23 Things

I first thought about writing a blog when I began my PhD in April 2014, and here I am over two years and an almost completed PhD thesis later on my second blogpost! What has finally prompted me to start blogging? Quite simply, deciding to take part in the ’23 things for research’ course run by the Researcher Development Programme at the University of Surrey. The central aim of the course is to engage researchers with a range of digital tools that can help them to develop professionally and personally.

It may have been a long journey to get to this point but it seems fitting that it should come about as I am facing the transition from my PhD to (hopefully) the next step in academia. I am hoping that this blog (and the ’23 things’ project) will allow a space for me to document ideas pertaining to my research, open up a dialogue, and engage with people who are interested in similar things.

I am not entirely new to the benefits of digital tools and social media, I have an academia.edu page where I can share abstracts, conference papers, and publications and from the moment that my supervisor recommended that I boost my academic presence by starting a Twitter account (@amylouise921), have been in LOVE with it as a platform. While I am more of a retweeter than a tweeter (something I hope this blog will make up for), Twitter enables me to connect to a vast network of people who engage in topics that cover my broad range of interests: from medieval literature, to the study of women, to feminism, to queer theory, and all of the intersections in between.

So I am very much looking forward to what all of this brings and hope that it can help me to communicate my ideas to a wider audience.