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Beyond Your Research Degree

Beyond Your Research Degree

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(This podcast has now ended. Please check out Exeter Postgraduate Researcher Podcast for the latest content from Doctoral College)

A podcast from Researcher Development about topics relating to PhD researchers, including careers for researchers, beyond academia, from the University of Exeter. Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Episodes
  • Episode 21 - Demelza Curnow (Quality Enhanement Manager, Quality Assurance Agency)

    Episode 21 - Demelza Curnow (Quality Enhanement Manager, Quality Assurance Agency)
    Mar 8 2022
    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 ...
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    22 mins
  • Episode 20 - Holly Prescott (Careers Advisor of Postgraduate Researchers at the University of Birmingham)

    Episode 20 - Holly Prescott (Careers Advisor of Postgraduate Researchers at the University of Birmingham)
    Jan 31 2022
    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 ...
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    27 mins
  • Episode 19 - Kelly Preece (Researcher Development Manager and Research and EDI Manager, University of Exeter)

    Episode 19 - Kelly Preece (Researcher Development Manager and Research and EDI Manager, University of Exeter)
    Oct 25 2021
    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:...
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    41 mins
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