 00:08:12,800 --> 00:08:17,060 Is that what I would say if you're conside

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about non-academic careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks to Dr. Celia Butler, Senior Applications Engineer at Synopsys Inc.   Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,870 --> 00:00:23,530 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter, Doctoral College   2 00:00:23,530 --> 00:00:27,580 Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Beyond Your Research Degree.   3 00:00:27,580 --> 00:00:34,570 I'm Kelly Preevce And today, I'll be talking to Dr Celia Butler, who is currently senior applications engineer at Synopsis,   4 00:00:34,570 --> 00:00:41,380 having graduated with her PhD in physics in 2012. Celia, you happy to introduce yourself?   5 00:00:41,380 --> 00:00:53,080 Hello, my name's Celia Butler and I did my PhD in Microwave Metamaterials in the electro magnetic materials group at the University of Exeter   6 00:00:53,080 --> 00:00:58,870 which is part of the physics department or it was at the time. And now I work for synopsis   7 00:00:58,870 --> 00:01:03,740 I'm a senior applications engineer with the simplewear support team.   8 00:01:03,740 --> 00:01:14,370 And what I do is I provide support for a software package that allows you to take 3D image data and like scans from MRI,   9 00:01:14,370 --> 00:01:24,670 and CT and turn it into a computer model and you can do all sorts of things with that computer model from 3D printing to finite   10 00:01:24,670 --> 00:01:34,030 element analysis all the way through to just simple visualisations to learn something about that data that you're inspecting.   11 00:01:34,030 --> 00:01:42,490 Amazing. So can you tell me a little bit about the transition from doing your research degree into the current role?   12 00:01:42,490 --> 00:01:50,050 Did you have any were there any jobs that you took in between or was it a straight move?   13 00:01:50,050 --> 00:01:59,860 Yes. So when I left my PhD, I actually went into a job which sort of spanned the gap between academia and industry.   14 00:01:59,860 --> 00:02:10,510 So officially, it was a postdoc role, but I was actually more of a research and development engineer with a pre-spin out company.   15 00:02:10,510 --> 00:02:15,760 So it was still part of the university and it took on a role.   16 00:02:15,760 --> 00:02:20,120 kind of like a technical consultancy?   17 00:02:20,120 --> 00:02:30,610 So like an R&D consultancy role. And my specific area was to look at improving radio frequency identification tagging.   18 00:02:30,610 --> 00:02:38,690 So RFID tagging is now quite popular, popular. You see it all over the place in tags, in clothes shops.   19 00:02:38,690 --> 00:02:44,440 RFID tags are embedded into shoes. When you buy them all sorts of things.   20 00:02:44,440 --> 00:02:50,860 But the specific area that I was looking at was how to tag structures that have a lot of   21 00:02:50,860 --> 00:02:56,320 metal in them because essentially they're an antenna and when you place them on metal,   22 00:02:56,320 --> 00:03:02,290 they don't work very well. And I was looking at tagging RFID circuit boards.   23 00:03:02,290 --> 00:03:08,890 So these circuit boards have very high value and you really try to understand what you can do.   24 00:03:08,890 --> 00:03:16,420 So I worked with a few different people locally to try and address this problem,   25 00:03:16,420 --> 00:03:22,490 using some of the knowledge from my PhD, but also past experience from before that as well.   26 00:03:22,490 --> 00:03:32,320 And after that role, I left it and started a new position for a company called Subten Systems.   27 00:03:32,320 --> 00:03:40,660 Now, this was a very small Start-Up company, possibly the best and most exciting research I have ever done.   28 00:03:40,660 --> 00:03:46,480 It was looking to create wireless Ethernet bridges.   29 00:03:46,480 --> 00:03:52,780 What that means is point to point, a transmission of data, at very, very high frequencies.   30 00:03:52,780 --> 00:04:03,910 So in the millimetre wave region. And this was so exciting because I was quite new to the R&D world and I was given a lot of responsibility,   31 00:04:03,910 --> 00:04:08,770 but also worked in an amazing team and we just got things done.   32 00:04:08,770 --> 00:04:15,910 It was fantastic. But unfortunately, like a lot of start-ups, it didn't make it.   33 00:04:15,910 --> 00:04:22,800 And I had to make the decision to leave. Possibly the hardest decision of my life.   34 00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:28,390 But yes. So I left subten systems and that fantastic team.   35 00:04:28,390 --> 00:04:33,460 And then I found a job in the centre of Exeter working for at the time, simplewear   36 00:04:33,460 --> 00:04:42,580 which were, again, a small company, not really a Start-Up, but about 30, 40 people.   37 00:04:42,580 --> 00:04:49,060 And from there. This company was bought out by synopsis.   38 00:04:49,060 --> 00:04:54,660 But my job role has stayed pretty consistent. Most of the way through.   39 00:04:54,660 --> 00:05:09,100 And I actually I'm able to use a lot of my experience from my career, but also interests outside of work to perform my job, which is it's just a.   40 00:05:09,100 --> 00:05:13,810 Varied and keeps me on my toes most of the time.   41 00:05:13,810 --> 00:05:20,610 That sounds amazing. And in a short space of time, you've worked in quite a lot of different.   42 00:05:20,610 --> 00:05:30,280 Different organisations. So what was it like making that transition from your phd into a.   43 00:05:30,280 --> 00:05:40,560 Non-academic Role did. Did you always know you wanted a job outside of academia and doing research in industry or so?   44 00:05:40,560 --> 00:05:51,050 I think when I did my PhD, I really enjoyed my time doing the research element before I did my PhD.   45 00:05:51,050 --> 00:05:53,390 I worked in industry for a few years.   46 00:05:53,390 --> 00:06:03,630 So I was very aware of what it was like to work in a team doing commercial R&D as opposed to quite academic research.   47 00:06:03,630 --> 00:06:11,390 And it is very different. And I preferred the industrial research, the kind of work.   48 00:06:11,390 --> 00:06:16,610 Working towards one product or one specific goal,   49 00:06:16,610 --> 00:06:24,680 but also having the flexibility to change projects or move into different roles within the same organisation.   50 00:06:24,680 --> 00:06:33,950 Whereas in a PhD, you're very focussed on your path, your route to completing whatever your project might be.   51 00:06:33,950 --> 00:06:35,960 I didn't find the transition very hard.   52 00:06:35,960 --> 00:06:46,520 Moving from academic research to sort of industrial R&D, I think, because it's something that I knew and I was comfortable with.   53 00:06:46,520 --> 00:06:58,220 I was looking forward to moving back. I also had very good kind of time management skills during the PhD.   54 00:06:58,220 --> 00:07:03,680 I viewed it more as a day to day job because of my past experience.   55 00:07:03,680 --> 00:07:08,660 There is one exception for that, which was when I was writing up.   56 00:07:08,660 --> 00:07:15,080 When I wrote up, the time really went out the window. I was just working all the time, it seemed.   57 00:07:15,080 --> 00:07:19,850 But after that, I was really able to relax into that role,   58 00:07:19,850 --> 00:07:27,080 to work with lots and lots of different people and to really focus on a product, which is what we were aiming for.   59 00:07:27,080 --> 00:07:29,720 So, yeah, that worked really well for me. So, yeah.   60 00:07:29,720 --> 00:07:38,030 Can you say a little bit more about what it what it is about doing R&D work in industry that you prefer to academia.   61 00:07:38,030 --> 00:07:48,200 Is it that kind of. Is it something to do with the pace. Is it the pace of it or is it the kind of clearer sense of product, and impact.   62 00:07:48,200 --> 00:07:57,200 So I think industrial R&D has a clear focus, a clear aim.   63 00:07:57,200 --> 00:08:09,860 But people work slightly differently. In my experience in commercial R&D compared to academic R&D or academic research, in academic research,   64 00:08:09,860 --> 00:08:21,890 you are striving to understand every single little part of whatever your problem or area might be in commercial R&D,   65 00:08:21,890 --> 00:08:28,430 although you need to understand what's going on. There's a limit to how much detail you need to go into.   66 00:08:28,430 --> 00:08:38,300 You need to be able to solve the problem. But you are working towards a different goal and that goal will come to an end and it will change.   67 00:08:38,300 --> 00:08:44,150 There will be a second level, another stage or something that you are building on.   68 00:08:44,150 --> 00:08:51,560 You need to understand this area. Make a decision. Produce a product, whatever that might be, and then you move on.   69 00:08:51,560 --> 00:08:55,820 It's also quite normal to have multiple projects going on at the same time.   70 00:08:55,820 --> 00:09:10,100 And for me, I need that that ability to be able to switch between projects to keep me fully invested and sort of just enjoying what I do.   71 00:09:10,100 --> 00:09:14,510 I need lots of little things to dip in and out of just to keep me entertained.   72 00:09:14,510 --> 00:09:19,830 I guess. Yes, I absolutely know that feeling.   73 00:09:19,830 --> 00:09:30,870 So you said about the time management skills that you developed during your PhD and how important they are to what you do now.   74 00:09:30,870 --> 00:09:34,950 And certainly if you're working in lots of different projects, I can rea

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about non-academic careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks to Dr. David Jacoby, Research Fellow at the Zoological Society of London. You can find out more about David on his LinkedIn profile.   Music credit: Cheery Monday Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/    Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,870 --> 00:00:15,620 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter, Doctoral College 2 00:00:15,620 --> 00:00:23,920 Hello. 3 00:00:23,920 --> 00:00:28,960 I'm Kelly Peece and welcome to this episode. Today I'm going to be talking to David Jacoby. 4 00:00:28,960 --> 00:00:38,800 David works as a research fellow in a university affiliated institution, so he's kind of bridging that gap between industry and academia. 5 00:00:38,800 --> 00:00:43,910 Hi, David. Can you introduce yourself? My name is Dr. David Jacoby. 6 00:00:43,910 --> 00:00:49,840 I'm a research fellow at the Institute of Zoology, which is part of the Zoological Society of London. 7 00:00:49,840 --> 00:01:00,470 I've been working there for roughly seven years now. I graduated from the University of Exeter with a research degree in 2012. 8 00:01:00,470 --> 00:01:06,380 My PhD was in animal behaviour and that was from the School of Psychology at the Streatham campus, 9 00:01:06,380 --> 00:01:13,430 and it focussed predominantly on the application of network analysis for understanding shark behaviour. 10 00:01:13,430 --> 00:01:19,130 So, David, can you tell me a little bit about your current role and what it involves as a research fellow? 11 00:01:19,130 --> 00:01:23,930 I have a growing research lab around the theme of network ecology and telemetry, 12 00:01:23,930 --> 00:01:31,250 and this focuses on my main research interests, which are predominately the ecology and conservation of shark species. 13 00:01:31,250 --> 00:01:41,920 So that is things like how they reside with inside and outside marine protected areas, the threats they face from commercial and illegal fisheries. 14 00:01:41,920 --> 00:01:45,800 But another component in my research is also various different animal tracking 15 00:01:45,800 --> 00:01:51,110 technologies and how we can use that to understand things about movement, ecology and behaviour. 16 00:01:51,110 --> 00:01:56,360 And finally, the third strand of my research is into animal social network analysis as well. 17 00:01:56,360 --> 00:02:00,980 So why animals aggregate predominately in the marine environment for my focus. 18 00:02:00,980 --> 00:02:07,730 What this means for population dynamics and how do we quantify social behaviour in fish at all. 19 00:02:07,730 --> 00:02:17,090 So this role really involves supervision of both PhD and masters students, as a research and pure research institute. 20 00:02:17,090 --> 00:02:25,490 We do some degree of teaching associated with some of the other London universities whose masters courses are affiliated to us. 21 00:02:25,490 --> 00:02:34,100 But it's predominantly my role is around data analysis. The writing of grant applications and papers, reviewing grant applications and papers, 22 00:02:34,100 --> 00:02:40,520 as well as a big component, and then everyday meetings with students and colleagues. 23 00:02:40,520 --> 00:02:47,420 For example, I sit on the Equality and Diversity Committee within the Institute of Zoology, and this is really about taking inward. 24 00:02:47,420 --> 00:02:58,250 Look at how we as an organisation represent the diversity in society and how we can improve diversity across academia in general. 25 00:02:58,250 --> 00:03:03,830 In addition to that, we have a lot of responsibilities around communication and outreach activities. 26 00:03:03,830 --> 00:03:13,440 So I spend quite a lot of time trying to present my work to people, be on the scientific community and whether that be at conferences, 27 00:03:13,440 --> 00:03:24,200 non-specific scientific conferences and events for the public evening symposia which we put on for public at the Zoological Society of London. 28 00:03:24,200 --> 00:03:29,660 And then extra curricular activities include things like editorial responsibilities. 29 00:03:29,660 --> 00:03:37,190 So I am I've been an assistant editor at the Journal of Fish Biology for the last six years. 30 00:03:37,190 --> 00:03:43,340 So that also takes up quite a bit of my time as well. So what's it like working in a pure research institute? 31 00:03:43,340 --> 00:03:47,280 Is it similar or different to conducting research in academia? 32 00:03:47,280 --> 00:03:51,170 And what's the what's your day to day work life like? 33 00:03:51,170 --> 00:03:55,610 I really enjoy working at ZSL or the Zoological Society of London. 34 00:03:55,610 --> 00:04:01,560 It's a pure research institute. And as an organisation, it is absolutely steeped in history. 35 00:04:01,560 --> 00:04:07,730 It's nearing its two hundredth anniversary. Charles Darwin was a former fellow of that as well. 36 00:04:07,730 --> 00:04:17,060 And Sir David Attenborough is the current patron. So the place is really inspirational in terms of some of the research that's come out of there. 37 00:04:17,060 --> 00:04:22,760 There's a real diversity of research, a diversity of methods and study systems as well. 38 00:04:22,760 --> 00:04:26,540 So you never really know what you're going to be discussing when you meet people in the tea room. 39 00:04:26,540 --> 00:04:35,150 There's so many different study systems from terrestrial animals to aquatic, from various tracking to genetics. 40 00:04:35,150 --> 00:04:40,250 So there's a real mixed bag of people working there. And that's what I like about the place. 41 00:04:40,250 --> 00:04:46,520 In many ways it's similar to university, but without the pressure perhaps to conduct quite so much teaching, 42 00:04:46,520 --> 00:04:52,100 we do contribute to master's courses from Imperial College, London, University College, London as well. 43 00:04:52,100 --> 00:04:59,160 King's Royal Vetinary College and a number of other institutions. So I can do as much or as little teaching as I want, 44 00:04:59,160 --> 00:05:03,230 but I experience the same pressure that you get at a university to bring in grant 45 00:05:03,230 --> 00:05:09,560 money to justify our position to publish regularly in high impact publications. 46 00:05:09,560 --> 00:05:18,140 I have an honorary position at UCL, which is one of our main collaborative organisations, 47 00:05:18,140 --> 00:05:24,250 and there's broad collaboration across all of the London and London groups and London universities. 48 00:05:24,250 --> 00:05:32,240 And this includes the London doctoral training programme from which we have a kind of annual cohort of these students as well available to us. 49 00:05:32,240 --> 00:05:41,210 My average day, I would say, is desk based predominantly, and it will include student meetings, some analysis, a bit of writing, 50 00:05:41,210 --> 00:05:46,970 quite a lot of internal meetings as well, and also external international collaborative meetings, 51 00:05:46,970 --> 00:05:53,030 which can run out of hours as well, depending on who is speaking to. 52 00:05:53,030 --> 00:05:57,070 Then on the flip side of that, I have regular fieldwork each year as well. 53 00:05:57,070 --> 00:06:03,070 So I have two main field sites currently up and running where we track sharks using acoustic telemetry. 54 00:06:03,070 --> 00:06:08,560 My main field site is in the British Indian Ocean territory, one of the largest marine protected areas in the world. 55 00:06:08,560 --> 00:06:15,610 And here, the groups tracking reef sharks to understand the role that the marine protected area has on trying to conserve these species, 56 00:06:15,610 --> 00:06:20,520 which are still facing large threats from illegal fishing activity. 57 00:06:20,520 --> 00:06:23,890 The second field site is in northern Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, 58 00:06:23,890 --> 00:06:28,150 and this is tracking critically endangered angel sharks, about which we know very little. 59 00:06:28,150 --> 00:06:31,180 So we're using technologies there to try to understand some of their ecology, 60 00:06:31,180 --> 00:06:38,590 some of their daily seasonal and annual variation and movements and distribution. 61 00:06:38,590 --> 00:06:47,950 And this usually involves being out on the water from the vessel based research for anywhere up to three weeks at a time, at least once a year. 62 00:06:47,950 --> 00:06:53,080 Sometimes there are more trips and I also attend both national and international conferences as well. 63 00:06:53,080 --> 00:06:59,500 So that's another component of my time. But that's a broad overview of what I tend to do on a day to day basis. 64 00:06:59,500 --> 00:07:03,250 So what skills and experiences from your research degree? 65 00:07:03,250 --> 00:07:06,910 Do you use specifically in your current role for key skills? 66 00:07:06,910 --> 00:07:16,390 My PhD, I would argue that I really relied on some of the project management experience I got during my PhD 67 00:07:16,390 --> 00:07:26,590 This included things like budgeting, time allocation, delegation of responsibilities and roles to research assistants and to students as well. 68 00:07:26,590 --> 00:07:33,340 But also the importance of reading and reading a lot. Reading around the subject, reading as broadly as possible. 69 00:07:33,340 --> 00:07:39,430 Things like practising presentations as well. I used to be terrified of giving presentations. 70 00:07:39,430 --> 00:07:41,380 The more I do, the easier I find it. 71 00:07:41,380 --> 00:07:52,390 So certainly practising that more and more was a skill that I began to acquire during my

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about non-academic careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks to Dr. Natalie Whitehead, co-founder of the Exeter Science Centre. Here are some links to the different organisations and schemes we discussed in the podcast:  Dr. Natalie Whitehead Linkedin  Exeter Science Centre  Student Start Ups  SETsquared   Exeter City Futures  Exeter Science Park  Kaleider  The Ocean Clean-Up  The Impact Lab  National Marine Aquarium   CDT Metamaterials    Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,940 --> 00:00:23,510 Hello and welcome to the Beyond your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter Doctoral College 2 00:00:23,510 --> 00:00:27,590 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of Beyond Your Research Degree. 3 00:00:27,590 --> 00:00:34,550 I'm your host, Kelly Preece, and I'm delighted for this episode to be joined by one of our recent graduates, Dr Natalie Whitehead. 4 00:00:34,550 --> 00:00:39,770 Natalie, are you happy to introduce yourself? OK, great. 5 00:00:39,770 --> 00:00:46,640 So I'm Natalie Whitehead. I recently finished my PhD in physics. 6 00:00:46,640 --> 00:00:54,050 I was looking at spin waves through magnets, which are just a special type of wave that travels through magnets. 7 00:00:54,050 --> 00:00:58,310 That was my PhD and that finished in September. 8 00:00:58,310 --> 00:01:07,910 And I'm now the founder and director alongside my colleague, Dr Alice Mills for the Exeter Science Centre. 9 00:01:07,910 --> 00:01:12,920 Talk to me about the Exeter Science Centre. How how did this come about? 10 00:01:12,920 --> 00:01:20,180 So this is something that I've been thinking about for, oh, I don't know, probably just a bit over a year now. 11 00:01:20,180 --> 00:01:26,390 But a year and a half. And basically, I I was trying to work out what to do after my PhD 12 00:01:26,390 --> 00:01:32,810 So this who was in physics and during my PhD and undergraduate degree, 13 00:01:32,810 --> 00:01:38,180 I was really involved in doing public engagement with research and a lot of science outreach. 14 00:01:38,180 --> 00:01:45,260 I absolutely love talking about science and and speaking to the public about it and showing them demos and getting their 15 00:01:45,260 --> 00:01:53,660 views and trying to answer questions and things and basically just trying to inspire them about how amazing science is. 16 00:01:53,660 --> 00:01:59,540 So I was trying to work out what to do after the PhD, which would, you know, 17 00:01:59,540 --> 00:02:04,970 be good for me, but also for something that I can really contribute towards. 18 00:02:04,970 --> 00:02:08,770 So, you know, the climate crisis is a really big thing at the moment. 19 00:02:08,770 --> 00:02:14,370 Of course, it should be and should have been for the. I don't know how many decades. 20 00:02:14,370 --> 00:02:23,930 And I really feel like I have some kind of responsibility to do something with my physics training, which is useful. 21 00:02:23,930 --> 00:02:27,350 So I was trying to work out what to do and whether, you know, 22 00:02:27,350 --> 00:02:32,030 whether I should go and work for one of these amazing Start-Up companies doing cool things. 23 00:02:32,030 --> 00:02:34,280 You know, I was looking at the the ocean clean up. 24 00:02:34,280 --> 00:02:41,780 I think what they're doing is amazing, using science and tech to solve the problem and a global issue and lots of other companies like that. 25 00:02:41,780 --> 00:02:50,990 It's nice thinking. Well, you know, I could go and work for someone like that. Will I be the best scientist or engineer to do that? 26 00:02:50,990 --> 00:02:56,240 I don't know. But I thought really what my what my skills are. 27 00:02:56,240 --> 00:03:01,610 One of the things I'm really passionate about, as I mentioned, is science communication. 28 00:03:01,610 --> 00:03:11,330 And this idea really just came to me one afternoon having lunch and thinking like, why don't I just make a science centre in Exeter? 29 00:03:11,330 --> 00:03:16,070 It's just something that I've always kind of thought, wow, we should really have one of those here 30 00:03:16,070 --> 00:03:20,540 I've been to a few around the UK and across the world. 31 00:03:20,540 --> 00:03:28,610 And I just I love going there. And I see adults and people of all ages just absolutely loving, 32 00:03:28,610 --> 00:03:37,480 understanding different things about science and playing with scientific equipment and just really engaging with science. 33 00:03:37,480 --> 00:03:43,530 And I just figured, why don't we have one here? And why don't I just make it? 34 00:03:43,530 --> 00:03:49,580 So I approached my colleague Alice, and she's a very passionate science communicator as well. 35 00:03:49,580 --> 00:03:53,150 And she loved the idea here. And we've just been talking about it since then. 36 00:03:53,150 --> 00:03:57,050 So, yeah, we're just super dedicated to making it happen. 37 00:03:57,050 --> 00:04:02,120 So what stage are you at with your plans for the science centre? 38 00:04:02,120 --> 00:04:08,120 We're still in the very early stages. So, as I mentioned, I finished the PhD in September. 39 00:04:08,120 --> 00:04:12,030 And of course, when you, you know, hand in a PhDthesis, 40 00:04:12,030 --> 00:04:16,440 you still got a lot of work to do afterwards to kind of, you know, do the viva and make corrections. 41 00:04:16,440 --> 00:04:22,570 So that's been kind of continued and maybe into about January or so. 42 00:04:22,570 --> 00:04:29,580 And then I really properly submitted it put in online and then then could properly focus on this that I've been working on. 43 00:04:29,580 --> 00:04:35,930 It's pretty much full time on and off, you know, around the thesis since September. 44 00:04:35,930 --> 00:04:44,420 So what we're what we're doing at the moment is trying to get trying to get the public to be aware of our plans and try 45 00:04:44,420 --> 00:04:54,650 to get their input and really just try to establish ourselves as a science discovery centre for Exeter and for the region. 46 00:04:54,650 --> 00:04:59,150 And just trying to raise awareness, try to raise money as well. 47 00:04:59,150 --> 00:05:03,920 That's a big part of it. And just trying to make it happen. 48 00:05:03,920 --> 00:05:15,740 We've got a a team of advisers who are amazing and super inspiring from different areas of science education and business as well. 49 00:05:15,740 --> 00:05:21,020 And they're kind of our advisory boards. They'll be moving over to be our trustees. 50 00:05:21,020 --> 00:05:27,650 Once we establish ourselves as a charity soon. But there's there's loads of things to do about it. 51 00:05:27,650 --> 00:05:33,350 When you take on such a big project, you realise that, you know, you're running a business. 52 00:05:33,350 --> 00:05:38,170 You're also trying to create a charity here, charitable business. 53 00:05:38,170 --> 00:05:46,240 Engage with the public. And that is just a kind of multidisciplinary project ready, which is really exciting or very overwhelming. 54 00:05:46,240 --> 00:05:50,380 But at the same time, it's some I wouldn't want to be doing anything else. 55 00:05:50,380 --> 00:05:55,870 I was going to say it's it's a huge project and and it is there must be an awful 56 00:05:55,870 --> 00:06:02,440 lot of business based skills and business based work that needs to be done. 57 00:06:02,440 --> 00:06:05,890 How how has that been? How has it been. Yeah. 58 00:06:05,890 --> 00:06:10,650 You know, going from an academic environment to doing much more business related work. 59 00:06:10,650 --> 00:06:12,610 Have you found that transition easy? 60 00:06:12,610 --> 00:06:19,690 Have there been kind of skills and experiences you've been able to take across or has it been a complete learning curve? 61 00:06:19,690 --> 00:06:29,020 It's been a very steep learning curve. So am I. I don't have any experience of running a company myself, and nor does my colleague Alice. 62 00:06:29,020 --> 00:06:34,930 So we're learning. However, I feel like when you you do a PhD and you study. 63 00:06:34,930 --> 00:06:38,470 I mean, you know, from my experience of studying science and physics, 64 00:06:38,470 --> 00:06:45,470 you you have to take in a lot of information and and process things and think logically. 65 00:06:45,470 --> 00:06:49,480 And, you know, you you can learn things very quickly. 66 00:06:49,480 --> 00:06:58,420 And although the business and accounting and finance and all that kind of stuff is it's not my first language at all 67 00:06:58,420 --> 00:07:02,900 I feel like there's there's a lot of information out there that just needs synthesising, understanding. 68 00:07:02,900 --> 00:07:06,310 And really, that is the way we're approaching this. 69 00:07:06,310 --> 00:07:10,420 Of course, we understand it. We we shouldn't be expected to be absolute experts. 70 00:07:10,420 --> 00:07:12,630 Everything we're doing and this projects, rather, 71 00:07:12,630 --> 00:07:20,530 it's it's understanding when we need help and need assistance and guidance from people who really have experience in this. 72 00:07:20,530 --> 00:07:27,190 So we've been very lucky, actually, to have a lot of assistance from the university in. 73 00:07:27,190 --> 00:07:35,920 In this kind of Start-Up venture, if you would call with the start-ups team, setsquared programme. 74 00:07:35,920 --> 00:07:40,420 They've been absolutely wonderful and giving us the kind of business advice. 75 00:07:40,420 --> 00:07:50,590 So we've been assigned a business adviser, David Solomides, who is just super inspiring and really, really, really helpful. 76 00:07:50,590 -

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about non-academic careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks to Dr. Denise Wilkins, Researcher at Microsoft Research.   Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:15,000 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter Doctoral College 2 00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:28,000 It's Kelly Preece here research development manager ing the University of Exeter Doctor College. 3 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:30,000 And I'll be your host for this episode. 4 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:40,000 I'm delighted to be talking to another University of Exeter doctoral alumnus, Denise Wilkins, who is currently working as a researcher in industry. 5 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:50,000 Denise, are you happy to introduce yourself, I'm Denise Wilkins and I'm a social scientist and I work at Microsoft Research in Cambridge. 6 00:00:50,000 --> 00:01:00,000 So my job there really is to conduct research. So I'll be trying to understand people. 7 00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:06,000 Social scientists trying to understand their needs and really try to feed insights back 8 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:13,000 to people who are looking at the future of technology development to really think how, 9 00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:22,000 you know, what I'm hearing, what I'm talking to, people might translate and be applied to products that we might want to develop in the longer term. 10 00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:27,000 And so at the moment, we're working in a theme called The Future of Work. 11 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:35,000 So we're really interested to understand what the work might look like in the future and how technology might support that. 12 00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:40,000 And my project is looking at knowledge in large organisations, say, 13 00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:49,000 trying to find ways to help workers in large organisations share knowledge and have knowledge kind of more available to them in their work. 14 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:56,000 What was your research degree in at Exeter? My degree was in psychology. 15 00:01:56,000 --> 00:01:59,000 Say it was it was very kind of similar themes. 16 00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:09,000 I was looking at technology and in particular I was looking at a social media and how it might affect people's willingness to engage in activism. 17 00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:15,000 So to put it, I was really inspired by things like the Arab Spring and where you might have 18 00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:20,000 seen or have kind of had news stories that social media played a role in, 19 00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:29,000 acts as a catalyst by inspiring people to go on the streets. But at the same time, there was also kind of a slacktivism narrative going on which said, 20 00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:33,000 well, you know, people are just like him things and sharing things on social media. 21 00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:37,000 And they're not really kind of going on the ground and doing the hard effort. So really 22 00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:45,000 Well, what I tried to do in my PhD was to really understand when and how social media might facilitate activism 23 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:51,000 and social change and what are the type of circumstances where it might maybe have a different effect. 24 00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:59,000 And reduce people's willingness to do that. On what? When might it have more kind of negative effects and social change? 25 00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:02,000 So although I was in psychology, 26 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:09,000 my research will always have the interest in people and technology and how technology can be a positive driver for change. 27 00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:18,000 And that's kind of followed me on to my work at Microsoft. So I'm interested to know what what your plan was, I guess, 28 00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:25,000 when you were doing the coming to the end of your research degree in the write-up, which is incredibly challenging in and of itself. 29 00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:33,000 Did you have a clear plan of what you wanted to do afterwards? Was the plan always to go into a research career in industry? 30 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:36,000 Yeah. Well, at the time, I don't think I was aware. 31 00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:40,000 of the different options and career paths that there were. 32 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:46,000 And I knew that I love researching. I knew that I love talking to people. 33 00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:49,000 And I knew that I wanted to have an impact, say, 34 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:56,000 thinking about how technology so pervasive in our everyday lives and how new technology is being created all the time. 35 00:03:56,000 --> 00:04:04,000 I was aware that, you know, that there are kind of negative impacts that technology can have, say how can. 36 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:08,000 And so the idea as a researcher take a role in shaping that. 37 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:12,000 And I wasn't really sure then about the opportunities that existed in industry. 38 00:04:12,000 --> 00:04:19,000 It wasn't something that I heard much about. You know, psychology's part of STEM in Exeter. 39 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:28,000 So I often heard about people with like a chemistry or biology degrees and how they might go to kind of pharmaceutical companies. 40 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:35,000 But I didn't really hear much of the narrative about what kind of psychology PhD could do with their degree. 41 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:44,000 So I wasn't really aware and I was mostly looking for the kind of jobs in academia and postdocs in academia. 42 00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:50,000 And I actually I went on. And prior to working in Microsoft, I did a postdoc and I Exeter. 43 00:04:50,000 --> 00:04:54,000 So that was with the same P.I. 44 00:04:54,000 --> 00:05:00,000 He supervised me for my PhD. And that was looking at a different form of technology in different contexts. 45 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:07,000 And I was looking at block chain and how and how it could be used to create new peer-to-peer energy markets. 46 00:05:07,000 --> 00:05:14,000 I was looking at the energy sector there. It was only when I started doing that postdoc 47 00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:22,000 One of the other researchers on the same project really told me about kind of user research. 48 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:32,000 They told me about HCI as a field. And they told me about my research in Cambridge and how they do lots of they have lots of engagement, 49 00:05:32,000 --> 00:05:39,000 kind of which social science and which social scientists that there really is a role for kind of social scientists in large 50 00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:48,000 organisations like that and engaging with different users and generating insights that can be used by design and developers. 51 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:49,000 So was that an immediate move? 52 00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:55,000 So when you finished your postdoc, did you go straight to a job at Microsoft Research or was there something in between? 53 00:05:55,000 --> 00:06:01,000 Yeah, there wasn't anything in between. So from talking to her it just sounded really inspirational 54 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:05,000 It sounded kind of exactly what I wanted to do 55 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:18,000 So no, on the one hand and. So Microsoft research is slightly different from like Microsoft, so there's kind of two arms to Microsoft. 56 00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:25,000 You have sort of Microsoft and the product groups and they'd be directly they still do user research 57 00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:31,000 and they and they would be directly trying to impact the products we use every day in the short term. 58 00:06:31,000 --> 00:06:42,000 So it really is. As far as I totally understand that it's about sort of what really focussed on finding insights that can improve specific products. 59 00:06:42,000 --> 00:06:48,000 Whereas Microsoft Research has its longer term or indeed vision. 60 00:06:48,000 --> 00:07:00,000 So I'm not part of any particular project, product group, but I hope to have insights that could perhaps impact and shape any of the products. 61 00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:04,000 And other large tech companies have similar. 62 00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:09,000 You have Google and you've got Google product groups, but you will see what people research. 63 00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:13,000 So, yeah, that's that's kind of one of the splits that you have. 64 00:07:13,000 --> 00:07:23,000 So really what I liked about Microsoft research is that you have the opportunity to have the real world impact on the products. 65 00:07:23,000 --> 00:07:29,000 And by really doing that I'm aiming for that kind of thought leadership and find it, 66 00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:37,000 finding these insights that can impact the longer term vision that there really is this kind of academic community. 67 00:07:37,000 --> 00:07:43,000 So we're encouraged to write publications and to submit them to journals and to conferences. 68 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:48,000 Really, really there is this academic engagement. 69 00:07:48,000 --> 00:07:58,000 We also have. So that's another reason why that's those kind of opportunities with Microsoft Research really appealed 70 00:07:58,000 --> 00:08:05,000 to me because I felt like it ticked both of the boxes of what I really loved about being in academia. 71 00:08:05,000 --> 00:08:14,000 So on the one hand, trying to have real world impact or say being part of a broader academic and scientific community where you're able to sort of 72 00:08:14,000 --> 00:08:21,000 push your learnings out more broadly and beyond kind of the immediate project that you might be working on through publications, 73 00:08:21,000 --> 00:08:27,000 for example.

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about non-academic careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks to Dr. James Alsop, who works as a secondary school English teacher.   Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:23,000 Hello and welcome to Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter, Doctoral College 2 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:29,000 Hello, it's Kelly Preece and welcome to the latest episode of Beyond Your Research Degree. 3 00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:37,000 In this episode, I'm talking to Dr James Alsop, a graduate of the University of Exeter who is now working as a secondary school teacher. 4 00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:48,000 Are you happy to introduce yourself, James. I'm James Allsopp. I graduated from Exeter in 2015 with my PhD in English. 5 00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:53,000 My thesis was all about the Living Dead in early modern drama. 6 00:00:53,000 --> 00:01:00,000 It was cunningly titled Playing Dead because it involves dead things in plays. 7 00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:05,000 I thought I was quite proud of that. I am. It was a four year process. 8 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:16,000 It was a hard, hard, hard fought PhD. And at the end of it, I didn't really have any career trajectory. 9 00:01:16,000 --> 00:01:21,000 For various reasons I'll probably end up talking about in a minute or two. 10 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:33,000 Fast forward, you know, five years or so. And I'm here in Exeter again after a short return home to Essex and I'm teaching. 11 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:39,000 So I'm teaching English at Torquay Girls Grammar School. 12 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:49,000 And yeah, I've been teaching now for seven years in total with a couple of mini breaks here and there as well. 13 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:58,000 Yeah, that's been my path. And hopefully I'll fill in the gap between how did I finish the PhD and how did I end up here. 14 00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:03,000 Yeah. So what? I think thinking about it kind of chronologically, 15 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:13,000 what was what was that like to be coming to the end of or getting to the end of the PhD and not knowing what the next step was? 16 00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:18,000 So first thing's first I think I made the whole thing sound a little bit easier than it was 17 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:23,000 even though I did emphasise the chronic difficulty of the entire process. 18 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:30,000 I don't if I mean if you're listening to this, I don't necessarily take my example as a model to follow. 19 00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:37,000 I had a extremely. I want to say strange, this strange feels like an understatement. 20 00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:45,000 I had a frankly bizarre ending to my PhD, so I did my first year of the doctorate 21 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:55,000 And I'm self-funded, by the way. I was very fortunate in that my grandfather was able to pay for my entirePhDprocess. 22 00:02:55,000 --> 00:03:00,000 He gave me his will before he passed away. He is still with us 23 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:05,000 He's got. That's lovely because he's got the kind of fruits of the labour. 24 00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:12,000 He wanted to say, you know, you'll end up with his money at some point, say I have it now and do something with it. 25 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:17,000 And it was strange because that was very cool having this amazing gift. 26 00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:21,000 But also there was a lot of emotional pressure there. You know, you've got this big pocket of money. 27 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:27,000 All of a sudden it's been spent on your education and you better do something with it. 28 00:03:27,000 --> 00:03:32,000 And even in those early days, it felt like the Holy Grail at the end of the PhD 29 00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:36,000 was always this academic career. You know, my role models were academics. 30 00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:41,000 My my my academic heroes were people that I looked up to for so long. 31 00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:44,000 And just imagine being in their position one day. 32 00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:51,000 Imagine being in that lecture theatre or imagine sharing these ideas and having these amazing conversations and writing books. 33 00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:58,000 And, you know, that was the aim that was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. 34 00:03:58,000 --> 00:04:02,000 But I mean, as we all know, and I imagine anyone listening to this knows, 35 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:09,000 those pots of gold are far rarer than perhaps you imagine at the start of the journey. 36 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:21,000 And being self-funded I had to pay my own way through that first year of the PhD in terms of living expenses and things like that. 37 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:28,000 So what I found was I had three Part-Time Jobs on the go one time. 38 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:35,000 And of course people think of the PhD. As, you know, you're a student, you're learning, you're in education still. 39 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:40,000 But as anyone that started the process knows, the PhD is a full time job. 40 00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:44,000 Yeah. You know, it's it's an all consuming beasy 41 00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:51,000 So I was spending my evenings and nights working on this doctorate and my days I was spending so much time, 42 00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:55,000 you know, furthering between, gosh, what did I do? I was a barman. That was cool. 43 00:04:55,000 --> 00:04:59,000 I love being a barman. I was a barista in a coffee bar. 44 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:08,000 Wow. I worked in what was Coffee Express and I think has now turned into I know there's a salon there at the bottom of Devonshire house. 45 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:15,000 It used to be a coffee bar.  I was there in the early morning to do breakfasts for students. 46 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:20,000 I was a cleaner as well at the Exeter Corn Exchange. 47 00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:25,000 I still get a cold shudder whenever I go out there. 48 00:05:25,000 --> 00:05:30,000 And that's not because it was a bad job or because I saw it as unworthy of me. 49 00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:39,000 It's because it was ungodly early hours. I was up at half past three in the morning to get there for a half past four shift. 50 00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:44,000 And I'm not I'm not gonna tell you this because, you know, woe is me or anything like that. 51 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:49,000 I just want to make it clear, you know, that that first year was intense. I had this huge emotional pressure, 52 00:05:49,000 --> 00:06:01,000 but also this workload that meant I was spending so much time earning money to live in Exeter that I wasn't actually doing much studying in Exeter. 53 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:06,000 I rarely saw my supervisor. And that wasn't because they weren't available. 54 00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:10,000 It was just because I wasn't. Yeah. 55 00:06:10,000 --> 00:06:17,000 So that was a lot. I moved home in the second year of the degree, which was a godsend. 56 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:23,000 You know, I was lucky enough to be able to move home and live with my parents while I carried on with this PhD 57 00:06:23,000 --> 00:06:29,000 And finally, I had time to research. Finally, I had time to start writing. 58 00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:34,000 Of course, what that means is now in the back of my mind, I've got this ticking clock. 59 00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:43,000 You're in your second year. The third year is approaching and that first year didn't contain much productivity, did it, in any real sense? 60 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:48,000 I also needed money. You know, I couldn't live off my parents. 61 00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:53,000 So I had to get a job. I ended up working in a pancake restaurant. 62 00:06:53,000 --> 00:06:57,000 Both things. Oh I know, which is great. 63 00:06:57,000 --> 00:07:07,000 You know, I make a mean pancake and a mean omlette to this day, you know, there are skills that I carry with me for the rest of my life. 64 00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:12,000 But, you know, it was a again, it was it was a tough process balancing this. 65 00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:17,000 I lived in Essex, which isn't a million miles away from the British Library, which was grand. 66 00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:21,000 So I'm finally starting to find some balance there. 67 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:28,000 And then the third year of my PhD started and I realised that actually I didn't know what was at the end. 68 00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:33,000 Now, thing is, I because of all the other stuff that in. 69 00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:41,000 Not so much my time. I hadn't got anything published. I've been to one single conference. 70 00:07:41,000 --> 00:07:46,000 I hadn't helped to put together any conference panels myself. 71 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:55,000 I hadn't contributed any reviews to any publications. And when you're studying English, when English is your field, you know, 72 00:07:55,000 --> 00:08:02,000 the publication is it's a daunting process because there's so much amazing stuff out there. 73 00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:10,000 But it's also very solitary process. This was in the days before academic Twitter, I think, took off. 74 00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:17,000 And I found that the whole thing intensely lonely. It was very hard to make any any headway there. 75 00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:22,000 I didn't even know what an academic conference was until the end of my second year. 76 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:26,000 You know, I it feels so strange to say now. 77 00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:33,000 So I found myself in this strange place at the start of my third year where I didn't know what was actually going to happen at the end of it. 78 00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:48,000 I had a very supportive supervisor

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about non-academic careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree! In this episode PhD student Debbie Kinsey talks to Dr Caitlin McDonald, a University of Exeter alumni who now works at the Leading Edge Forum. Today Caitlin is recognised for her domain knowledge in qualitative methods like ethnography and participant-observation.    Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:21,000 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter, Doctoral College 2 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:22,000 My name's Dr Caitlin McDonald. 3 00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:31,000 I graduated in 2011 with a degree in Arab and Islamic studies from here at the University of Exeter at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. 4 00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:36,000 And hard as it is to believe that it's now nine years later. 5 00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:39,000 It's it's really interesting to look back on what's happened since that time and 6 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:45,000 consider the skills that I took away from the university and how I'm applying them now. 7 00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:53,000 So maybe to give you a bit of an update on where I am. I currently work as a digital anthropologist at an organisation called The Leading Edge Forum, 8 00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:59,000 which does technology and strategy research for large businesses and just in the 9 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:04,000 Last month I was at the UN delivering a talk at the International Labour Organisation. 10 00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:11,000 I then hosted a dinner at the House of Lords about ethics. And I've done a range of interesting and exciting things since then. 11 00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:15,000 But it's really interesting to think about this particular month in particular 12 00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:20,000 and how that the kind of culmination of where I started and how I got here. 13 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:28,000 So I started working at the Leading Edge forum about two years ago, and before that I was based at what was the Times educational supplement. 14 00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:30,000 But it's no longer known as that it's just the tes 15 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:43,000 It's no longer owned by the Times, where I was working as a digital analyst, data analyst and working with data systems quite a bit. 16 00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:49,000 So all of that sounds really different than where I started, which was very much middle easy studies based, but really the kind of the through line. 17 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:55,000 The thread for me was that a lot of the research that I was doing when I was doing my PhD was very digital ethnography based. 18 00:01:55,000 --> 00:02:06,000 So I was looking at patterns of knowledge and how they shift around the world, in particular for dancers who often for Middle Eastern dance, 19 00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:15,000 want to base their practise or to base the centre at the hub of their knowledge in Cairo or sometimes in Turkey or in other kinds of regions. 20 00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:19,000 But in my particular case, I was looking at dancers who had a dance tradition that is based out of Cairo. 21 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:26,000 And what ended up happening was I did a lot of ethnography around in particular how people were using Facebook groups, 22 00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:32,000 but also other social media channels to spread the knowledge and in the creation of knowledge 23 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:39,000 about how the dance kind of mythology and epistemology of what the dance meant to people. 24 00:02:39,000 --> 00:02:47,000 And while this doesn't sound really revolutionary now, way back in 2006, 2007, 2008, when I was first doing that, that was fairly new. 25 00:02:47,000 --> 00:02:52,000 You know, there weren't a huge amount of digital humanities tools at the time. 26 00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:59,000 And certainly we weren't using anything like this wonderful lab that we have now. I think this was the old print print shop at the time. 27 00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:04,000 So it was really interesting. But then what ended up happening is I went to do a very quantitative role, 28 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:08,000 which when you become an anthropologist, you don't necessarily think of yourself as a quantitative person. 29 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:14,000 Some might. I did not. But it was having that kind of digital skills component that really was able to help me make 30 00:03:14,000 --> 00:03:20,000 the transition from a very academic role into a much more kind of commercially minded role. 31 00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:27,000 And I didn't really intend to leave academia, but around the time that I was leaving, there were huge budget cuts. 32 00:03:27,000 --> 00:03:35,000 So there simply weren't the kind of resources available for people to have postdocs and subsequent academic careers in particular. 33 00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:40,000 As an immigrant to this country, I was I needed to have a role if I wanted to stay working here. 34 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:46,000 That was not short term. So it had to be a Full-Time full contract. 35 00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:49,000 And luckily, I was able to find something that worked out, which was with the Tes 36 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:53,000 and they really wanted someone who could help them to an extent of their research skills. 37 00:03:53,000 --> 00:03:58,000 But a lot of the role was really about the kind of Day-To-Day operational knowledge to help the business run. 38 00:03:58,000 --> 00:04:01,000 So that was very, very different from what I previously been doing. 39 00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:07,000 But having this kind of interrogative skills, those kind of basics of a humanities research skills, 40 00:04:07,000 --> 00:04:11,000 those basic social sciences research skills was really helpful or for doing things 41 00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:17,000 like helping question why a particular thing was being done in a particular way. 42 00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:22,000 In particular, I was doing a lot of kind of daily reporting of what was happening on the website and what kinds of numbers 43 00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:29,000 were coming back in terms of circulation and all those kinds of things that digital businesses do. 44 00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:35,000 And really, the thing that was extremely useful was being able to turn around and say, hey, is anyone actually reading this report? 45 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:40,000 You know, something as simple as this ritual that we go through on a daily basis of producing these numbers. 46 00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:42,000 How are they feeding into our decision making? 47 00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:49,000 And in some senses, that questioning was perhaps not always very welcome, but it also was that helpful to create the conditions for change. 48 00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:54,000 And I think that the social sciences are not always really great about talking about 49 00:04:54,000 --> 00:04:59,000 the transferable skills outside of academia that absolutely do exist. 50 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:05,000 And I think now we're starting to see in particular with another research area that I do, which is all around ethics. 51 00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:09,000 You're starting to see some of those kinds of questions emerging around. 52 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:19,000 Who is in charge of this knowledge or what are the kinds of different weights that we put on how we assess particular aspects of 53 00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:27,000 artificial intelligence and its relevance and its usefulness and how is it relevant to and who's benefiting and who's not benefiting? 54 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:34,000 And I think that having a general social sciences research background, regardless of whether your specialism is in ethics or in, 55 00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:42,000 you know, particular aspects of digital technologies, you know, having that kind of questioning mind is is a really useful thing. 56 00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:49,000 And I think that people who work in digital context are starting to appreciate those qualitative skills, 57 00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:58,000 again, in a way that perhaps has been a little bit subsumed recently. So those kinds of questions around how is this going to benefit not only direct 58 00:05:58,000 --> 00:06:01,000 users of our services or our products or whatever it is that we're building, 59 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:08,000 but also that kind of contextual knowledge about how is this affecting other people who are going to be impacted by the decisions that we're making? 60 00:06:08,000 --> 00:06:14,000 There is renewed curiosity and interest in those kinds of decisions. And so increasingly, organisations, 61 00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:19,000 businesses and non-commercial organisations are looking to the humanities as well as 62 00:06:19,000 --> 00:06:25,000 engineering to to make up the body of knowledge of creating those products effectively. 63 00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:30,000 So I would say now is a really good time, actually, to be in the digital humanities. 64 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:35,000 And to some extent, no matter what you're doing, your work is always going to have a digital component. 65 00:06:35,000 --> 00:06:38,000 So recognising that, you know, when you think about the degree that I did, 66 00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:44,000 which was very much based in transmission of knowledge and very much about dance, 67 00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:48,000 you wouldn't necessarily think that that would lead to where it did lead. But in other ways, it makes total sense. 68 00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:54,000 It was a logical chain of transmission. I was looking at the social components of how that knowledge was happening. 69 00:06:54,000 --> 00:07:00,000 And now we are even more i

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about non-academic careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree! In this episode PhD student Debbie Kinsey talks to Gemma Edney, a University of Exeter alumni. An experienced project manager and events manager, Gemma now works at St George's, The University of London.    Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:19,000 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter Doctoral College 2 00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:27,000 So I'm Gemma. I did my PhD in film studies finished last April. 3 00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:37,000 So April 2019 was when I was awarded. I submitted the September before that, so I sort of stopped the actual physical researching and writing 24/7. 4 00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:46,000 In September 2018, immediately after submitting, I got a job at the student information desk. 5 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:54,000 Here I am organising graduation. Which sounds more stressful the more I think about it. 6 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:59,000 But I actually think organising graduation is actually quite stressful. 7 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:01,000 But so I did that. 8 00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:10,000 So I did that immediately after submitting completed my corrections while I was doing that, and then continued doing that for a little bit. 9 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:15,000 I was looking for jobs here and there. 10 00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:19,000 The plan originally was academic jobs, so I was looking for those. 11 00:01:19,000 --> 00:01:27,000 There weren't very many. So and the more I looked at, to be honest, the less I wanted any of the jobs that did come up looking. 12 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:35,000 So then in October last year, I decided to apply to the civil service fast stream scheme. 13 00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:42,000 And finally, it's the longest application process ever. But finally, I found out in February that I've been successful. 14 00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:50,000 So I'll be starting there in September, which is about the change of direction, but is, I think, a good move for me. 15 00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:55,000 So, yeah, that's kind of where I am in my journey at the moment. 16 00:01:55,000 --> 00:01:59,000 Yeah. So you were initially you working kind of in university, you know, you said. 17 00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:04,000 Well, yeah, initially looking for research type jobs but now decided to move outside. 18 00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:10,000 Yes. Yeah. So I worked throughout my PhD anyway, um, 19 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:19,000 part time at the university and then that's sort of how I ended up with the job that I ended up with once I had submitted. 20 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:27,000 I wasn't in a position I could once I'd finished, just do sort of a seminar here and there or like one or two seminars a week. 21 00:02:27,000 --> 00:02:31,000 I needed an actual job full, full time hours. I did. 22 00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:38,000 Originally, I was offered teaching in the year that I, I submitted, but it was only one seminar a week. 23 00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:44,000 And so I had to say no because I needed more than just one seminar a week and I 24 00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:49,000 wasn't able to take a full time job and also do a seminar a week because funnily enough, 25 00:02:49,000 --> 00:02:53,000 the university don't like to employ people or more than a full time contract. So. 26 00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:59,000 So I wasn't able to do that, which was a shame, because I do really I do miss teaching is one of the things I really miss. 27 00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:04,000 But I carried on looking. I was constantly looking for jobs. 28 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:09,000 I was never under the impression that I was gonna do graduation organisation forever. 29 00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:14,000 That's not something that I thought was on my future plan, really. 30 00:03:14,000 --> 00:03:22,000 So I did carry on looking for jobs. But the more I looked to be honest, the more it's they were all fixed term. 31 00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:30,000 They were all part time. Some of them were fixed term and part-time. And it just wasn't something that I wanted. 32 00:03:30,000 --> 00:03:41,000 After doing four years of PhD, I was ready to just actually know where I was going and where I was gonna be and have a bit more stability. 33 00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:46,000 And it was just one of those things that gradually I came to the realisation that actually, 34 00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:50,000 although I would have loved to stay in academia, it wasn't the top of my priority anymore. 35 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:54,000 And I think that's okay. I think that's fine to have come to that realisation. 36 00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:58,000 It took me a while to come to that to come to that realisation. 37 00:03:58,000 --> 00:04:04,000 But yeah, it's not something that I have no regrets about stopping looking for academic jobs. 38 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:08,000 There was a point where I just anything came up I went, I didn't want that job. 39 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:15,000 I just looking at the looking at the job description and looking out the work involved and things, that's not I don't think I want it. 40 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:21,000 And when that just kept happening, I thought, yeah. I didn't want any of these jobs. 41 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:28,000 So I started looking outside. And to begin with, I was a bit sort of I felt a bit lost in the. 42 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:32,000 I had been aiming at this for so long and done this one path. 43 00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:38,000 And then I thought, OK, what am I going to do now? What do I even do? 44 00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:44,000 And so I look for things sort of within universities and I'm sort of more student support kind of roles and things. 45 00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:49,000 But again, there was just nothing that really struck me. I got there were a couple of jobs. 46 00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:57,000 I went for that I think I would have really enjoyed it, but I came second for all of them. 47 00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:06,000 Which was lovely that they told me that. And also awful that they told me that because I'd have rather come last and just been told, no, it's not so. 48 00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:10,000 But then I sort of thought, well, maybe I don't need to work at a University at all. 49 00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:17,000 Maybe all other things. And I actually started looking more at graduate schemes and thinking more. 50 00:05:17,000 --> 00:05:21,000 Is there anything that also like PhD I'm still a graduate. 51 00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:25,000 II can still apply. And there are various things there. 52 00:05:25,000 --> 00:05:29,000 And there are various schemes that actually sort of market themselves. 53 00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:36,000 at PhD graduates, as well as other graduates of other levels as well. 54 00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:42,000 And so I started sort of looking at much more widely than I had been before. 55 00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:46,000 And I actually heard about the civil service scheme on a train. 56 00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:54,000 Just people behind me were talking and I was really nice. So they were sort of just talking about their current roles and everything. 57 00:05:54,000 --> 00:05:59,000 And I was thinking, oh, like sounds interesting. Like what the scheme that they're on. 58 00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:05,000 And I had a look at it. And it's actually designed not just for fresh undergraduates that are leaving university 59 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:11,000 but for a career changes and people are all different stages of their careers. 60 00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:12,000 And I quite liked that. 61 00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:21,000 It specifically says we are not just a graduate scheme and we're not just for 20 and 21 year olds that have just finished their degrees and things. 62 00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:26,000 So I sort of looked into it and to be honest, just that and an application on the off chance. 63 00:06:26,000 --> 00:06:33,000 And then, I mean, it's a very long process. So the longer I went into it, the more I said I actually really want this 64 00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:34,000 I want I want a place. 65 00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:41,000 And so, yeah, it was as soon as I sort of got more more involved in the process and through the application, the more I thought, yeah. 66 00:06:41,000 --> 00:06:43,000 I think this is a really good move for me, 67 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:52,000 something that I think I can apply myself to and having a bit more experience beyond sort of having through my page. 68 00:06:52,000 --> 00:06:59,000 The experience I've got and through working elsewhere as well, I think we'll actually be really beneficial. 69 00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:06,000 So, yeah, there are absolutely no regrets on the journey I've taken to get to this point. 70 00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:12,000 But it just took me a little bit of time to come to come to the realisation of what I sort of wanted and needed. 71 00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:16,000 To be honest, this is for my own personal wellbeing. 72 00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:21,000 I think this is a really good decision. And ever since I've sort of had the plan of life. 73 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:27,000 Now I know that I'm going somewhere else. I'm going off in this direction. Sort of felt almost lighter. 74 00:07:27,000 --> 00:07:30,000 Yeah, this is great. I haven't felt that for a while. So that's where. 75 00:07:30,000 --> 00:07:37,000 Good. This kind of thing where it's important to think that not just the things you enjoy, that you really enjoy teaching. 76 00:07:37,000 --> 00:07:46,000 So what kind of life you want. Yeah. And a lot of the academic opportunities and I like them around you and finding just didn't fit wi

Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about non-academic careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree! In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks to Dr. David Musgrove, Publisher at Immediate Media Co.   Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses   Podcast transcript   1 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:15,000 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter doctoral college 2 00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:22,000 I'm Kelly Preece, researcher development manager in the doctoral college at the University of Exeter. 3 00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:25,000 And I'll be your host today. Hello. 4 00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:32,000 Hi. Hi. OK. So my name is Dave Musgrove and I studied here at Exeter. 5 00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:41,000 I did my B.A. here in archaeology and I went on to do a PhD in the archaeology department. 6 00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:49,000 There was a year in between times when I went out and worked for a few companies doing various temping jobs. 7 00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:57,000 But I came back. I was very, very grateful to be asked back and be given a funded opportunity to do a PhD 8 00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:06,000 All about the mediaeval landscape archaeology of the Peet Moors of the Somerset Levels a title I remember well from doing it. 9 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:13,000 And I did my PhD in three years and then I left and did not carry on into academia. 10 00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:27,000 So the my career since then has been I've been essentially working in the media, specifically in magazine publishing, 11 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:36,000 but also latterly in online publishing because of the realities of the print magazine publishing world. 12 00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:42,000 And the fact that online is is clearly an important place in which publishing happens. 13 00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:47,000 So how did I get into that role? 14 00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:58,000 Well. So whilst I was doing my PhD It became fairly clear to me that I probably wasn't going to become an academic. 15 00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:06,000 So I think it was really in the second year of my PhD, actually, that I thought I ought to be thinking about what else I could be doing. 16 00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:12,000 So I chatted to my supervisor and said that I was thinking I was quite interested in publishing. 17 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:21,000 I've been doing some work for her, editing some of her manuscripts and doing some page, lay out some of her books. 18 00:02:21,000 --> 00:02:28,000 So I'd been developing some skills. There getting a bit of cash and that had sparked a bit of interest to me. 19 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:37,000 So she suggested I go along to the University Press here at Exeter and see if they had any volunteering work experience opportunities, 20 00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:44,000 which I duly did. And and I enjoyed that and must have be reasonably proficient because they offered me some part time work. 21 00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:50,000 They're just doing general admin and a little bit of light editing. 22 00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:56,000 So I did that for the latter part of my PhD 23 00:02:56,000 --> 00:03:01,000 And I met somebody there who had some contacts in the magazine publishing world. 24 00:03:01,000 --> 00:03:09,000 So when I finished my Ph.D., she very kindly put me in touch with some people at a company called Future Publishing, 25 00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:17,000 which is based in Bath, which produces lots of, still going, produces, lots of computer magazines and other things. 26 00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:27,000 And I had also, whilst I was in my PhD, I had taken an interest in the Internet, which at the time I was doing my PhD. 27 00:03:27,000 --> 00:03:34,000 That was a few years ago the Internet was only really starting off and I learnt how 28 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:42,000 to do HTML coding and I was able to get a job on a magazine about the Internet. 29 00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:52,000 Well, I applied for it. And with the contacts that I had been given by this person at the University press, I had a little bit of a step in. 30 00:03:52,000 --> 00:04:01,000 And so I got a job while working for as a very base layer level on this magazine for a couple of years. 31 00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:14,000 I was very lucky to get on a training programme there for magazine journalism, and that got me into into the world of of magazines. 32 00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:21,000 I worked on various other computer and Internet magazines at Future Publishing for a few years and then 33 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:28,000 heard about a History magazine launching at a rival company in Bristol called Origin Publishing. 34 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:36,000 So I applied for a job there. Got it. And obviously played off my doctoral skills to get that. 35 00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:44,000 And I've been with that company ever since. It's been through various guises and was bought by the BBC. 36 00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:53,000 And I ended up working on BBC History magazine, which is a very popular History magazine, the most popular History magazine in the UK. 37 00:04:53,000 --> 00:04:56,000 And I've essentially been working on that for the last few years, 38 00:04:56,000 --> 00:05:05,000 as in various roles as the editor for about a decade and then subsequently as the publisher and content director. 39 00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:10,000 So I'm now in a managerial capacity, but still within a media company. 40 00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:15,000 So that's the story. Fantastic thank you so 41 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:24,000 You say things that spring to mind and about the importance of some of that. 42 00:05:24,000 --> 00:05:33,000 Experiences you picked up alongside the PhD. So you talked about having had a year gap before and doing various like temping jobs. 43 00:05:33,000 --> 00:05:40,000 Were any of those things related to your subject area or to publishing or were they kind of just General? Nope 44 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:46,000 They were a variety of jobs, working in a postroom, working. 45 00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:56,000 I ended up working for a market research company, and I think we'd probably be described as a graduate level job, as a market research executive. 46 00:05:56,000 --> 00:06:01,000 Which to be honest I didn't particularly enjoy. 47 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:07,000 And that was what led me to think, well, maybe I'll have another crack at academia for a bit. 48 00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:13,000 I think all those all those positions, you know, you can pull out some skills from them, 49 00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:18,000 some experience which is helpful in getting the first real job that you want to do. 50 00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:30,000 And definitely, I think for anyone who's looking to enter the job market, you know, you know, in a professional capacity, 51 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:39,000 you need to draw on any any possible skills you can think of from from Part-Time work or temporary work that you've done and just, 52 00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:44,000 you know, make sure that you can you can flag up one thing that you learnt from that. 53 00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:50,000 So when I worked in a postroom for instance sure, I would have said that it helped me develop my people skills because I was dealing 54 00:06:50,000 --> 00:06:56,000 with a lot of a lot of um trubulent individuals who wanted their post 55 00:06:56,000 --> 00:07:00,000 I don't remember exactly what I said. But, you know, there were you can always find something. 56 00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:09,000 Some even from the most uninspiring sort of job. You can always find something that she can allude to in an interview or in a CV. 57 00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:16,000 So when you were applying for those that the first role and at the at Future publishing in Bath 58 00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:24,000 you talked about kind of drawing in quite a wide range of interests. And obviously you're relying quite heavily on your writing and editing skills. 59 00:07:24,000 --> 00:07:36,000 And what else did you draw on in applying and by doing the role in particular in regards to having done a PhD, having done a research degree? 60 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:44,000 Well, I think one of the one of the things that I particularly draw on for that first role was the was the fact that it wasn't specifically related to 61 00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:52,000 my PhD but that I done during my studies, which was learning to code websites, 62 00:07:52,000 --> 00:07:59,000 which only had the opportunity to do because I had some time in my you know, in my in my research calendar. 63 00:07:59,000 --> 00:08:02,000 And there were some facilities here to enable me to do that. 64 00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:15,000 So I was clearly able to draw on that, to give me this sort of specialism that they were interested in for that particular magazine. 65 00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:20,000 In general, I'm sure I would have said, and I would have meant it, 66 00:08:20,000 --> 00:08:34,000 that my my doctoral studies had given me an overarching sense of responsibility in the 67 00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:40,000 understanding of the importance of personal responsibility in all aspects of work. 68 00:08:40,000 --> 00:08:46,000 And I would have played quite heavily on the fact that I've shown that I have the 69 00:08:46,000 --> 00:08:52,000 ability to do a project and carry it through to completion on my own volition. 70 00:08:52,000 --> 00:09:00,000 And I think that's me. That's one of the really big things you can say from from from doctoral research is to say, 71 00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:05,000 you know, you clearly have the capacity for independent work. 72 00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:10,000 What you need to then do is to demonstrate that you also have the capacity and the flexibility 73 00:09: