Thesis Boot Camp experience

Mara Arts

Over the course of three days early April, a group of Birkbeck PhD students were able to participate in a ‘thesis boot camp’, organised by the CHASE consortium. Thesis boot camps originated in Australia and are designed to give PhD candidates a concentrated period of time to focus on their writing, and produce as many words as possible.

The boot camp was hosted by the University of Sussex on the Feltham campus, and the event was expertly facilitated by writing skills trainer Dr Catherine Pope. Around 30 doctoral students attended the whole weekend, hailing from seven different institutions.

We started at 4pm on a Friday afternoon, with introductions and a few words from Catherine to display some persistent writing myths. We were reminded that the aim of the weekend was to produce as many words as possible, and not to craft perfect prose or fully edited chapters. Catherine also taught us the ‘Pomodoro technique’ of doing 25 minutes of concentrated writing, followed by a short break. This was going to prove very useful over the course of the weekend!

Then it was time to get writing. We started with telling another student what we were hoping to achieve that session, which was followed by five minutes of ‘freewriting’ on the topic ‘What do I want to achieve this weekend?’ Freewriting is writing whatever comes into your head, non-stop, without any regard for spelling, grammar or punctuation. It helps to get the writing juices flowing. The rest of the evening, until 8pm, was spent writing.

We had two big classrooms at our disposal: one ‘writing room’ where each student had a desk, and where we were asked not to talk to create a good working environment. The room next door was the break room, which had a constant supply of drinks and snacks, and which we could use whenever we wanted to chat, relax, or play games. Lunches and dinners were also served in the breakroom. Having all meals catered for, and being away from the demands of your domestic environment, really helped to stay focused on the research. As most participants were staying in the same hotel (also generously funded by CHASE) it was easy to unwind together over a drink in the evenings.

On Saturday and Sunday the schedule was much the same. We started at 10am each day with telling our ‘accountability partner’ what that day’s goal was, and then did a bit of freewriting to get going. The rest of the days were split up in sizeable chunks of writing time. Participants could also request a one-to-one session with Catherine to discuss a particular issue they had with their research. On Saturday there was a guided walk in the fields adjacent to the campus, to get some much-needed fresh air. We also spent some time in group discussions each day, to share common PhD student problems such as tricky supervisors or managing work-related stress; and to swap writing tips.

When we finished at 4pm on Sunday, Catherine gave us some tips on how to keep our writing momentum going. Although everyone was pretty worn out after so much hard work, many participants were hoping to attend another boot camp session soon. They are a great way to get over tricky writing hurdles and start good writing habits.

Mara Arts is a PhD student in the Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck.

The following training opportunities are available to all Arts and Humanities research students at Birkbeck.

CHASE Creative Writing Residency

18 – 25 May | Near Kings Lynn, Norfolk

A creative writing residency to provide an opportunity for creative writers across the CHASE network to build creative writing skills, further CHASE creative writing projects, develop pedagogical skills and build relationships across the network.

The Residency is a one-week program for creative writers from 18th to 25th May at the Great Barn Farm near Kings Lynn. The week will consist of daily student led workshops and writing classes on theory and practice with a masterclass on the 19th from Sarah Hall, who has published six novels, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The week will also include scheduled time for participants to further their own creative projects. It will conclude with a group discussion on teaching best practices and draft guidelines.

• Read the full schedule and apply here

Possibilities: Media as process and actant

Title: Continuous corpo-realities <-> diagramming probabilities and possibilities!

Friday 9 March | 10.00-17.00 | University of Sussex

How do digital tools, environments and research co-construct each other? How can you trace the materiality of your research?  How might you diagram the interdependencies of your research sites? What are some of the possible re-mappings and re-imaginings that might occur?

• Read more and apply here

The following training opportunities are available to all Arts and Humanities research students at Birkbeck.

What Future for Theory?

26 March (Goldsmiths, University of London), 23 & 24 May (UEA)

‘Theory’ no longer holds the ascendancy it did in its 1980s heyday. Research has become more archive-oriented, more concerned with the production of knowledge, for which new possibilities have emerged with the advent of the ‘digital humanities’. ‘Theory’, with its specialised language, its immanent readings, became a symbol for the humanities’ inability to communicate their value; the model of the ‘output’ assures academic institutions and the culture in which they operate that humanistic research has something to show for itself. Theory also seems out of step with those contemporary political movements that aim to articulate new subjectivities and identities: theory itself had pronounced the death of the subject, and dismantled the metaphysical assumptions underpinning identity. Increasingly, theory appears a thing of the past.

But at a time when both the university and the humanities are undergoing major transformations, we wish to ask: how might theory, both its canonical past and its emerging forms, help us to make sense of our current moment, its technological/scientific developments, its forms of cultural production? And how does this current moment demand that we rethink the approaches and methods of theory? Particularly pressing are the ways digital technologies are transforming the way we conduct and disseminate research, but at the same time the limits and possibilities of the human: our present moment calls not just to be analysed, but to be theorised.

The programme will be made up of a symposium, to be held at Goldsmiths on 26 March 2018, and a roundtable, to take place at UEA on 23 May. On 24 May, participants will produce a video response to the questions that had arisen in the discussions thus far.

Find out more and apply here: Deadline to apply Wednesday 21 February

French for Academic Purposes 2

Further sessions in the series

• Session 1: 14 February, 13.00-15.00, Courtauld Research forum
• Session 2: 21 February, 13.00-15.00, Courtauld Seminar Room 1
• Session 3: 27 February, 14.00-16.00, Institute of Historical Research Pollard Room
• Session 4: 6 March, 14.00-16.00, Institute of Historical Research Pollard Room

Find out more and apply here

The following training opportunities are available to all Arts and Humanities research students at Birkbeck.

Thought and Image: Processes of Reciprocity

Friday 2 February 2018 | Goldsmiths, University of London

The process by which an idea becomes an image and an image an idea is by no means straight forward, nonetheless this alchemy is the key task Audio Visual PhD students must perform. We are happy to announce this programme of Master Classes with leading artists who will talk about the generation of ideas and artworks in their current practice. By taking advantage of the collaborative nature of this venture between Goldsmiths, LUX and Birkbeck we will present a wide variety of subjects and approaches from both UK and internationally based artists.

The first event features Alia Syed, a London and Glasgow based filmmaker who has been making experimental films for over 25 years.

• Find out more and apply

Researching Popular Music: Methods, Debates, Publics

Friday 2 – Saturday 3 March 2018 | Goldsmiths, University of London

Students are investigating music-making communities, musical-cultural identities and histories, modes of musical production and dissemination, theories of sound and sonic practice, and other musical topics. What ties almost all of these projects together is some idea of the popular: of music’s publics, and its modes of everyday musical participation. But the popular music studies canon cannot always provide methodological models for what is a set of highly innovative PhD studies. To address this, Researching Popular Music will bring together students across the CHASE institutions to present and discuss their work, both with each other, and with invited speakers working at the forefront of music and sound studies.

• Find out more and apply

The following CHASE training opportunities are open to all current Arts and Humanities PhD students at Birkbeck.

The London Docklands Walk (part of Critical Excursion series of events)

Monday 27 November | 15.00 – 18.00

The London Docklands was at one point one of the world’s largest ports and central to the economic growth of the British Empire. As one of main port arteries connecting London to its colonies, the Docklands holds a rich and complex cultural tradition often neglected in understandings of the formation of British culture and society. This walk will move through the existing geographical site of what was in 1981 ‘The London Dockland Development Corporation’ (LDDC). The LDDC was the flagship of the radical right’s attempt to regenerate inner city London by minimising public sector involvement in order to incentivize global capital to take the lead in social and economic redevelopment.

• Find out more and register

Network: The Matter of the Archive before 1700

Friday 15 December | Lunch 13.00, Workshop: 14.00-16.00/16.30

Medieval and Early Modern Coinage

Hands-on workshop at the British Museum, led by Dr Martin Allen (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).

This is a workshop for all medievalists and early modernists – historians, literary scholars, art historians and beyond – who are looking to learn more about coins and monetary systems. The session is conceived as a focussed introduction, and source of inspiration, for people working broadly on the Middle Ages and early modern period in Europe (including the British Isles).

• Find out more and register

Writing and Reading Landscapes of Utility

Dates throughout January, February & March 2018

This series of in-situ training sessions seeks to direct critical and creative attention to a range of aesthetically under-imagined or neglected fringe environments such as landfills, industrial wastelands and utility plants, as sites of an emerging cultural sensibility (as distinct from the established critical category of ‘non-places’ such as shopping malls and retail parks and other familiar spaces of urban and peri-urban modernity).

The aim of these training sessions will be to investigate these materially and economically significant terrains, exploring their cultural and historical groundedness, while asking a number of questions about the changing uses and stresses to which land and environment are put.

• Find out more and register

Sensible Cinema

Friday 19 & Saturday 20 January 2018 | Goldsmiths, University of London & Birkbeck, University of London

A CHASE Advanced Research Craft Workshop Session

This two-day advanced training workshop brings key practitioners in film, video, and sound together with CHASE PhD students and staff to explore new research methods for creating moving-image works organised around an ecological sensibility; one that is attuned to both human and non-human modes of perception.

The notion of “sensible cinema” around which the workshop and its training sessions are conceptualised might be characterised as advancing a geo-aesthetic approach to filmmaking; tapping into an expanded acoustic frequency range and exploring the limit conditions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

CHASE PhD students will workshop their research ideas and current projects alongside that of our guest practitioners and staff in a series of four closed sessions followed by two public events comprised of screenings and discussions to be held at both Goldsmiths and Birkbeck.

Training sessions will combine the presentation of practical work and technical insights with theoretical reflections upon these engagements and will thus require certain preliminary preparation on the part of students in the form of a reading package with links to projects, clips and new technologies.

The workshop is also open to students who have a direct interest in the subject area and wish to participate in the unfolding discussions

• Find out more and register here