The Anxious PhD: 3 x 3 Useful Strategies for completing a PhD with anxiety

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay  I completed my PhD in English Literature at the University of York, in the UK, in 2014. I was diagnosed with anxiety in around 2013, but I’ve had some form of anxiety for much, much longer. I wanted to write this post to highlight some of the things I found most difficult, …

New to University Teaching? Look After Yourself

[UPDATE: Since I wrote this, the wonderful Kit Heyam has written a queer supplement to this - it's well worth reading and can be found here] Starting to teach in higher education can be lonely and nerve-wracking. It’s easy to feel insecure about your knowledge and skills (do I know enough? Will I bore them? …

Supporting Postgraduate and (other) casually-employed teaching staff

This week’s UCU strike takes as one of three issues the treatment of casual staff at universities in the UK. Agitating for change on a national level is great, of course, but a lot of important changes can be made at the institutional, departmental and even module level by the behaviour of full-time and especially …

5 ways to develop your teaching as a PhD student

Developing one's teaching is rapidly becoming an essential part of being a PhD student. Many universities now offer at least some form of training to postgraduate students who teach, and this is often linked to Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. This is, by and large, a Good Thing: sending new teachers into the …