August has been a time of transition between completing the final elements of my PhD programme and starting full-time work in a new environment.
I finished the editing for my final thesis submission, completed all the paperwork for my full-time employment, and set up my work-from-home office and ‘virtual classroom’.
I bought a new, 27-inch iMac to prepare for lecturing online and two research projects.
The simplicity of iMac design is stunning. The large screen is beautiful, the speakers are very good, and everything is smooth and easy to use.
Luca and I swapped desk locations and bought two large bookshelves, discarding a lot of stuff and rearranging the office formation. We now have much more space to display books and decorate the room with some greens.
Since the lockdown started, our personal space has been merged with aspects of our professional lives. I have had more meetings on Zoom than ever before, and so many aspects of our personal and professional activities are beginning to overlap.
Book proposal
As many post-viva PhD students do, my supervisors and I started discussing publication strategies. I am drafting a book proposal to publish my thesis as a monograph. During the viva, my examiners and I discussed which form would be best for publication, and we agreed that it would make more sense to present my framework alongside the illustrations and examples I included in the thesis. The next question would be which publisher and what book series to aim for.
I want to keep writing articles – I was going to be an independent researcher if I couldn’t get an academic job. My supervisors told me that selecting a publisher for my thesis should be guided by the career path I choose, because there are several publication options, each with a different level of impact.
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