Late-Night Talk: Nigel Pollard, PhD, and Stephen Harrison, PhD. The PhD After The PhD

Students and Graduates!

Nigel Pollard, PhD, is an Ancient History Professor at Swansea University, author, fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and archaeologist specialised in the Roman and Near Eastern worlds. ⁠https://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/n.d.pollard/#authored-books=is-expanded&journal-articles=is-expanded&publications=is-expanded⁠

Stephen Harrison, PhD, is an ancient historian of ancient Greece, Macedonia and Persia (Achaemenid Empire) at Swansea University, You Tuber and author. His books ⁠‘Kingship and Empire under the Achaemenids, Alexander the Great and the Early Seleucids’⁠ and ⁠'Alexander the Great: Lives and Legacies' ⁠ are out now. 

⁠@StephenHarrisonHistory⁠

Thank you all for tuning in, it has been a pleasure!

Transcript

Welcome And Post PhD Reset

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Nigel Paul and Stephen Harrison, welcome. And it's been a pleasure to have you both here. And now this time we're having a an informal and relaxed conversation between now my you me as a former student of my former supervisors. So how how is uh how's everything today and uh how uh now you've been going this process of uh post-Easter break and now the mark the marking process.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

I mean I'm on research leave, so it's amazing because I'm not doing that. So yeah, I'm just kind of chilling out doing some research, thinking about a new project, which is fun.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Okay. What kind of project?

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Um, well, for the first time since I started my PhD in 2011, I've got to come up with a new project. So I've been exploring, I guess, what I might do with the next five years or ten years or however long a project takes. Um trying to think about kind of big questions. And maybe we'll come to this later on. I think you know, you've just finished the PhD, and if you're thinking about future research, the kind of obvious thing is what would the next chapter of the PhD be? And then when the PhD becomes a book, the obvious chapter, the obvious thing to think about is what would the next kind of chapter in the book I've just written be? And I very much don't want to do that. I want to do something new, so I've been exploring different different kinds of things.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Okay. We can talk about that a bit further.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

And it it it's nice to to talk to you in a slightly different environment now that you've finished your your PhD on which congratulations. Uh thank you.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

You look a lot more chilled out, Louis, than the last time I saw you. Which is completely understandable. You look like a man who is a few months removed now from uh the kind of end game.

Nigel’s Route Into Archaeology

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Yes. So first of all, thank you, and also thank you for being my supervisors. Then you've been just uh a comp being uh on my side for uh for six years, so the so to speak, since since the beginning of my masters, and uh and that was a a really great achievement. Now, as you said, I'm a bit more relaxed, but at the same time, uh I got to uh I was literally before before doing this running the tests and everything, I was writing my article my future article for a volume uh about uh uh about ancient migrations and uh that was a result from my the my latest conference my last conference I presented at in Coimbra, the Celtic Classics. And so I'm relaxed and I need to focus on that this next this little chapter and just doing the old things as uh seeking uh a job within the field and see how it goes, both academic and non-academic. But we've been in conversations uh on that, so uh what who who who would like to start off um uh telling about uh your academic background and what led you to decide to to do your PhD?

SPEAKER_02 6:39

You go first, Nigel.

Stephen’s Alexander To PhD Path

SPEAKER_01 6:41

All right, because I'm the oldest. I actually Stephen and I both did our undergraduate degrees in the same place in the UK, but I think we've got very different career paths uh in academia since then. So, in terms of of what how I got into to doing a PhD, my PhD is in classical archaeology, classical arts and archaeology technically, but that and and I mean it's not so when I was an under undergraduate, I did classics undergraduate degree. And before I'd even before I'd done that, I'd I'd done some field archaeology as a teenager. And I got I I was put off doing field archaeology as bef before I was an undergraduate, but then uh after I'd been an undergraduate for a year, I I ended up going on a field project in Italy, and I I kind of rediscovered archaeology. And I want so I wanted to do more of that, and I was mixing with academics who were working on that field project, and so kind of talking to people, and so that got me sort of interested in the idea of carrying archaeology forward. And initially I wasn't so much focused on doing a PhD, and what I it what I started doing actually after I graduated was applying to do master's level archaeological science degrees in things like environmental archaeology and archaeological petrology study of ceramics and things like that. But it was kind of an odd time because those were science notionally scientific courses, but they were also in archaeology, and the funding bodies at the time couldn't get their heads together over the idea of something that was science within a humanities thing. So neither of the humanities or the science funding bodies in the country at that point were willing to fund that that kind of degree, and you couldn't get loans to do that sort of thing. So uh and but I worked as a uh field archaeologist for a few years, and it was poorly paid, and it was short contract work, and and I I didn't love the the mechanics of working out in in muddy wet fields in Gloucestershire enough to want to continue to do that. So I decided either to do a PhD, which seemed to me a bit more uh a bit more glamorous than the muddy fields in in Gloucestershire, if I could get funding to do that. And I I was at that point I was applying to the the US because the funding environment in the UK was very different from what it is now. But at the the alternative was to get a proper job. So I I was applying for jobs in uh as a trainee accountant in in City of London financial firms, and I was holding an offer from a City of London accountancy firm when I got the offer of PhD funding, mostly by working part-time at the University of Michigan. And at that point I thought, well, okay, I might as well give it a try. I'll go to the US for a year, see how it goes. And and so I I went to the US and I did my PhD there. So that was that was the the story of how I came to do a PhD.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

Yeah, I think I think you're right, Nigel. Mine's a little bit different in that I did my undergrad degree in in history and studied a wide range of different topics. And in my second year, I did a module on kind of the ancient Greek world, and as part of that, I we were writing a weekly essay and I did an essay on on Alexander, and I happened to do the essay on Alexander pretty much the week we were asked to think about all our dissertation topics should be for third year, and I was like, oh, this seems interesting, so maybe I'll do that. So then I did my third year undergrad dissertation in history, but doing Alexander the Great. And I think I guess we've all found this that once you start asking one question about a particular time period, you quite quickly find another one. And so um my kind of intellectual trajectory with the projects was quite natural in there. The undergrad dissertation, I still remember what it's called, it's on the shelf over there. It was called Alexander the Great and the Constraints of Macedonian Kingship, and it was kind of about how far what are the limitations on power, even in a theoretically absolute monarchy, and how do kings interact with the people around them, and how do the people around them constrain the king's ability to act independently, and how does that change over time? And Alexander's quite a good example of that. And it fitted in at the time, there was some kind of this was what you know, this 2009. There was there had been in the last kind of 10-15 years quite a lot of debate about kind of whether Macedonia was a constitutional monarchy or not. So I kind of got interested in that and then decided to change from in from history to kind of classics to ancient history in to do a master's. Um, and I was lucky enough I got a bit of funding to take a year out and to learn Greek for a year, which was a lot of fun because anyone who's learnt a language will say, You can't spend nine hours a day learning a language, can you? You've got to like break it up. So I had a lot of fun that year as well, um, and did a lot of other things. Yeah, so learned Greek for a year, and then I did my masters in classics. And for that, kind of I was interested a little bit more in Alexander and the successes, and that's where I first started to get interested in Royal Space, which Luis is something we've obviously spent a lot of time discussing, going right back to your masters. So I kind of got interested in that, and then as I was getting towards the I I guess the masters yeah, it's a really intense year, particularly because you know, some masters are 12 months long, like obviously the one you you did Luis's 12 months, whereas the one I did was nine months, and so you had written like two essays and it was March, and you were starting to think about a final thesis, but you're also thinking about what am I doing next year? And I had friends who were kind of applying for PhDs, so I thought, well, I'll give it a go and I'll give it a go and see what happened. And I came up with a project idea that was kind of putting Alexander into his into his context. So I had kind of a question that I was interested in in answering. It was also that time where yeah, everyone was kind of just a lot of people I knew was applying for PhD, and I thought, well, there's no harm in applying for one and seeing what happened. So I looked around a few different places, had offers from a few different places, none of them, none of them funded. And then I got a little bit of funding to stay in Cambridge where I was free. Yeah, got excited about that, and then I got offered funding at Dorham and I turned it down to stay in Cambridge. Um, because I had kind of already mentally committed to doing it. But I think like for me, why I chose to do a PhD was I mean, you're a long time working essentially was the attitude I was having fun, I was enjoying it, I had a question I wanted to answer, and I didn't really see the need to go out and get a job in the real world. Yes, at 21 or 22, which is what my friends were doing, and they were all going and doing exactly what Nigel's just talked about, going into the city and getting jobs like that. And because I because I'd done my I because I'd done my kind of year out learning Greek, and then my master's quite a lot of my friends were taught two years in and had a lot of friends who were a bit older, so they're like two to five years into their career, and they were told me about what they were doing in law films and stuff, and it just sounded miserable, mate. It just sounded awful, like genuinely like you know, people are you know, up all night, incredibly high pressure, like all of that kind of stuff. Um, and I just thought, yeah, it'd be more fun to do a PhD, and it was, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

I think it's whereas I I I got immensely anxious about the fact that I wasn't on on a very clear kind of career path, and I never actually was on a very clear career path until I hit about 40. But I don't know whether it was partly about the don't know, just me or whether it was something about the what it about the nature of the times. I mean, this was back in the I mean I gra I graduated from my undergraduate degree in 1984 with an 11.9% unemployment rate, and and I felt like you know, I I I I needed to progress and get a proper job in some sense. And that was kind of just what people did in those days. So, you know, for me the the the the the the archaeological field work was a bit of a distraction. That the PhD seemed like a a track into to something with you know with prospects as it were. Little did I know, um, however.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

Well, I think I think Nigel, that's where it got it maybe changed a little bit between when you were doing your PhD and when I was doing mine. Because I think by the time I was doing mine, which I started mine in 2011, I think maybe the numbers of people who are doing PhDs in all subjects have started to increase quite a lot by then. And I think certainly like my supervisors and the people that I was kind of getting advice from were very clear that you know, don't do a PhD if you expect don't do a PhD solely because you want a job in academia, because you statistically will be disappointed. And you know, those of us who've got jobs in the last decade, decade and a half, I think all feel very grateful and fortunate and are aware that there are you you you have to get hugely lucky, you know. Like when I when for my job, I got a I got a I got an 11-month job at Swansea in 2016, and 10 years later I'm still here. And the job advert, I remember the job advert, Maria Pretzler was on sabbatical, they needed somebody to teach her module on Alexander the Great. How many of the people in the country had just finished a PhD on Alexander the Great of the year that I did, you know? Had that module, had Maria been down to teach one of her other modules like Arcade Greece, I wouldn't have been an obvious person to be shortlisted. And so um yeah, I think I maybe went into the PhD thinking it might not lead to a job in academia, but kind of having a PhD doing a PhD will be fun. I'll enjoy it, and the skills I'll get from it will make me employable, and having that on my CV, regardless of what I want to do in my mid-20s, like it'll it'll I'll be employable, you know.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

I mean that that element of luck is you know is is massive and it it tremendously important, and and I've I've been lucky at so many different stages of of my career. But I mean, uh you know, a lot of that the the whether there are jobs or not jobs or whatever, you know, I mean that that's been the same through time. So I mean that year that I I graduated from my undergraduate degree, you know, there was it we that was really, really bad in terms of academic jobs. And and I think the fact that I went on to do a PhD shows how naive I was at the time, really. You know, there was one academic job at Leicester, which Andrew Wallace Hadrill got, for example, and I knew all these people who were like junior research fellows and who were, you know, like we're all applying for this job. And and you know, I mean that that was about the worst. And then when I was at Michigan doing my PhD in the by the the late 80s, early 90s, one of the American educational charities, I can't remember which one it was, had had thought there was going to be a big shortfall of academics in the humanities in the US, starting from the mid-90s onwards. And so they they were actually funding scholarships for people to, you know, have a year to do their research as PhDs. And I've got one of those. But then we get to like 93, 94 when I graduated in the US, and the bottom had dropped out of the humanities academic job market completely, and there were hardly any jobs again. And I ended up coming back to the UK and thinking I was going to do something completely different. But then actually, the job market was quite buoyant in the late 90s in the UK, so I got lucky in that respect. So, you know, kind of I think it's it's up and down, things things change, and you it's it's often quite unpredictable.

Choosing Paths And Building Skills

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Yeah. Uh well, I think we can we can all agree that besides the PhD, just having being fun and then leading to uh different outcomes, but also having its own challenges, uh it kind of reminds me what of what I've been doing with the PhD. Initially, I would say, okay, I'm I want to go to academia, but then after hearing some thoughts, after hearing your uh your feedback as well, uh that made me think, oh well, now that I've finished, obviously I'm just uh scattering myself around to to trace uh employability within the field, which is uh it's still it's still ongoing, but at the same time having the uh this uh tremendous amount of effort and also absorption of knowledge that I would I would never thought I would get something uh out of it. Uh I think it would just to say that the PPE would be uh it is something that is uh fulfilling, uh it's so fulfilling and also exciting at the same time of being uh uh busy in uh producing knowledge and uh at Stephen, it's rather to do that than sitting down at an office writing typing uh BS basically. And the thing and the thing is that uh it kinda reminds me as well while we were talking about Stephen, it kinda reminds me uh of that uh time that you went to had some funding to learn Greece at the time I finished my undergraduate. I was on an Erasmus gap yeah. Uh but in context of finding an internship, which I happened to find I happened to find one in in Berlin, which was my golden ticket, so to speak, before jumping on to the masters.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

But I think and I think like you know, you're talking about kind of going on an academic track and then coming off it and thinking about where you are now. I think you know, one of the things that because you know, I'm 38 now, so my mates are all you know, 15, 16 years into their careers, and it's been quite interesting to see how a lot of friends have changed career from from the outside, it looks like quite a big career change every three or four years. And actually, it's that what they've got are if I can quote Liam Nissan, a particular set of skills, right? And they they have those skills that let them go and do whatever looks interesting, and I think I've kind of taken this attitude into it's gonna sound ridiculous, right? I did the I did my undergrad, I did my undergrad, my master's, and my PhD in the same place, and I spent 10 years in in Cambridge, and then I got an 11-month job in Swansea, and 10 years later I'm still here. So I'm gonna say something that sounds stupid because I've it looks from the outside like I've just been on a very obvious track all the way through. But one of the things I've learned from my friends is I think you don't need to think 10 years down the line in terms of of career. Maybe I'm at the point now with career development where I need to think a bit more, a bit more long term and plan for things a little bit more. But I think you can think in two or three year cycles, and I think it's really important. And the thing I've always tried to do is make an active choice to do the thing that I'm going to do rather than just fall into it. So I had, like I say, I didn't just assume that I would stay in Cambridge after my master's to do my PhD. I looked at other places, I talked to lots of people, and then I made the decision to stay. When I kind of first was thinking about going into academia, I didn't just apply for academics. Well, in the end, I did just apply for academic jobs, but I didn't just look at academic jobs. I basically, just be because of when when I finished, like my Viber was in October, so my corrections took me through to January. So then I was like, well, the job round will start in March, and I had a little bit of part-time work that I was doing anyway. So I said, look, I'll give myself one round of academic jobs. But while I was doing that, I looked at think tanks, I looked at kind of grad schemes, I looked at civil service, and I looked at all of the different things. And what I was trying to do is I was talking to people who worked in those jobs, and I said, look, just describe your nine for five to me. So for example, I talked, I talked to somebody at a think tank where you know they're doing lots of research, and I think a lot of what they do sounds really interesting. But then I was like, but if you're doing that, somebody else is telling you what you need to go away with research. Whereas if I'm going to stay in academia, I can dictate the terms of that myself. So I was kind of weighing those things up. But then I had, you know, I had the 11-month contract, and then I got offered the opportunity to stay for the second year, and that when my contract got renewed, and that was another opportunity where I thought, okay, have I enjoyed this enough that I want to do this, or do I want to look at other opportunities? And there's been three or four times where I've kind of made those decisions and I've had opportunities to leave Swansea and go other places, and I've kind of been weighing up what is best for me, you know. And I think it's really important to kind of always be actively saying, like, how do I develop my career? What's the route I want to take? Am I on the path now that I thought I would be on or that I want to be on in the future?

Detours After The Doctorate

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Yeah. And I do think also that not I'm I'm saying from a PhD perspective that it it it makes you proactive and you gain proactivity skills in order to map out uh what are the um the other ventures that I could um uh choose from and making a sort of a mind mapping of okay, here's the list of of uh uh opportunities that I go for, both academic and non-academic, while at the same time being uh building something uh building some skills that can be transferable to to the future and just having a uh patience game essentially to uh uh uh reach uh any of one of those outcomes, if it whether if it is as you said, your 11-month contract at saying New Sound University, and then afterwards uh having that opportunity, making a self-reflection of of yourself and okay, they gave me this opportunity, grab it or leave it.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Yeah, I mean when when I I finish my PhD, I uh you know I I very much envisaged that that I would become an academic and and and I you know and and probably in the US as well. But and I interviewed for a few jobs, but yeah, it was really Competitive there. And I mean, I had a one-year job in the US after my PhD. I had a one-year job on an American program in Italy after I did my PhD as well. But there came a point where I basically moved back to the UK because I couldn't stay in the US any longer, at least legally. And the I figured I was at I was out of academia at that point. And I was, I mean, in terms of so I went, I went several years before I got another academic job. And a lot of that time I spent working as a university administrator because it was a world I knew. And initially I was I moved back in with my my parents who lived near the Open University in Milton Keynes. So I was an academic administrator at the Open University. And a bit later on, I started working on uh early educational technology for the Open University as a consultant. So this was kind of early web-based learning and early use of ebooks in learning and things like that. But that but I was kind of looking around and thinking of other things and looking at other opportunities at the time. So I mean, I I did a travel agent course because I figured I might try and set myself up as a sort of you know travel agent focusing on the my expertise in you know Mediterranean world, cultural travel, that kind of thing. So I did a BTEC.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

I think given I think given what's happened in some of the regions that you're an expert in Nigeb, I think it's really good that you didn't go down the route of kind of travel guides taking people on holiday through Syria.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

I think the the bottom might have fallen out of that market for you at some point. Yeah, but I I kind of I I fancied focusing it on Italy somewhere where we could go for go for a nice lunch rather than um uh necessarily uh you know have to dodge extremist violence of one kind or another. But but connected with that, another completely unrelated route that I was really interested in was actually psychiatric nursing and and counselling, because that was at the time that was an interest of of mine. Um my and um my my mother for for non-psychiatric reasons was in and out of hospital a bit at that time. And I, you know, I was actually kind of ended up talking to nurses and things like that. So we're you know, I actually quite fancy nursing, possibly psychiatric nursing. And they said, well, you know, yeah, I think but I'm too old. And they was saying, no, no, you that's because I was about Stephen's age then, but a little bit younger. Uh they're saying, no, you're not too young to train to do that. But it it did seem like a big commitment trying to get the, you know, like funding and and and do another like, you know, two or three years or something to train to do something when I just spent six years training to do something that hadn't panned out. So there were also but and and it you know to a great degree, I think it was just it was luck that I got back into academia because I I spent a year at the British School at Rome rather as a rather random consolation prize for not having I got a research fellowship because I'd applied for a job there that I hadn't got. And they said, well, actually, but if you want to stay on and do years research. And that got me to a postdoctoral research assistant job in Oxford because it was focusing on on providing research assistance connected with excavations in in the city of Rome for Margareta Stainby, who was the professor of of uh archaeology of the Roman Empire there at that point. And and and that kind of sucked me back into to academia. So you know that that and and in some ways, I a lot of the stuff that I've done over the last 10 years or so has taken me outside of strictly academic worlds, and I enjoy that a lot. And in in some ways, I I perhaps wish I'd been a bit more imaginative or things had gone a different way after I'd finished the PhD. I mean, it was never something I was so committed to that I couldn't envisage, you know, that I would have been like a starving independent researcher or something like that. I always would have been looking to do something more substantial. And I wasn't I wasn't afraid to go off in other directions, but in the end, I just and and then from Oxford I ended up coming to Swansea, and that was you know really a luck. And so, in some senses, it sort of worked out through a series of of opportunities that came up. But actually, if it had gone in another direction, I think while it would have been quite daunting thinking of going in that other direction at the time, it probably would have worked out in another way.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

So just just on what just on what you said there, Nigel, I think it is um I think you could you sort of said it wasn't the be-all and end all for you, and I think I feel like that as well. I I honestly had never thought about applying for an academic job until I was in my visor, because at the end of my visor, my external examiner, Tom Harrison, and my internal poll, and it just sort of said, you know, um some things you'll need to fix for the thesis, but like what we're really thinking about is how you turn it into a book. And I was like, a book, you reckon this could be a book, really? And then they sort of and I'd never thought of it like that, and kind of then sort of had a little chat about kind of careers and sort of sort of the that was the and I think um you spend a huge amount of time in academia feeling stupid. That there's always somebody in the room who's cleverer than you, whichever room you're in, there's always somebody, right? Um, and I think that your academic ideas, if you're not careful, become very much an extension of you. And so when somebody criticizes your idea, it feels like a deeply personal criticism of you as a human being, which you know sometimes the way people phrase things makes it seem like it is, and it shouldn't be done like that. But I think having the attitude that there are other things in the world that you could be good at, I think helps you keep the perspective you need to maintain your sanity when you're finishing a PhD, coming out of a PhD, thinking about going into an academic, into an academic job. And I also think it makes you I don't know, it feels like it maybe makes you more employable as well, showing that you've got the got the rounded interests, you've got the people skills, that you've worked in a few different jobs that are gonna let you relate to different kinds of people and things, you know. If you think about being a lecturer now, we relate to people from all different walks of life and stuff. So some of the things that I had done that took me beyond academia, you know, for example, I was do I did a lot of sports coaching growing up. That puts you in a very different environment with very different kinds of people, which actually are skills that I draw on now all the time, you know.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

Yeah, and I think uh and I think bringing those skills from other from other from other jobs, uh whether they are seasonal or a bit temporary, then they will be transferable anyways to what you're actually doing. I mean, for I mean, for for example, now I was looking for a job. I'm still flipping chicken and at Nando. But also, but also sometimes I I laugh I laugh at myself, not because I'm flipping chicken and say, oh, I'm flipping this as if I was doing as I was as I was fighting against the Persians at the Battle of Gorgomela, for example. I thought I said that once to a to a colleague of mine who was taking civil engineering and gave up in his second year of his undergrad. And I said, Okay, let's let's build something with chicken and corn, for example. And then I said, Okay, this is Alexander and the chicken is Darius. And so we're just playing around when when under stress.

Teaching Loads And Lost Research Time

SPEAKER_02 38:29

But but I think the thing is, I think in in your PhD, in your PhD, you would sensibly have a huge amount of time to do research. Yes. And then you get an academic job, and the amount of time that you've got to do research completely disappears. If if you think I was on a teaching contract the first set six or seven years that I was in Swansea, right? So I don't have any research time in my contract although you try to teach them. Um, you know, the first the first year that I was in in Swansea, I wrote well, I was teaching three different modules across the year. So it's not that it's not that much teaching. But then you go, that's 125 hours of lectures that you've got to write. And now I can write a lecture in 15 minutes because I've got material, I know how to do it. I can just sit there and go bang, bang, bang. But I'm starting out, it's taking me five, six hours to write a lecture because you you just don't know what students need, you always put too much in it. There's you're always far too prepared. If you've got five hours to write a lecture, it'll take you five hours. If you've got half an hour, it'll take you half an hour, right? And so, and then you have all the administrative stuff that you need to do in the job. And it can mean that actually finding research time is really tricky. I think coming into the career, having gone, well, I I had six different part-time jobs during my PhD. I'm used to, as you say, I was never flipping burgers, but I was always doing something, you know, working on a library desk or whatever where you're serving customers and things, but in the back of your mind, you're thinking about a project and you're used to being able to say, Well, I've actually only got I've got an hour between my lectures here. I need to do something useful. Well, that's a little bit like when I was doing my PhD and I was between these jobs and stuff. And I think it makes the transition into the reality of an academic job a little bit easier. And I think people who have had the have been fortunate enough to have had funding and have been able to just kind of focus their entire time on the research sometimes find the transition trickier.

US Versus UK PhD Structures

SPEAKER_00 40:23

Yeah, I also had uh other other small income streams uh jobs. I when my last one was uh as a mentor of languages and culture, and it was so fulfilling. I was able to express uh ex not express to share the diverse cultures and languages for young UK pupils uh about that. And they also like they really enjoyed about uh hearing a bit of Portuguese, for example. And but uh go back to what you were saying, I think I think uh it's uh uh having these small experiences that uh uh uh makes you even more proactive, as I said previously, but also for uh can it it will help you to uh uh reach what what the so-called North Star, whether it's an academic uh job or a non-academic one. Uh I I'd like to ask as well for because I think you've already answered about uh uh the if you whether consider any other paths or you just academic like the one-way road towards it, I think it's just crystal clear that you already answered to that one. I do wonder that because of the the different time spans of your PhDs and Nigel graduated in the 90s and you are already in the 2010s, how uh then the the PhD degree changed in terms of academic research infrastructure?

SPEAKER_01 41:48

Well, in in my case, I I don't know that that I I can make a judgment about how it's changed over time because I d my PhD experience was a completely different one in the US because it's structured in a completely different way. So, you know, my I mean my my US PhD took six years. And actually, if I'd known that when I went there, I probably I would have thought twice about doing it. I thought I could kind of do it in three or four years, but but actually six years was was a relatively good progress for that. And in in the US, a a PhD is is a program, only about half of which is spent focusing on producing what what we call in the UK called a thesis and what the the US calls a dissertation. And bizarrely the two terms are flipped in US uh and British use. So I you know I kind of got there and actually I I found myself more timetabled in the US system as a PhD student than I had been as an undergraduate in the UK system. I was doing coursework, advanced coursework for three years. I had to do a whole range of you know courses on on Greek painted pottery, Roman sculpture, Greek and Roman architecture, all of these kinds of things. There were language requirements. I had to do exams or the equivalent in Latin, Greek, French, and German. And then two big sets of comprehensive exams to test me on the stuff that and you know, and there'd been assignments in all the the individual classes or the individual modules as well. And so, you know, spent uh a good three years or so doing that, and also I did a lot of field work in in Egypt, in Italy, in Tunisia in the vacations from that. I was working part-time as well, half half-time as a a teaching assistant or a research assistant through that. Then for the last like, you know, two and a half years or so, that was when I focused on my my my thesis topic. And you know, I knew kind of I I'd selected, I I probably should have worked on a a research topic that was connected with Roman Italy, because actually, you know, my Italian was pretty good even back then, and I like working in Italy and stuff like that. But again, being foolishly naive at the time, I thought, well, you know, there's so many people working on Roman Italy, and I I'd been working with a lot of them, thinking, you know, I can't do anything original on Roman Italy, and and I started focusing more on the Eastern Roman Empire and ended up working on on um things connected with Roman Egypt and and Roman Syria. Uh, so you know, and then I I did my two and a half years, I wrote my my thesis and and that was it. But it's a completely different experience from doing a PhD in the UK back then, or presumably now, well now on under based on my experience of supervising you, but presumably based on Stephen's experience as well.

SPEAKER_02 45:10

Yeah, but I think it's that it's that thing, isn't it, that the American system because in America people specialise much later than we do. I think that early part of the PhD program that you've just described, Nigel, is the kind of thing that traditionally people would have thought here takes place in a master's. Yeah. And some of the undergrad, even.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

And I never did a formal master's, and and it was because it wasn't a requirement for the programme. And then just a couple of years into the programme, when you've passed your first set of exams, they they get together and say, Oh, I think you you probably deserve to get a master's degree at this point, so they just give you one. But also because I'd done quite a lot of that, particularly the language stuff already as an undergraduate, it meant that I didn't have to do all of that. And I could take advantage of some other things on offer, like anthropology courses in particular, uh, which I really enjoyed and got really interested in. So, so yeah, as you say, it's a kind of a uh it was uh um it was an expectation that the Americans would would be specializing rather later.

SPEAKER_02 46:21

And I it to be honest, I like that system, and I did look at a few US places when I decided not to apply in the end. Um I think had I not done the PhD immediately after the masters, I might have looked more seriously at some places in America. And I think one of the one of the reasons I like it is I think maybe one of the things that's changed isn't to do with the PhD itself. Because I don't I don't think the process of the PhD has changed at all, really, in that the the out the what you're required to do hasn't changed. You're required to come up with an idea that no one's had no one's come up with before, which is hard, and you've got somewhere between 18 and 100,000 words to write to do that, yeah. And because that's not changed, I think the the way in which it's taught is essentially the same all over the UK, isn't it? One-on-one meetings with your supervisor bringing your second supervisor occasionally is a second pair of eyes, da da da da. Um I think maybe the some of the things that the I mean maybe it might just be kind of my experience, like I felt maybe I don't quite feel it anymore, but certainly during my undergrad, my master's with my PhD, and then the first five years that I was working, you know, you've got the career ladder, and then you've got the bloke who's clinging on to the bottom rung of the career ladder. I always thought of myself as the person holding on to his feet. Yeah, and I think um, you know, when I went I I look at kind of my skill set, and I think I wish that there were things that I had done earlier in my life, particularly around languages and training, which would have helped me now. Like, for example, I'm sort of pseudo-half teaching myself Babylonian cuneiform, right? To help me a little bit with some of the research that I do. I wish that I had spent three months taking advantage of opportunities in my masters to do that, but I wouldn't need to do it now. But when I was doing my masters, the most important thing was getting the grade that would let me get on the PhD, which meant that I could only really focus on the things that I was being assessed on. And like that's probably true in the British system from GTSEs to A levels to your undergrad to your masters to your PhD. And within the PhD, there's a bit of scope to kind of grow skills and things, but then you know, in some sense it's it's tricky. Um yeah, but I don't think the actual process of doing a PhD or teaching a PhD has changed much in the last um the last little while. I think maybe where some of the things have changed is where there are kind of doctoral programs, HRC doctoral programs, and people have funding. I think that funding bodies have become much better in the UK of ensuring that they, or at least trying to ensure that they prepare the students they are funding for a world beyond academia. I think when I was doing my PhD, for all I said, people said, don't expect to be become an academic. I think there was the attitude that that would be the first choice for everybody. And by the end of your PhD, a lot of people don't want to do it. Because the last few months of the PhD, you've just done it. Like the last few months of the PhD are pretty miserable, aren't they? Like I was doing, I was doing all nighter after all nighter, like you know, I remember leaving the library. Jenny I met my now wife in the kind of like final six months of my PhD, and I do not know how she put up with me. But she worked in the building, she worked in a museum in the building where our library was. And I remember like bumping into her as she was walking into work because I was going home having been up all night, and it's like a miserable process. But I think funders now have recognized that they need to do more to ensure that students are are prepared for the wider world. I think people who aren't funded don't always have that support, and I think that that's an area that will change in the next in the next five to ten years. But I think part of the reason that things will change at PhD level is that things are changing at undergraduate level with regard to kind of preparation for employment, kind of more connect, there's more connections now between what we're doing as academics and the world of work and with industry and where much because like you know, when I was an undergrad, and it's not it's not that long ago, there's a really good career service, and your lecturers would say, Go to the career service, and literally nobody would. Like nobody I knew went to the career service. Maybe, maybe once people had a job interview, they went and said, like, what kind of questions might they ask me? But now I think we're doing a lot more to embed kind of employability skills into the teaching that we're doing and making it clearer to students what we're doing. And I think once we start to see the benefits of that, and I think we are starting to see the benefits of that, once we see the benefits of that undergrad, that'll feed into masters and it will feed in a little bit more to what we do with PhD students, um, particularly given like the job market, because I do think that you know we have a responsibility to make sure that our students are prepared.

Why Supervising Is Terrifying

SPEAKER_00 51:30

I think you I think there's a big important point to touch on that, is that this from what from all these years that I've studied in my PhD and then obviously and then my master's when I started beginning to understand a bit of the the British higher education system is that that uh there is a bit of more of a professional preparation to the to uh the world of the the working world where not only we're just going to have to do our dissertations, but also uh expecting opportunities of getting some training. I never expected to have some uh uh to to to run some training courses on introduction to research integrity. or uh safeguarding in the workplace or any other uh cer professional cer uh body of certif that I would need to have some certificates in order to use them as uh a proof that I did something in order to get some of those transferable skills to to the outside world. So I think in uh in s in many ways that is a good thing to not to communicate in uh on our CVs to uh any uh prospective employer so and uh g changing on the topic of uh now you both are supervisors you supervised me and it was a a great experience so I have to give credit for that but how is the challenge of uh being a PhD supervisor can I go first with this because I think the biggest challenge is that it's absolutely bloody terrifying so so you know I I I was your second supervisor I was the second supervisor for another person who graduated a couple of years ago I've had one of my own PhD students supervise who I supervise completely and I've got somebody else who's nearly finished right it's terrifying being responsible for four years of your life mate do you know what I mean like because like we're giving you advice about what directions to go in and like ultimately like you ultimately you're going to submit your work when we tell you we think it's good.

SPEAKER_02 53:38

Yes you're not gonna do it before then and that that is it that is a huge amount of pressure like just and I think when I started kind of supervising would I have been 33? And like that's about right. So I was I started supervising my first PhD student when I was still on a tutor contract. I wasn't on my own research contract and it all went it all went fine but I think that the the challenge is like you there is there is a little bit of training now about supervising PhD students. I don't think there was 10 years ago and the majority of people kind of most of what we do in life we kind of draw on our own experiences and then work out the way we want to do it. Yeah but as a PhD supervisor well you had one and that's about the limit of your experience so you're kind of like talking to people and working out working out how to do that. I think that so I think that that's hard. And then I think the other thing that I find hard is keeping the right level of critical distance between a project because I think and this is I think why having two supervisors is really important because I think you as a student need to know that your first supervisor loves you and thinks you're brilliant and thinks that and you need to know that they're in your corner right because you need to have absolute implicit trust in them. Yes and that can as a supervisor sometimes make it quite hard when and we all have these periods but you might have a period in a PhD where for three or four months it's a bit of a slog. You might feel it as a student it's a bit of a slog and the ideas might not be coming that you need and then it can that that that can be quite hard. It's a bit easier as a second supervisor to come in after a year and be bad cop um and say like look this isn't and be honest and just be like this so I think it's that it's that balance of like not getting too close to a project because we work so closely with you that we know what you're trying to say and sometimes if you haven't quite said it we miss that. So it's that it's it's it's keeping that distance while also making it clear to the person you're supervising like I think this is really good and I think you're really good and I value you and things like that, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:02

Yeah I mean I I think you're you're you're right about that sense of of responsibility it's you know is kind of you know I do do kind of lie awake worrying at night sometimes if thing you know if something something's not going well for a PhD student or another research student or something like that. Yeah you know it is uh and and to some degree I think that that's increased but I mean when I I did my US PhD I I had a a dissertation committee so I I had a wider range of people who I who I could consult beyond my even you know not just a primary and a secondary supervisor. So yeah you know it does it does feel it is a big sense of responsibility that when you're supervising somebody I think that there are a number of different things that come to mind there's the the question so you know all research students are different in terms of the amount of input and feedback they want or need and the level of of detailed engagement that they need. So when I was a PhD student I mostly like to be left alone to do as to to produce fairly large chunks of things and and my supervisor in a a large you know very research active university the Department University Michigan who he was supervising a lot of students at the same time it didn't have you know would would would you know give it a fairly cursory read over and and and give me some pointers and things like that. And I was really happy with that and I would have hated it if if I'd was getting constant detailed feedback all the time but some people really like that and really need that level of structure. And so my you know my like my girlfriend at the time was was really you know really wanted and needed that constant detailed feedback from her supervisor and that would have driven me up the wolf so I think yeah you have to get a sense for for how individual students work.

SPEAKER_02 58:22

Can I can I just jump on that one because I think one thing that I find that's related to that is you get quite close to a project and then you have to realize that it's not your project and you have to and I think one of the things I I really value about my supervisor is he let me write the thesis I wanted to write and it went beyond some of the areas that he's super interested in but that's good. And I think I had some friends who maybe had supervisors who they felt were quite interventionist and basically said like you can't talk about this if you talk about this you'll fail your PhD or and like I and I I think you know there's a line obviously you can't let somebody go down a completely useless path where you're not going to get you know there's a responsibility to make sure you keep people on track. But I think yeah I think like giving people space to write about what they want to write about in the way that they want to write about it. And I do joke I'm I'm I can be quite interventionist when it comes to like um phrasing particularly and how things are done and I remember you know with one of my students there was one particular I just started like a a list of banned phrases and that's much more interventionist than I would have wanted to be but I think it was valuable in that context because if you use the same phrase 400 times in if you use the same three if you use the same three three word phrase 400 times in your thesis that means a hundred and one thousand two hundred words are the same. So change them but yeah I think letting letting the student find helping the student find the path that they want to be on and then let them do the project their way even if you're thinking oh actually I might have chosen I would have prioritized this bit of evidence rather than this one but letting them make the decisions as well is a challenge.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:13

Yeah I mean that that's a really good point and I had I wasn't even thinking that through when I was talking about it but that the the supervisor who who who wants you to write the thesis they want rather than the thesis you want is a you know and that that was I I was aware of that when I was a postgraduate as well there was another guy who was a you know really nice guy who who was supervising one of my friends who was was very seemed to be to me very controlling in terms of shaping the my friend's thesis in a way that my supervisor wasn't so but I think that I I mean I'm I'm at language and and and stuff like that I think that I'm I'm and I'm quite interventionist on that as well but on some level that's superficial not in a a bad way but it's not shaping the core of what the thesis is it's it's helping the student to present it as effectively as as possible you know and get rid of those repetitive cliches and the the the the you know the kind of the the wordiness that that creeps into stuff so so yeah I mean at the end at the end it it be it's be it becomes quite common to write the same thing write more or less the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:32

But having these type these these supervision feedback is is i it it is useful because it can lead to a a a different outcome while writing something quite similar to it. I think that that's that's a good point. And also the other point is that um that the PhD itself isn't just only one author it's just the main author obviously the student but at the same time you have you have at your side a huge staff academic staff and non-academic staff that is helping you it's giving you feedback and besides the the besides you guys you guys give me the feedback on on the the different topics my curr my current partner has been helping me with the English right and so the language and the tone and the structure was really helpful when she was she was intervening on the final hurdles of my of the of my dissertation and say you better to cut this off because it feels quite repetitive of what you said previously.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:36

And I think even if you're not you know obviously you're writing in a language you didn't grow up speaking which is a it's a different it's a different challenge. It is particularly particularly when particularly when you're exposed to academic English and Nando's English which is a sort of slightly different it's a slightly different kind of um but I think even if you're even if you're right you know I would get I would get people to to read stuff um and I still get people to read stuff particularly with the popular book that I wrote I made sure that that was read by non-academics but you know because so often we get kind of caught up in trying to sound clever and it's like don't try to sound clever just be clever you know and sure that you're clever and have an idea.

Isolation And Finding Your People

SPEAKER_00 1:03:18

Yeah and that's the sort of issue of with the the only single authorship that people still confused even p some even I heard some PhDs themselves that thought this is a lone this is a long and lonely road and I said no it's no it isn't you have people who are by your side and they are helping you to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:36

So it's claiming that the PhD is entirely yours yes but at the same time no I mean it's it's good to hear that that you view it that way because I you know for for me you know kind of on on a a challenge in a sense or a concern with working with PhD students in this system is the extent to which doing a PhD in in in the sort of UK style might be quite isolating and in in a way that perhaps it wasn't so much for me in the American system because you know having gone through those three years of coursework with a bunch of people in a quite a also quite a large graduate program you know that we were actually quite a a close community in terms of support whereas if if you particularly if you you go in the UK system you go to a university that where you don't already have a support network and you start a you know three, four year PhD there and you're focused on what just what you're doing. I mean it it is a a concern as a supervisor that the that the student might feel kind of isolated and that might have impacts on mental health and things like that. But so it's good to hear that that you you you had an awareness that there were other people supporting you through that process.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:07

And I think just on that I think it's I think that's a really it's really important what you said. And it's also a tricky balance I think as a supervisor to get because um I'm we'll phrase it like when I started doing my PhD we had a we had a weekly seminar and somebody said to me if you give one paper a term at the weekly seminar by the end of three years you'd have done nine papers and that's a PhD. So that's essentially what I did yeah and I think you know you spend much more time with your peers than you do with your supervisor. You might see your supervisor what an hour a month potentially depending on what stage you are maybe it's every couple of weeks in some you know it varies depending on the student but you're not seeing your supervisor as much as you you're seeing your peers. So it's important to kind of make sure that you have the right environment and I think as you know as members of staff you do cry to you try to help create that environment. So you support things like kind of you know graduate um work in progress things you support weekly seminars that grads want to run and stuff. But there's also an element where people need to have the drive to do it themselves. And then you the you know because I think an an important part of preparing you for an academic world and we've talked we've talked so much about the wider world as well is actually being a self-starter who's got a bit of gumption he's got a little bit of like oh you know what I wish there was more of this going on well and you're you know Lewis you're a good example you're like oh I wonder what it would be like to start a podcast so you started a podcast you know like you've just got to try you you know you you have to so I think yeah making sure that you take advantage of support networks but that you actively seek out ways to build your own is a really important balance and if it doesn't you know universities need to have those systems in place to make sure students aren't struggling. Yeah but also it's on a community of graduate students to create what they need themselves a little bit and take responsibility for that and the employability outcomes of doing that are really valuable.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:08

You know how you know how many conferences did you organize two or three in the time I've organized and then you I've organized three and curiously yeah I'm thinking in seeking I'm on in my network I'm thinking in talking to a person who has some similar research interests to set up a conference in the near future but this is just an idea so yeah if anyone's listening to this who's doing a PhD or wants to do a PhD three conferences is too many two's enough don't don't and also don't organise a conference in the final year of your PhD I'm not sure if you did that but that's good don't do it don't do it in the final yeah do it in do it do it in year two do it in year two I've never organised I've never organized a conference in my life and I have like plans to organize and also just having the seeking of the balance balancing in you doing rather just two or three as you said Stephen rather than doing a hundred and never and not finishing your PhD and you have to delay it.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:08

Yeah but it's also it's it's the it's the what what's the point of it's the like do it at a point where it's strategic for you. So if you try to organize something in first year you don't really know what your project is like great you can meet some people just go along with stuff second year you've got a good idea you've got a bit of time you can organize it but also if you meet people from it and there's networks that you start in a form or whatever or if you go if you organize a conference and there's going to be an edited volume from it from doing the conference to an edited volume coming out you need at least 13 months or two years. So do it in your second year so the thing can be out when you're finishing your PhD rather than trying to do it in fourth year and then it being two years in the wilderness trying to find a job before the thing comes out that you've worked really hard on you know so it's like thinking strategically about these opportunities.

Redundancies And Realistic Opportunities

SPEAKER_00 1:08:54

Yeah I think that too and I also had also with the PhD community all that's all that things with meme doing PhD lounge since the beginning of the PhD by the way and uh and also having other things to to be active I mean we have in in Swan Uni we have a Ph we have a PhD community and they some of them they do talks uh just in a more relaxed way and I curious there's one happening tomorrow but outside of the of Singleton campus and many people they join and they've uh they've extended the concept into setting up different groups on WhatsApp so tomorrow there will be a cycling event and then many PhDs will go. And also PhDs who receive the award are more than welcome to to jump on board. So and since we were talking about the outcomes of getting to academia or not getting into uh an industry job and now we're facing all uh this uh uh existential crisis of the academic redundancies which is just a real thing I've signed up the petition by the way this was a long time ago I spoke to with Nigel about that as well uh and also with the PhDs in trying to at least get a foot on the door uh on any employment do you still think that there will be uh new opportunities for uh Ph talents like myself and other ones to uh get uh either in uh into academia or would you uh uh reckon that industry would be well non-academic roles would be a better alternative I mean look I think I'm I hope it's come across to listeners and you guys both know me I'm a very positive person and the answer to the question you've just asked is a one where actually I think the answer's quite negative.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:55

I think you know is it better to try to get in academia than into industry is a question for the individual. I think you know I think that's up to individuals to explore. I agree on that. Do I do I think that there's going to be a mass load of opportunities in in higher education in the UK in the next two to three years? No I don't and I think that um there will also be some incredibly qualified people on the job market who have lost jobs, left jobs not been able to get jobs because I think you know we're we're it's not just that job cuts are happening in lots of universities now it's that people haven't been hired out of their PhD for quite a long time. I think if if you went through humanities departments particularly in all UK universities and counted the number of people who were permanently employed and under the age of 33, I think you'd get a very short list. You know? So I think that you know people who are graduating now are competing against people who graduated two or three or four or five years ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:03

I think that there will still be quite a robust postdoc market because that stuff is is kind of the funding there is often external and it's not connected directly to university finances and I think there's still a strong a strong market a strong market there and I think ultimately there will be a kind of rebalancing and a period of recovery but I think you know I don't think there's going to be loads of jobs this year, next year the year after unless there's a fundamental change of of policy regarding HE funding which is a shame you know I don't know what you think Nigel Yeah I mean that that sounds realistic certainly although you know as as I said I in through my own my own early career lifetime there were so many lurches up and down from the you know the the mid-80s you know one ancient history job through the you know the late 80s in America where everybody said there were going to be loads and loads of academic jobs and then there weren't in the early 90s but then there were more academic jobs in Britain. So things do change certainly I mean they don't change overnight and and you know there might be unforeseen structural changes that lead to you know more jobs of some kind but then on on the other hand as I've said when we were discussing this in more detail early on I I wish in some senses I'd been more more flexible and and kind of braver in running with some of those alternative career ideas that I'd gone with because I think doing the PhD was was a worthwhile experience in itself and I think it it developed I already had things to offer and the PhD developed some of those skills further and gave me New skills. And I think actually, you know, I could have been been equally happy or or possibly happier going in another direction at that point. So, you know, I mean, yeah, it doesn't look good at the moment. I don't think that's necessarily a a bad thing if you're willing to to be a bit entrepreneurial and flexible about what Yeah and I I think I have I have I have a couple of related thoughts to that as well, which are number one, I think that if there are opportunities for universities to hire, and I should say I have absolutely no intel on this at all.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:48

This is entirely just me guessing. But I think that universities will want to hire young people because I think they will look at the makeup of their department. Obviously, they can't hire a young person over an old person just because they're young. You know, there's protective characteristics to think about. But I think that positions that will become available will probably be ones that are more suited to younger people that will be less well paid, they'll be tutor grade rather than lecture grade or lecturer grade rather than associate professor or whatever. So that's that's one thing that might happen. One of the other things that I hope happens, which humanities academia is awful at, is I'd like to see more opportunities for people to move between industry and academia. Because you see it in you see it in other academic departments that we know in Swansea, but I've got friends in other places who've got people who come in having worked in a period and then they go out of academia and do something else and then they come back to it. And I think um there might be a little bit more like that, as particularly when we're kind of thinking a little bit more, just from kind of history classics lens, a little bit more about like applied learning, a little bit more about embedding employability into a curriculum to give students opportunities. Things like heritage sectors might be a little bit easier to cross between heritage and academia and back again in the next, you know. I'm talking here about, I'm not talking about next year, I'm talking about the next 20 years, you know. I think there might be a little bit more flexibility, more flexibility there. Um I might also see I think universities start to recognise and value a broader set of skill sets when they're hiring. Because certainly when I was and I think it's probably I think it probably is still true. The most important thing now is is your research for an academic job and its connection to the ref, the kind of research excellence framework. That's the most important thing. But I think everyone's got good research, and people will be interested in some of the tiebreakers, and some of the stuff we talked about are the kind of tiebreakers that might help people get get jobs.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:05

Yeah. I do think that's a a good a good uh great way of telling uh to many of us PhDs to just to be realistic on their own goals, and as long as you go throughout your PhD, your your perspective each year, each each year you go through, your perspective of checking employment will change.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:29

Yeah, yeah. But I think my you know my attitude to it is that and what you know Nigel and I both said, like we feel very we feel like we got hugely lucky in our career. And I think you could speak to every academic, and no matter where where they're employed at, no matter their track record, and I think most of them would say at some point they got a little bit of luck, that an opportunity fell in their lap. And what you have to do is be prepared for that opportunity to come your way by doing all the things that you can do so that when the opportunity comes, you can take advantage, you know, if the door's open, the door might be open a tiny bit, and it's your job to kick it down and get in there, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:03

Yeah, with the right I think it's also with the right with the night network that you have and building it strategically and right intel uh yes, strategically uh and not randomly, then something will come up. And I think it's just us need to be quite patient on that and just building that resilience that something will come up. I say I I say even to my parents and even to my to my PhD colleagues and say, look, we we might get a job straight away, but realistically it won't be happen on day and night. It's gonna be it's gonna take quite a struggle. And just the only thing is just to move on and apply for it and then move on and see how it goes. If it isn't, if it isn't this job, then the job will be next. If it isn't that next one, then then we'll be another one. It's just keeping focusing on your research and then reinforce your skill set that you have already.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:58

Yeah, I I also think people have hugely unrealistic experience expectations or understandings of how academia has ever worked. And I think Nigel's corrected some of them here. But you know, I think when I was doing my PhD, like I think everyone just thought you did your PhD and then you got a job and that was it, and you were set for life. And like, obviously, that's obvious. And you know, I think I know one person for whom that happened and they're a genius, but like that's not what happens. People get short-term teaching contracts, you get a short-term postdoc. But that is also true in the wider world. Like, if you want to work in museums, if you want to work in the heritage sector, Nigel talked about like field archaeology being short-term contracts, like all of this stuff is dependent on funding, so it's renewable, so it's short-term contracts, and like you know, yeah, that's tricky. That's it. But it's but I think if you're aware of that, it makes it a bit easier to be not surprised that that is the situation when you get there.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:59

You were saying something, Nigel?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:01

Yeah, but I'm just I mean that the I I the I I'm at least when I was younger, I I I wasn't especially comfortable with with you know change and upheaval and that kind of thing, which makes it all the more remarkable that I actually went to the US to do my my PhD. But then after I finished my PhD, you know, I kind of because of also my expectations of the job market, I I thought things would settle down. You know, little did I know that it would be what another um it would be another seven years before I had uh uh you know kind of a a job that was was open-ended in the sense of not being fixed. And and I think if if I'd been aware of that and been more comfortable with that when I finished my PhD and and kind of known that, you know, yeah, this is the way it's gonna be for a bit. And I I I might have been a bit more, you know, again, kind of adventurous and a bit more um comfortable with what was going on rather than kind of stressed by it, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:15

Yeah, and then I think all that matters is is just to be for any PhD out there, just to be open-minded for any sort for the circumstances, and you'll get you'll get an amazing experience doing the PhD.

Do A PhD For Curiosity

SPEAKER_01 1:21:32

And and and kind of be be mindful about it, you know, kind of try to enjoy the the experience of of what you're doing at at the time, if you can, rather than necessarily just thinking of it as a you know as a way to to get your ultimate goal or whatever that might be.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:54

Yeah, you know, that's the message, isn't it? Like my advice to people who talk to me about should I do a PG, my advice is are you cu are you genuinely curious about this? That's gotta be your number one motivation. Do you have some questions that you want to understand and you want to find an answer to? If you're doing it because it's a stepping stone to something else, you can hate it. It's gonna be a slug. It's three or four years of your life. And you know, yes, you should enjoy it when you're doing it, but there's gonna be bits when you hate it. Because there's every there's bits about every part of your life that you hate at some point, you know what I mean? Like there's bits where you're like, why am I doing this? You know, why am I still playing football with 21-year-olds when I'm 38? There's times when I enjoy it, and there's times when I feel like a slow old man. Like, you know, that's one of the bits of my life that I enjoy. And it's the same with like doing a PhD or a research project. You're gonna have highs and lows with it. But I think like Nigel's point, if you can stand back from it and try to enjoy it while you're doing it, but the best way to enjoy it is to go into it with the right idea of what it is, what it's for, and why you're doing it.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:57

And I think that would be a great advice for any PhD who's listening to to this um late late night session, and uh to also those who who want to go for a PhD, probably you've probably had someone at the end of the of their undergraduate or even and your master's end say, I want to do a PhD. What are your thoughts on it? And probably you might have that as well. Without mentioning names, of course.

Books Channels And Current Projects

SPEAKER_01 1:23:28

What do you think, Nigel? Um, I I to be honest, I didn't actually I didn't hear that question particularly well. So is it it was it something about what how you'd um what you what your advice would be to somebody doing well, you know, yeah, that's exactly what Stephen was just saying. If if if you're if you're interested in it and and it it's something you actually want to spend three years, four years of your life doing without an expectation that it will lead directly to something, then yeah, go ahead. You know, but be just be aware that it's not a a meal ticket to an academic job. But I think most people in that situation now realize that. As I said, I think in many ways I was quite naive when I applied to do a PhD when I finished my PhD all along. Uh I might have felt differently if I'd been more aware of that. But yeah, you know, it's a worthwhile experience in itself, but it is the in itself is important. It's not necessarily what it gets you.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:41

Yeah. I think that's uh a great advice to say, and I mean I just want to say thank you for your time for having the availability and now having having this circling moment and right and quite informal to just to have a have a conversation on on the podcast. It was so it was really it was really great to to have you both on here and then uh spread your thoughts to anyone who wants to do a PhD and also the reality of doing a PhD and then post-phd and then your uh your experience as both supervisors and lecturers, which is which is positive. And so I I really appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:19

Okay, thanks. Yeah, thanks for having us. And hopefully, what six weeks, eight weeks, we'll gotta see you walk across the stage. Hopefully, graduation in July.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:27

Yeah, maybe write hand my fist to say, yes, I made it. So, do you have any other any other things we would like to share? Any upcoming projects that you are you are on research leave, uh Stephen, also so you've also written a book as well, which is great.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:44

Yeah, okay, yeah. Plug some things. If people want to find out about Alexander the Great, they can buy Alexander the Great Lives and Legacies, which is a fun biography of Alexander. Yeah, and um in the process of getting a new kitchen, so buy some copies, please. Uh other things I can plug. Uh, I've been I've started a YouTube channel fairly recently. All right. So you can get me on YouTube at Stephen Harrison History. Stephen Harrison, yeah, Stephen with Ph. I'm doing kind of weekly deep dives into ancient history. So the thing I've just done was the death of Philip II of Macedon. The week before that, I did every time Alexander the Great has been mentioned in the UK Parliament since the year 1800. That's what I've been looking at. So I've been doing a bit of research about that. So yeah, you can get me on you can get me on Instagram as well, at Stephen Harrison History as well, and you get some little shorts there.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:31

All right. Did you you were I do remember that you had a Twitch channel as well at the time of COVID?

SPEAKER_02 1:26:38

Yeah, I'm not doing that. That was that was I was doing yeah, I was doing um during COVID, we were doing kind of um like daily live streams and study streams with me. I called it Good Morning Macedonia because I was teaching Macedonia and we did like 10-15 minutes on Twitch every day, and then we started doing kind of like longer study sessions, which was fun. Yeah, but that's a good you know we talk about opportunities. Like I knew what Twitch was, but I didn't have a huge amount you know to do with it before then. But we ended up writing that, we ended up doing that, doing some research on how it was being received by students, and we wrote it up into an article that got published.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:10

So that's great. That's great. Do you st oh and by the way, just no pun intended? Are you still drinking Pepsi's and Coca-Cola? I'm just about to ask.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:22

Yeah, I got uh honestly, man. Yeah, I think that's too much. I was doing I was teaching, I do I was doing this class on um Alexander, and it was like Death of Alexander, and we were role-playing the wars, we were role-playing the wars of the successors. So everyone in the class had a character, yes, and like every 10 minutes was a year, and there were different parts of the classroom with different parts of the empire, and they could get money to buy troops, and they could basically do whatever they want, right? And some somebody came up to me and said, Uh, oh, do you mind if I just pop out for a second? I was like, Oh my god, someone hates this class. And they came back with a two-litre bottle of Pepsi Max, and they said, and they said they said, Can I trade this for 10,000 troops? And I was like, Yes, you can. And then at the end, I suddenly panicked and I was like, Am I allowed to accept a two-litre bottle of Pepsi Max from a student? So I gave it back to him and said he had to drink it.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:16

Oh man. Well, what's you, Nigel?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:18

Any upcoming projects? Um, yeah, always. I I think I have more projects than I can complete in my foreseeable lifetime at this point, and certainly more books than I can read in my foreseeable lifetime. But yeah, I mean, I I do as as you know, I I do a lot of of work now with practitioner audiences, armed forces, government heritage practitioners about protection of cultural heritage in in wartime, in conflicts, in modern conflicts, but based on on my historical research about cultural heritage in in mostly in Italy in the Second World War. So I'm spending a lot of time, you know, working like with the Irish defence forces and and various other other groups like that, which is really really interesting. And again, it's that kind of the the world outside academia and the value that has and and the you know how refreshing it is actually to get out of an academic audience and and get the feedback, the experience and feedback of you know, of people who've been in in Unifil in in southern Lebanon, for example, being shot at by by both sides. So that there's that and and historical projects that that tie into that. So I'm I'm finishing up a book-length project on Allied soldiers' perceptions of cultural heritage in in Italy in the Second World War. A lot is so many people went to Pompeii on leave when they were serving in Italy in the Second World War and wrote about it in their diaries or memoirs or letters or whatever. So I've been working through a lot of that material, and and that's really interesting, bringing that together now, trying to put together another um funding bid about documentation relating to cultural heritage in the second world war. So, yeah, always lots of things going on and not enough time to get them all done in. But it as my dad would say, it keeps stops you hanging around off on street corners.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:30

Um I think any and maybe more podcast appearances in do in time soon.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:40

But I think we we could do this again if you if you if you'd like in a few years' time and just having any updates of what's had been happening in other worlds, and so that would that would be great. Yeah, sounds good.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:51

So you you can ask me how how retirement's going. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:55

I can do I can do that, I can do that for sure. Maybe that's hanging out.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:58

You've been hanging around on those street corners again, Nigel.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:01

So when we become a professor emeritus.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:05

I'm told the great thing about retiring as an academic is you actually get time to do the work that you would have done if the other work hadn't got in the way. So but not for a few years.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:18

Therefore, Nigel and Stephen, thank you so much. And thank you once again for being my my supervisors in this course of six, seven years. And it was great. It was a great run. And and yes, let's do this again. So it's it's gonna be a great time and looking forward to see you maybe in coffee chats if you'd like to do so during the graduation ceremony. So I'm gonna be sticking around in Swansea for some time whilst looking for jobs as well, and keep grinding on PhD lounge as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:47

So and I again, you know, many, many congratulations to you on your persistence and and and hard work and yeah, and and getting to where you have. So yeah, yeah, well done. Thoroughly well done, great.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:04

Thank you so much. And for the the students and graduates listening, thank you all for tuning in, and it's been a pleasure.