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Month: January 2015

Nathan

Episode 34: Dr Grant Aitken

Episode

In Episode 34 I talk to Dr Grant Aitken, who had his viva in December 2014 at the University of Southampton; Grant’s research explored the social epidemiology of chronic kidney disease in England, and we chatted about how he did his research, what the outcomes were and what happened in his viva. Grant (who is on Twitter here) is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Southampton.

Let me know what you think of this episode, leave comments on this post, tweet @VivaSurvivors or email me – particularly if you want to appear in an episode of the podcast this year.

Thanks for listening! (and reading!)

Nathan (@DrRyder and @VivaSurvivors)

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Nathan

Episode 33: Dr Helen Kara

Episode

In the first episode of 2015, I’m very happy to be interviewing Dr Helen Kara, who is an independent researcher and director of We Research It Ltd. Helen completed her PhD on the emotion work of managers of Sure Start Children’s Centre, and it was great to talk to her about this – and of course her viva – but also her experience of starting a PhD following several years of being a researcher.

Helen has written a book on research methods, as well as several short guides on aspects of doing research. You can find her Amazon author page here. Feel free to leave comments or ask questions on this post, or you can get in touch by tweeting @VivaSurvivors or emailing me! I’m looking for more interviewees to share their PhD and viva stories this year, as well as people happy to talk about academic life or being an examiner. Please get in touch!

Thanks for listening! (and reading!)

Nathan (@DrRyder and @VivaSurvivors)

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Nathan

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Update

Hello! It’s just over a month since I tweeted and shared things through Viva Survivors. Christmas and New Year was lovely for us, and I hope the same was true for you, however you celebrated the season.

Looking Back

2014 was an interesting and good year for the podcast: despite a long break from producing new episodes, the end of the year finished with two episodes each month, and the podcast had growing numbers of visitors and downloads – the Ask an Examiner special was so popular that it was the 8th most downloaded episode of the year despite only being shared in early December. Already it is the most downloaded episode this year – so I’ll do my best to organise more interviews with examiners throughout 2015.

I experimented with Patreon as a possible way to support the growth of the podcast, but with changes to UK VAT laws for digital products I’ve decided to suspend this until there is more clarity on what this would mean for me as a freelancer. Thanks to everyone who tweeted and shared this.

Looking Ahead

I’m trying to be more prepared for producing episodes this year, and aim to continue creating a minimum of two episodes per month. There are two episodes already lined up for January:

  • January 19th 2015 – Episode 33: Dr Helen Kara
  • January 26th 2015 – Episode 34: Dr Grant Aitken

I have a proposed schedule for the rest of the year, right the way through to December; this would have a minimum of two episodes per month, and I have ideas for month-long events later in the year. Watch this space for details! Of course, in order to produce these I need your help, so please get in touch if you want to share your story or join me one of the specials.

My Books

Fail Your Viva is still going strong in the Amazon Kindle Store – the price went up in January, again because of changes to UK VAT laws – and I am exploring a self-published print run at the moment. I’ve got some interesting opportunities coming up that I’m not quite ready to talk about, but will do when I have more details. One that I can talk about is my second book, Frequently Asked Questions about the PhD Viva, which is currently in production and is on track to be in the Kindle Store by Easter. And I will update on this soon!

Finally, look to the right – I’ve put a subscribe link over there if you want to be emailed whenever new updates and episodes appear on the site. Thanks for supporting the podcast, sharing it and listening to it through the last year, and I hope that I produce some great and helpful things this year.

Thanks for reading!

Nathan (@DrRyder and @VivaSurvivors)