Episode 60: Dr Ania Gruszczynska

Sixty episodes! Sixty!

In Episode 60 I’m chatting to Dr Ania Gruszczynska, who completed her PhD at Aston University in 2010. Ania’s research is in sociology and gender studies, and her thesis was titled Queer enough? Contested terrains of identity deployment in the context of gay and lesbian public activism in Poland.

We explore how she came to look at this area of research, how she prepared for the viva and what happened on the day. We also talk about how her role as an IT Project Manager, and Ania tells me about her PhD Career Coach service, something that’s well worth checking out. You can find Ania on Twitter here.

As ever, drop me a line if you’d like to be a part of a future episode, and if you have any questions, comments or suggestion then feel free to email or tweet at me. Also, check out my ebooks and books on viva preparation – including The Viva Prep Handbook, which I launched this month.

Thanks for reading!

Nathan (@DrRyder and @VivaSurvivors)

Episode 53: Dr Michael Munnik

In this episode I’m talking to Dr Michael Munnik, who had his viva at the University of Edinburgh just over a year ago. Michael’s PhD research looked at the relationships between journalist and Muslim sources in Glasgow; it was really fascinating to hear about his research, how he prepared for his viva and what happened on the day. Michael is now a lecturer in social science theories and methods at Cardiff University, and you can find out more about him here.

In the summer of this year Michael wrote three posts for the Pubs and Publications blog, check them out here:

This is the last episode for 2015, but we’ll be back again in January 2016. Soon after that I’ll be launching the Patreon campaign for supporting the podcast – get in touch if you’d like advance notice about this. You can find me on Twitter too as @DrRyder or @VivaSurvivors. I love hearing from people who want to come on the podcast to share their PhD and viva experiences – and we’ll be hearing a lot more of them on the podcast in 2016!

Thanks for reading!

Nathan (@DrRyder and @VivaSurvivors)

Episode 7: Dr Andy Hoyle and Dr Louise Hoyle

In this episode I talk to some married friends of mine, the Drs Hoyle! Dr Andy Hoyle graduated from the University of Liverpool in 2006 with a PhD in Mathematical Biology; Dr Louise Hoyle finished her postgraduate research this year, completing her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Stirling.

We’ve been trying to arrange an interview time for a while now; I thought it would be really interesting to chat with them about their research and also about their experience of having a partner who was doing postgraduate research. It was lots of fun talking to Andy and Louise, I hope you enjoy listening to it. They had lots of good advice for both the PhD and the viva.

Episode 8 should be along in the next few weeks; I’m still looking for interesting ideas for future podcasts and interviewees. Drop me an email, leave comments on the episodes and make sure you’re following the Twitter feed for announcements: @VivaSurvivors.