Doing a PhD abroad

By Svenja Riedesel, Aberystwyth University

I’m a second year PhD student in Geography and Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth University. I’m glad I made the decision to move from Germany to the UK to study here for my PhD.

In this post, I’d like to tell you how it is for me to live and study abroad and give a few tips about doing a PhD abroad.

How did I end up doing a PhD in the UK?

By chance I ended up taking a short course on luminescence dating at Aberystwyth University, which was followed by a four week research stay a couple of months later. I fell in love with luminescence, the charismatic little Welsh town on the Irish Sea coast and the friendly chatty Welsh people. I was fortunate to secure funding for a PhD, therefore the last step was to pack my things and move to the UK. I didn’t even really think about it, I just went. My family supported me in this decision. Some others raised concern: living of a scholarship abroad…you will not pay into a retirement or unemployment fund (very German thing), what if Brexit happens and they kick you out? However, I had confidence in my decision and hoped my choice would pay off in the long run.

Ups and downs

Now I’m a bit more than half way through my PhD and I get to enjoy it more and more. It isn’t always easy, being a day trip away from home, family and friends. However, on the bright side: I made new friends and found home in Aberystwyth (at least temporarily). This however didn’t come instantly. Firstly, everything felt more like a vacation. Then things happen, seemingly minor things such as a toilet not draining, or a wheelbarrow wheel breaking, this combined with some PhD rollercoaster moments, made me realise that I am far away from home. However, after overcoming these small hurdles I am now settled and enjoying the place I live. It took me longer than I thought, but now I can really enjoy what I’m doing, despite of being far away from home in another country.

Here are a few tips by me, things that helped me to settle in:

Organise yourself. I am an EU citizen in the UK, so many things were straight forward, but if you’d like to study outside the EU (or are a non-EU student coming to another country), you might encounter some more difficulties. You need a new bank account, health insurance, probably a new phone number, maybe a visa. Check out things well in advance and if possible, arrive a couple of days earlier to sort things out. As your first week at the University will be full of introductory courses and meeting new people, you don’t want to sort your bank account at that time.

Get out. Fortunately, I was able to bring my horse with me. He’s a bit of home away from home, my get-away-from-the-PhD and my connection to the outside of academia – something I find very important. So if you like doing sports or are passionate about music etc. try to continue with this during your PhD and get in contact with University societies, clubs or other students early on to find out what options you have.

Talk to people. Another thing I had to learn was to say yes. Just joining in, especially early on, when people ask you to join for a trip, a night out, or just a coffee break. It is always good to talk to people. Communicate with other PhD students, they are in the same position as you are, so helping each other is a great thing.

Take time for yourself. You can’t engage all the time. Personally, I got really tired at the end of the day during the first months, just from speaking a different language and listening to it all day. Now I start my day listening to my favourite German radio station on the internet while having breakfast. Every time when I go home, I buy a new book in German. I love reading in the evenings and sometimes it’s nice to have something easy to read, where the brain does not have to work that much, because of the foreign language.

Don’t be afraid of making mistakes when speaking or writing. I make mistakes when I speak or write, but this hadn’t had any influence on my PhD so far. Nobody will blame you, when you make mistakes. There was some friendly laughter by friends of mine about some ridiculous things I said, because I messed words up, but that does not impact any relationships. The only thing to keep in mind is that most universities expect a certain level of language skills, which you have to prove via a test (e.g. ILTES, but check the required test for your chosen program). I did my ILTES test well in advance to the application deadline, so in case I didn’t fulfil the requirements, I could take the test again and improve. But there is plenty help with these types of tests online, and your chosen university will be able to provide help and advice too.

Know where to get help. Your wellbeing and both your mental and physical health is important. You are not alone when doing a PhD program. First of all your supervisors are not only there to help you with scientific questions, they can give you advice and guidance too. You can talk to fellow PhD students or other international students as well. Aberystwyth University, for example, offers help, information or enables connection with other international students via social programs. Universities also offer wellbeing services you can contact.

I hope this blog posts answered some open questions, or got you interested in studying abroad for a PhD. I really think it is a great opportunity and I’m very glad I made the decision to come to the UK for my PhD.

Where to find a PhD position?

If you are interested in going abroad for a PhD, the internet is the first place to search for institutions that do research in your field of interest. If you’re able to participate at a conference during your Master’s then this is a good place to look out for researchers you might be able to work with. Another option are scientific publications. You could get in touch with the authors and ask, if they have any opportunities. Or you might be able to speak to staff in your current university who know of projects. PhD projects are also advertised on the internet (for example: https://www.earthworks-jobs.com for geoscience, https://www.findaphd.com), Twitter is also a great place to look if you follow relevant academics in your field.

 

Getting into Programming: Top Tips

By Sarah Louise Brown, University of Manchester

My PhD researches how much organic carbon is processed to the atmosphere within watercourses that receive eroded peat soil, and a large part of this uses a data logger I built and programmed. If you had asked me 18 months ago whether I knew how to program the answer would have been a resounding “No” and in my head I would have added “…and I doubt I ever will”. I’m a Geographer, why would I need to!?

Fast forward to 2019 and while I still consider myself a novice, I have a decent enough understanding of programming and an aptitude in the programming that meets my needs. My needs are mostly hardware, e.g. Arduino or Rapsberry-Pi mini-computers wired to various environmental sensors but I also work in ‘command line’* based software such as LaTex, Matlab and R.

If you’re interested in programming or have a question you think could be answered with programming but don’t know where to begin, I’ve written some tips on how to get started.

1. Start Small. The first piece of programming I ever did on my own, without attending some kind of course beforehand (see #3), was programming a Rapsberry Pi to write the classic “Hello World!” on a screen in front of me. The second was getting the built in light to flash on an Arduino. The code for the latter is included on the Arduino board so I didn’t even have to type anything! Working with Excel-style data in MatLab is another thing to try. These smaller activities help you learn to navigate the software you write code into. My PhD research is more complex but I added each aspect of my data logger sequentially, giving myself many smaller successes and I didn’t feel overwhelmed. Start with small tasks designed to build your aptitude and work towards your end goal gradually.

2. Copy other code. The wiki article about ‘copy and paste programming‘ sounds quite derogatory and was probably written by someone who considered themselves the Architect of the Matrix. But why write new code when old code will do? Github and Adafruit are astonishingly useful resources for open-source code and many electronic components come with downloadable content. However, it could be easy then to go through your programming life never really knowing what any of your code does, leaving you unable to fix your own equipment or program. As you borrow code, read through it to understand the structure and purpose of each line. Most code allows you to make comments, so make sure you write down what each section/line does e.g. give it a title and write notes clearly. This will help you become a better and faster coder, but will be beneficial when you return to your code or if you want to build upon it later.

3. Take an introductory course in any kind of command line software. Many universities offer introductory courses to programming softwares, or there are a lot online e.g. Datacamp. My first experience with anything that used a ‘command line’ was MatLab and this familiarised me with the format of typing something in a specific format and the software following this instruction. During my PhD 1^st year I took an ‘Introduction to LaTex’ course, a word processing software based within a programming environment. These two were excellent starting points when I made the journey to Arduino programming and more recently R, because the basics (such as: types of data, what code libraries are, knowing to always check brackets when you get an error message, and the best search terms to use online to solve the problem I was having) were already in my head.

4. Check online when you get stuck. If you’re stuck on anything programming, Google is seriously your friend. Any problem you are having, someone else has also had that exact same problem and another person has solved it on an online forum (see Stack Exchange). The worst thing you can become is disheartened because you feel like you’ve reached the end of your ability, but a PhD can be about educating YOU as well as pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and taking time to solve problems can have unexpected rewards for your research.

5. Understand what you want to do with programming. You don’t need to become a pro to make programming useful to you. PhDs are often time pressured and I wrote at the start of this blog post I have ‘an aptitude for the programming that meets my needs’, and this is because I try to make programming something that saves me time rather than something that I have to put lots of time into. If your research goal involves managing and investigating large datasets, especially through repetitive maths/stats or data fitting, you might find learning R (or RStudio) useful as it won’t crash as often as Excel and you have more control over data fitting and graphical outputs. I didn’t need to learn e.g. how to make webpages, or how to connect my datalogger to WiFi, to answer my PhD’s core research questions and I have kept this goal in mind.

 

Sarah Louise Brown, University of Manchester Geography Department. Thanks to Svenja Riedesel for helpful comments.

Email: Sarah.Brown-2@Manchester.ac.uk

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sarahlb

Twitter @Brown_SL_

 

*A command line is a way of interacting with a computer or software where you write instructions in coded text format.

 

Post Ph.D. possibilities…What next?

By Morgan Jones

You’ve handed in your thesis (best feeling ever!), you’ve celebrated accordingly, and you’ve rested after one of if not the biggest achievements of your life. Your mind may turn to your viva but that might be a while yet, but what is likely to start making its way into your thinking is what next?! You may have been lucky enough to land a great job or training position somewhere that you are going to seamlessly transfer to from your Ph.D. without a break, but you may also not have a next plan. Nine months ago, that was me.

I handed in my thesis in September 2017, in the field of glaciology, and was in a great position with a number of published journal articles and a fair amount of teaching experience. My supervisors had been really supportive and made sure I knew the job market was difficult, but that I had the experience and work ethic to be OK. I knew I wanted to be in academia or something equally interesting, but there didn’t seem to be many academic jobs about.  However, some job adverts trickled in and I applied, getting rejected from some and interviews for others. Then, in December I got a great little six-month position at the University of Cumbria as a Lecturer in Physical Geography – an amazing opportunity to get lots of teaching experience and earn some money!

What ensued was a really great four months (still got two months to go)! I was thrown in at the deep end teaching a variety of students across the whole physical geography spectrum, some of which I had never done myself before as I did geology as an undergraduate degree. I was used to teaching in a team, but due to the small class sizes I was on my own, which was both daunting and great experience!  It has been full on and a bit of a shock – being responsible for the whole teaching process takes dedication and time. My boss was nice enough to give me teaching material to build on, but I still had to put in a lot of time to get them into something I was happy to teaching. This didn’t leave a huge amount of work time to do research, but after passing my viva in February I shared my spare work time (and a lot of evenings) between thesis corrections, finishing papers and applying for the next job.  The last of these is still undecided, but what I am learning is that whilst I thought I was only trained for a specific job, my Ph.D. had actually led me to develop a huge range of skills, to be dependable, to have a good work ethic and to be passionate about I do. That meant that the range of jobs I am now applying for is in a far broader area than research and lecturing, and with the last job behind me I have the confidence that I can get one of the many jobs I am applying for.

My experience is only one of many. Some of my peers have landed a job before the end of their Ph.D., some got the first one they applied for. Some have become teachers, or expedition leaders, or gone travelling. The end of your Ph.D. is scary, but you are highly trained and have worked hard – that will lead to something. However, here are a few tips I picked up along the way that might be useful:

• During your Ph.D. say yes: My supervisor always told me to take every opportunity that arose, and I did. There were instances that didn’t feel right, but those extra things (teaching, outreach, reviewing papers) all helped me to broaden my skill set, which is so handy for future job applications and for broadening the jobs you can apply for.

 

• Save up some money/ have a backup: Don’t assume you’ll get a job straight away after your Ph.D. Try and save some money along the way so it wouldn’t be the end of the world if you have to take a bit of time off or wait to be employed. I needed some time off because I was exhausted after working hard for four years, and I anticipated this so had kept a bit of money aside each month to enable me to do that.

 

• Apply for everything: a rule I’ve heard in academia is that you should only apply for jobs where you meet all the criteria. I agree with this, but even if you only have a slightly tenuous example of how you fit one of the criteria, apply! You can only get rejected and as long as you are ready for that by being realistic, you might as well apply. You’ll learn about the application process along the way and build up a bank of covering letters, research statements and answers to criteria, which will make the process increasingly easy.

 

• Keep talking to academics: your peers, your supervisors, anyone you’ve been in touch with during your Ph.D. If you’re looking for an academic job they will let you know if they hear of anything, but I’ve also found chatting to such people keeps you interested in academia. Ideas for further papers or grant applications also might appear in these chats, which are always good to follow up, and get them to read your job applications too!

 

• Think about your own research: Job applications will ask about your future research, so you need to be prepared for that, but it is also a great idea to have a go at writing a grant application yourself. It will force you to come up with and refine ideas for your future research, and you can then also add you have grant writing experience in applications.

 

• Look beyond academia: You may be dead set on being in academia, but realistically it may just not happen. That doesn’t mean you’re a failure, it just means you are trying to get a job in a very competitive sector and you sometimes just have to be in the right place at the right time. Have a look what else is out there – you might be able to use your skills in another equally interesting role.

 

• Keep at it! Something will turn up – you are highly qualified with a great range of skills.

 

Beyond your PhD: Tim Meadows, Lecturer in Physical Geography, The University of Manchester

If I had to describe the approach I’ve taken to my career so far I would have to go with ‘decisively indecisive’: decisive because I’ve made a couple of bold decisions without really questioning myself or thinking twice; indecisive because those decisions have resulted in a couple of significant changes in direction, both geographically and professionally. Let me explain…

I ended up doing a PhD much more out of luck than judgement. Throughout my undergrad geography degree at the University of Nottingham, I’d always really enjoyed the rivers modules. This was in part due to my seemingly innate love of all things rivers, as well as some genuinely inspirational teaching at Nottingham and several memorable field trips to glamorous mid-Wales. So I always thought I wanted to do ‘something about rivers’, but that was as far as my career plan had developed. That was when a couple of chance conversations with Colin Thorne around Easter of my third year put me onto the PhD trail. Unfortunately, our first application for funding was promptly rejected, forcing me to hastily develop and execute Plan B – this turned out to be doing an MSc in GIScience, again at Nottingham. In retrospect this was a pretty good move as I developed some key skills that have turned out to be quite useful further down the line.

With my MSc all but secured, Colin and I submitted another funding application – this time to do some modelling work aimed at assessing flood risks caused by elevated sediment yields from catchments that were severely disturbed during the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens. This project was deemed worthy of funding, and I consequently embarked on my PhD in the autumn of 2010. Looking back on my PhD now, it was an enjoyable and ultimately rewarding experience and I’ve come to realise just how much of a privilege it is to spend three years researching a topic that you have a genuine interest in. As a scientist, there’s really nothing better you could be doing. However, by the end of my time at Nottingham I had become fairly convinced that academia wasn’t for me. So keen was I to leave, in fact, that I took up a job with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency in Edinburgh long before I was ready to submit. In retrospect this was a bad idea and resulted in a fairly painful year of late nights and seven-day working weeks – not something I’d recommend.

The North Fork Toutle River draining the north flank of Mount St Helens: my PhD study site.

Despite the poor timing of my move to Edinburgh, the two and a half years I spent at SEPA were great and I learnt a huge amount about rivers and practical river management. I worked as part of SEPA’s Hydromorphology Technical Group to provide advice regarding the potential impacts of proposed river engineering works on fluvial forms and processes. This advice was used to inform decisions regarding licence applications and, ultimately, to protect and improve Scotland’s rivers. It was really rewarding to be able to apply my knowledge of fluvial geomorphology to real-world problems and to contribute to environmental protection in this way. I covered the southern half of Scotland and another great part of the job was having the opportunity to go out and visit rivers in such a diverse and beautiful country.

Bank erosion on the River Tweed at Drumelzier: my first case as a Senior Hydromorphologist at SEPA.

However, a little while after I finally submitted my PhD at the end of 2014 I began to realise that I was missing academia (this is what I mean by indecisive). In particular, I missed the relative freedom to define my day-to-day work and the ability to keep up with (and participate in) new and exciting research – I longed to go to a research seminar or to read a journal article! So I started looking for new jobs…

After a short while I came across a job posting for a Geomorphologist at the Environment Agency in Nottingham. Although this was a very similar job to the one I was already doing at SEPA and not the move back into academia that I’d hoped for, the opportunity to return to my University city was one that I couldn’t pass up. I was lucky enough to be offered the job and this prompted another rewriting of my career ‘plan’. It was another really interesting job but after only a few months my hankering to get back into academia returned. The rivers of the East Midlands are also somewhat less exciting geomorphologically than the Scottish ones I’d been dealing with for the past two years, so I was once again on the lookout for other opportunities.

A short job hunt later and I landed my current position at the University of Manchester where I’ve been working as a lecturer in Physical Geography since September 2016. Although this has probably been the busiest job I’ve had so far, it’s also been the one I’ve enjoyed the most. My main responsibility at Manchester has been to develop and deliver a first year course on river catchment science and management from scratch. Although this has taken a lot of work and has left me with little time to further my research agenda, it’s been a really rewarding experience that has enabled me to further hone my knowledge of rivers and to develop my lecturing skills – I have a newfound respect for all academics who make delivering a two-hour lecture look so easy! I’ve relied quite heavily on things I saw and learnt while working at SEPA and the EA to develop my course, so these experiences have been incredibly useful and have enabled me to promote the ‘employability’ side of geomorphology – something which I think can be lost on students sometimes.

Second year UoM students having a think about a geothermal (and pretty degraded) river in Iceland: helping out on field trips is another great perk of the lecturing gig.

I guess that brings me to my future prospects and career plans. Unfortunately, I’m on a one-year fixed-term contract here at Manchester which means that I’ll soon be restarting my job hunt again. Although short-term contracts seem to be pretty common in academia these days, particularly for those of us at the start of our academic journeys, they are, of course, not unheard of in other sectors too – I was on fixed-term contracts at both SEPA and the EA. Whilst the lack of job security is not ideal, I try to think of the exciting opportunities that might present themselves during my job hunt that I would have otherwise been oblivious to. There’s always a silver lining… My experience is that something will tend to come up, provided you are flexible and keep an open mind – geomorphologists have a great skill set that is valued both within academia and beyond.

I think this is the final point that I would like to leave you with: geomorphologists are highly employable and there are many people out there in several different sectors looking for good geomorphologists. Like me, you may have to move around a little bit and take a few risks, but doing so is likely to yield some great rewards. I feel genuinely privileged to have been able to do the jobs that I’ve done so far, and I think the odd change in location is a small price to pay for that privilege. If my experiences can tell us anything, it’s that you don’t need to have everything figured out by the end of your PhD – embrace any opportunity that presents itself and see where it might take you, you can always change your mind later! Good luck!

Second year blues and how to beat them

The second year blues is often something that you hear about in the first year of your PhD, but is difficult to fully grasp until it creeps up on you. It may not happen in your second year, but this seems to be the most common time that PhD students experience a dip. There are many blogs that have described this period in the PhD process, and for me, the most useful one is from The Thesis Whisperer. If you are feeling like everything is getting on top of you, just take a few minutes to read about ‘The Valley of Shit’, it will help.  I’m not going to use this post to describe the second year blues using a clever analogy as it has been done many a time. For me, it felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere with my work and that caused me to lose motivation and confidence. Any work I did wasn’t good enough in my eyes, even if my supervisors said it was. I just didn’t believe them. But the important thing to remember is that you won’t feel like this forever. The PhD process is fraught with highs and lows, and there are plenty of things that you can do to help you through the bad times.

Firstly, it is vital to look after your own health. Working long hours in the office takes its toll, and can often make you feel more stressed. This is because it takes longer for you to get work done because you are tired from working so many hours. It is counterproductive, and can be a vicious circle. Try not to work weekends unless it’s absolutely necessary. Eat healthily, have a good amount of sleep, and do some exercise. Exercise is a great distraction from work, and gives your brain a rest. Make sure you also have time off. Treat the PhD like a 9-5 job because this means that you are allowed to have multiple holidays during the year. N.B. Fieldwork does not count as a holiday! Finally, talk to other PhD students around you. They may be going through something similar, or will have done in the past. Just knowing that you are not on your own can feel like a weight off your mind.

In terms of work, the way to get through is to keep ploughing on. It is common to feel like you are banging your head against a brick wall when you are doing a PhD, but something will change. You’ll find a paper you had missed that leads you onto a new line of research, or a landowner will finally get back to you with permission to access a vital field site. Don’t think about the project as a whole because this is overwhelming, focus on doing the little things. Lastly, remember that you are being paid to research a subject that you enjoy (unless you are self-funded, but that’s another story) and you are not working in a boring job that you hate where you have to be in work at specific hours.

Fran Falcini

PhD student at the University of York

Beyond your PhD: Dr Daniel Schillereff, Teaching Fellow, Department of Geography, King’s College London

We asked Dr Daniel Schillereff, a former member of the BSG postgraduate forum to tell us about his academic journey leading up to and after his PhD. Thanks to Dan for sharing this!

Growing up in Newfoundland, where much of my childhood was spent on rocky coasts and in conifer forests, it was perhaps inevitable that exploring why the world looks and works as it does would appeal to me as a subject to study. Looking back, I have said ‘wow, that is fascinating’ about so many different themes that could be classified as geography since I first set out as an Undergraduate on a BSc Geography degree at the University of Liverpool. In my opinion, its comprehensiveness is one of the greatest strengths of the discipline, and there is unlimited scope to chop and change and merge your interests. If I was to describe my specific discipline, I suppose I am a palaeobiogeochemorpholimnologist. Or something like that. Similarly, it would be difficult to put a finger on a specific piece of advice I received or could offer about moving through a PhD and beyond, but there are some common strands: an open mind, a bit of luck and don’t restrict where your interests lie.

Choosing to do a Master’s degree was really a function of personal interest. I had become hooked on collecting sediment cores as an undergraduate and the MSc Environment and Climate Change at Liverpool offers many opportunities to collect cores! As I progressed through the programme, I really gained much more insight into the world of academia, which made me seriously consider a career as a researcher and I started looking for PhDs. It took many applications over the course of a year and a half to secure PhD funding, and the project ended up being back in Liverpool. My thesis explored whether palaeoflood laminations could be detected in sediment sequences from lakes across Britain, and was a great blend of geomorphology, hydrology, palaeo and contemporary limnology and integrated field, lab and computer-based work.

Mist lies over Brotherswater (one of my PhD field sites) and the Patterdale Valley.

The view looking south over the catchment of Brotherswater.

Since I submitted my PhD in September 2014, I’ve spent a year working as a PDRA on the NERC-funded ‘long-term, large-scale (LTLS) macronutrients’ project, split between the University of Liverpool and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Lancaster, and I’ve been employed as a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Geography at King’s College London since the start of the 2015-16 academic year. These positions have been tremendous, not least because I have learned so much and done so many new things. That is something I will continue to strive towards.

As one example, part of my postdoc work involved exploring macronutrient cycling in peatlands. The visual appearance of minerogenic lake sediments has always absorbed me, whereas I was less keen on the homogeneous browns and blacks of peat, and I suppose I presumed they were less interesting… How wrong I was! Having been ‘forced’ to analyse peats, I quickly realised there are so many fascinating and important questions that remain unanswered; I am now hooked. More broadly, this idea of being open-minded definitely applies to identifying opportunities to branch out from your PhD research by securing funding. You can achieve a huge amount with a good idea and a modest amount of money, and that money is out there! Most societies have Postgraduate or Early Career funding schemes – the BSG, for example! There may also be competitive institutional or faculty pump-priming pots. You probably will not be eligible to apply directly as a PhD student but approach your supervisor, and take the lead on writing the application. There is also growing impetus among institutions and external bodies alike to fund innovative teaching activities; these can lead to productive research outputs too! King’s colleagues and I secured money from our Faculty for the coming academic year to enable a student team to design and building Arduino-powered sequencing sediment traps. These will be tremendous upgrades to the hand-made traps we have installed in several Cumbrian lakes! There are also lots of opportunities and funding for outreach initiatives; BSG colleagues and I convene the Communicating Geomorphology Fixed-term Working Group, for example.

Another nice core sequence successfully recovered

Must maintain our energy levels…

I also mentioned luck. Finding that balance between PhD writing, job hunting and putting together the strongest applications you can is tough. I admire (but also do not envy!) friends and colleagues who took up a position before submitting their PhD. As my PhD submission deadline approached, I had had had several failed applications before the luck came through, in terms of timing. A colleague at Liverpool was co-I on the LTLS project and his Post-doc went off on maternity leave two years into a three-year position. That suddenly opened up a one-year post, that conveniently began one month after my submission date. So, I learned that positions crop up at the most unexpected times through a lucky set of circumstances.

Fixed-term teaching contracts are becoming more and more common. Having completed a full academic year at King’s, I believe that Teaching Fellowships are great, although that endorsement comes with three major caveats:

i) Friends’ and colleagues’ experience of such positions varies enormously from institution to institution, not least the number of hours you’ll be expected to teach (and thus not do research). Make sure all parties are clear on this front and don’t be scared to say no!

ii) Obviously this is easier said than done, but my advice would be to complete a Postdoc before applying for a teaching position. My one year as a researcher has led to papers and new research ideas that I am taking forward.

iii) Aim to undertake new teaching duties each year. This was sage advice from a senior colleague some time ago, and makes a lot of practical sense. If you enjoy the teaching, that’s great, and you can take a lot of pride and job satisfaction from the role. Ultimately, though, you are looking to bolster your CV and duplicating teaching responsibilities year after year will not do that.

The team extracting sediments from a forest hollow in the foothills of the Tatra Mountains, Slovakia.

The heather in full bloom and excellent peat recovery makes for a happy team.

An innovative field sampling technique in Brunei Darussalam.

In summary, my experience of academia thus far has been wholly fulfilling. I’ve strived to remain open-minded, in terms of identifying interesting opportunities but also the realistic fact that forging a career in academia is highly competitive and my long-term success is uncertain. There have been tough and stressful times along the way, but they are vastly outweighed by the remarkable experiences, many of which are unique to academia: fieldwork in exciting locations, working with like-minded and enthusiastic colleagues, teaching and engaging with students and ultimately discovering new things.

 

 

My time as BSG PG Forum rep – Morgan Gibson

I am sitting on a train on my way to London for my final meeting as BSG PG Forum chair. It, therefore, seemed to be the perfect time to reflect on my year as chair and my time as part of the BSG committees. I have learnt a lot during my time in the forum; that it is worth taking on these extra roles even if you feel like you’re too busy; that the west coast of Wales is too remote to consistently make meetings (we just have too much weather affecting our trainlines!), and that there are some brilliant postgraduate researchers out there doing amazing geomorphology!

 

I agreed to the role in March 2014, when the end of my PhD seemed very far away, and taking on the chair role, after my initial one year stint as deputy chair, was something that would happen a long way in the future. As with everything, though, the time disappeared and now I am sat contemplating what I have and haven’t achieved. Being part of the BSG has been a great opportunity: I have chatted to a lot of academics I wouldn’t have met without this role; I have coordinated a wonderful group of postgraduate to produce some great blog posts; I have been frustrated at the lack of people who we’ve reached with our great newsletter; and I’ve realised you always have time to squeeze in things, even if you don’t think you have any time left. I have loved getting to know the ins and outs of the BSG and of reconnecting with geomorphology at the annual conference. I have found the lack of time I have been able to devote to the role, both in my short time as chair and on a day-to-day basis, frustrating. I had grand plans to make postgrads a greater part of the BSG, not just in numbers (where we are an overriding majority), but also development of the society. I quickly realised I had to scale back my plans and use my best asset, my organisation skills, to streamline the forum and make sure the little time we had to offer as a group was used wisely. This led to monthly blog posts, more emphasis on social media and less on producing brilliant, but little read, newsletters.

 

My regret for my time as chair is that I didn’t get the forum better known by the society’s postgrad members. I hope I have developed the forum enough that Danielle, the new chair, can build on what I have done and really get all BSG PG members involved. This is where you lot come in – there are loads of you out there, and we want to be there for you, but we need to know how you want to connect with us. To do that we need to decide what we can offer you, and the best way to get in contact with you. The forum is doing a brilliant job of representing you in all the BSG’s committees, and maybe that’s enough, but we don’t think it is! Some of our ideas are a PG conference, PG fieldtrips and getting our instagram account full of amazing geomorphology photos. But before we put the effort in to these we need to know what people think. We are always looking for new postgraduate forum members as well, so if you wan to do something career-enhancing and interesting, then get in touch on Twitter.

 

Being postgraduate forum chair may not have been a huge role, but it has been important to me. I have seen how many passionate geomorphologists are out there, and how much they want to share their science. The BSG has got a lot of things right, one of the big ones being the support they provide to postgraduates with their grants. I’m leaving my role feeling sad I am no longer a part of the society’s organisation, but sure I will be back in the future!

 

Good luck Danielle.

 

Over and out…

 

Morgan Gibson

(PhD at Aberystwyth University)

Publishing your first scientific paper

By Kate Winter

You have written your scientific paper, addressed co-author comments, and now you are ready to show off all your hard work – congratulations! Now you just need to decide where to publish your work and battle through the submission process. Here are a few tips to make the process as easy as possible:

1.Choose your journal

If you haven’t already done so, the first thing that you need to do is target an appropriate journal. It may be tempting to submit your article to one of the top journals in your field but remember that these journals are very competitive and the projects that they publish tend to be ground-breaking studies with great significance. If you don’t feel that your research has a large inter-disciplinary significance, therefore ruling out popular journals like Science and Nature, but you aren’t sure exactly where your work should go, take a look at your reference list and note down which journals publish the papers that interest you most. Now go and have a look at the websites of these journals.

Most authors compare journals by looking at their impact factor, cost to publish and even speed of publication. The impact factor, which tends to be a well-advertised single or double digit number is the easiest way to compare journals as it signifies the average number of times that articles from the journal have been published over a given time span (often two years). A quick comparison of impact factor values could therefore give you an indication of how many people will reference your work, and therefore how many people will get to know your name and your research findings.

N.B. If you are just starting out on the writing for publishing journey, choose your journal before you start writing – the process will take a while and you don’t want to get to the end and find you need a rewrite to fit to your chosen journal’s specifications. 

3) Register for an account 

Once you have chosen the journal that you would like to submit your work to you should register for an account with the journal. This is free and easy to do, but worth doing early as it takes a while. From there you will be able to look up author guidelines on word, table and figure formats. The most important thing is to find out if your manuscript fits the specified word and figure limit of the journal. If your paper fits these specifications you can start to look at other details like whether the article should be written in British or American English, how the reference list should be laid out, how figures should be saved (pdf, eps etc.) as well as what resolution and size they should be.

2) Write your covering letter

After editing your manuscript to fit the journals specific requirements, the next port of call may be to write a cover letter to advertise your fantastic manuscript. As with all letters, it is best to use letterhead paper, with your institution, postal address, e-mail address and date on the right hand side. Address the letter to a specific editor if possible and in the opening paragraph ask them to consider the manuscript for publication. Include the title of your manuscript along with a brief statement (a sentence or two) about why you think the paper is important and why the journal should publish it (i.e. summarise the main conclusions of the paper). The letter should be short and succinct so aim for about half a page to a page of text then sign the letter off with your signature and full name (typed out).

3) Gather information needed for submission

After you have your manuscript and cover letter you may need to note down some more information in an old school note pad before you start the submission process (you may want to do this with a member of your supervisory team by your side). This may include;

• Full names (including any middle initials) of co-authors, as well as their institutional postal and e-mail address.
• A list of key words or index terms that relate to your article which can be used by future readers to search for your article. Note that these could be specific numbered terms which you will have to look up on the journals web page before submitting your work.
• Bullet points highlighting the key features/findings of your article. These should be short and are often limited to a maximum number of characters.
• A list of potential reviewers for your manuscript (3 – 5 reviewers are often required), including their full names, e-mail address, institution and institution postal address. Recommended reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. If you are unsure who to put down have a look through your references to see who you frequently reference as they are likely to be the experts in your field.
• Note down any conflicts of interest with potential reviewers. As reviewers should have no financial interest in the paper, no prior knowledge of your submission, should not have recently collaborated with any of the authors and should often not be at the same institution as any of the authors on your manuscript it is a good idea to jot down the names of anyone who fulfils this category who may well be considered an expert in your field by the journal editor.
• If you have used any copyrighted material in your paper, from sources like the internet or other papers you may need to provide written proof from the owners of the publishing rights that you have permission to reproduce the material.
• Information on any grants received which relate to the project and their unique numbers. You should also be honest about whether the funding sources had any role in the study design, data collection, analysis and interpretation of the data.
• The number of words in your article.
• The number of figures in your article and whether you want them to be in colour or black and white.

Once you have all of this information, set aside an hour or two to work through the submission process, making sure to add in all the required information as you go along, and tick all the necessary boxes. Near the end of the submission process you should be able to check your uploaded files, please make sure you do so, as a missing or old file could really hinder your chances of publication.

4) Just before heading to the pub…

Once you press ‘submit’, but before you head to the pub to celebrate remember to send out a quick thank-you e-mail to those who helped you to write the paper (remember to attach the submitted manuscript and figures). It will be appreciated and you may need their help again very soon to address comments raised during the peer-review process!

Best of luck with your submitted article!

Academic poster design. It doesn’t have to be a minefield

I recently went to a conference with my first academic poster. Firstly, no one mentions how awkward posters are to cart around on public transport, let alone walk with. Before you do anything, get one of those cool poster tube carriers that have a strap* disclaimer: if you laminate an A0 poster it will not fit inside the carriers! Secondly, if you are wondering how an earth the poster is going to be attached to the wall, don’t panic. Little bits of sticky back Velcro are usually provided so you can attach it to the display boards.

Ok. So we’ve got some logistics out of the way, onto the design. Many academics seem to think that a poster is the poorer cousin to a talk at a conference. Everyone wants to do a talk; it is seen as more prestigious. However, I think if you make an eye catching poster that draws colleagues in, you have more of a chance to discuss your research with them, potentially creating useful contacts for the future and receiving advice on how to take your research forward. In a nutshell, that dreaded word; networking.

 

Top tips

1. Choose the right software for you

The first thing I did before I put cursor to page was to google academic poster design software. After trawling through pages, the most common theme was do not use PowerPoint. There is nothing wrong with using PowerPoint but I think there is software out there that is more suited to poster design. If your university has access to Adobe Illustrator I would recommend trying that (mine does not unfortunately). Or you could try Inkscape, which is basically like a free version of Illustrator. This is what I used, it is easy to get the hang of and you can align text and images accurately. Other options which I have not explored are CorelDRAW, LaTeX, QuarkXPress, Scribus.

 

2. Think outside the box

 The whole point of a poster is to be eye catching and draw colleagues in. Once they are intrigued, they will ask questions and your poster will be memorable. The poster below for example, by Gareth Morris, is eye catching, simple, and leaves you wanting to know more. You can find out more about this poster here: http://www.nextscientist.com/challenging-status-quo-scientific-poster/

The poster entitled Humber in a Box presented at BSG 2015 really brings to life Dr Chris Skinner’s and Dr Tom Coulthard’s research combining gaming technology and existing geographical models to predict flooding and sediment fluxes in the Humber Estuary https://twitter.com/SeriousGeoGames. Here they used Google Cardboard and headphones alongside the poster, which allowed colleagues to place their phone inside the Google Cardboard, plug the headphones in, and view the model in 3D via YouTube. Even though this is not related to my research interests I instantly want to watch their model.

The article on nextscientist.com inspired me to try something different, and although I ended up with more text than I initially wanted, I got the right reaction at the conference. I had a great hillshaded Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of my study site that I wanted to be the star of my poster. This was printed in 3D and I had red blue glasses with my poster for colleagues to view it. Everyone was excited to put the glasses on, and I think it was this element that won the best poster competition at the Quaternary Research Association (QRA) Postgraduate Symposium 2015. To view a raster image in 3D follow the instructions in ArcScene and export the image. http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.2/index.cfm?TopicName=Viewing_in_stereo_in_ArcScene

 

 

   3. Clear structure

Having a clear structure allows you to guide the reader through the poster, making it easier to digest the content. Numbering your figures and text boxes is an easy way to do this.

 

4. Less is more

There is nothing worse than a poster with too much text, and in a room with 20 plus poster in, it is likely to be overlooked. Figures should have priority over text, as these will draw people in to read your poster and ask questions. My poster word count including figure captions and poster title (but not references) was 700. Try and limit it 1000 words max. Titles and headings are best in a sans-serif font e.g. Arial, whilst other text can be in a serif font e.g. Times New Roman, at a minimum 22 point size. References can be smaller; I used a minimum of 16 point size for my A0 poster.

 

5. Print drafts and get comments

If you are making an A0 poster, print a copy at A4 or A3 size to see what it looks like. You should be able to read the text. Get some comments from your supervisor and other PhD students. I had 3 or 4 drafts before I printed it in the A0 version. If your University offers fabric printing, use it. It may cost more but you can fold your poster, thus removing the awkward transportation and liquid proofing issues.

 

6. Go with your instinct

By all means take on board the comments by your supervisors, but if you don’t agree with them on certain aspects then don’t be afraid to do it your way. It is your poster. If you think it doesn’t present your research in the way that you want, then you are not going feel confident in presenting it. If you want to do something bold that doesn’t have much text and goes against traditional posters your supervisors may advise against this. However, if you come back from a conference and your poster was the most talked about or you won a prize, then it was worth sticking to your guns.

      7. At the conference

Stand by your poster and let colleagues read through it, you don’t need to give them an in-depth tour. They will ask questions if they are interested.

 

 

 

Beyond your PhD: Dr Emma Shuttleworth, Research Associate

I’ve had a funny old route to where I’ve ended up. I started out doing a Maths degree at University of Liverpool in 2001, but realised in my second year that multidimensional space and financial futures weren’t my thing and transferred over to Geography where I’d done some subsidiary modules. I graduated with a respectable 2:1, but didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life so I took a couple of years out working in various admin roles before deciding to head back to Liverpool to do a MSc in Environment and Climate Change. This is where things started to come together. I managed to get a bit of teaching experience demonstrating on undergrad field trips and set myself up with a really interesting dissertation on archaeological soil samples (it was interesting, honest!). I started to realise that I wanted to pursue a research career. However, towards the end of my MSc there wasn’t really anything that I was interested in on offer, so I spent another year out of academia. In amongst the travelling and temping jobs, I spent a lot of time Googling the kinds of thing I might be interested in researching (erosion, geochemistry, environmental magnetism) and up popped the research profile of Martin Evans at Manchester with a list of postgraduate opportunities that included all of my key words. After a couple of emails, a meeting where I turned up an hour late, and a hasty read of Geomorphology of Upland Peat, I had submitted my research proposal, and a couple of weeks later was told that Ihad been granted a teaching bursary to support my PhD tracing sediments in the eroding peatlands of the Peak District.

Sediment sampling in the Peak District

My final thesis was very different from the project that I proposed back in 2009. Initially I was very methods driven, and focussed on trying to answer a very specific research question about the timing of contaminated sediment release, but as I progressed opportunities came my way which changed the shape of my research. I applied to the Moors for the Future Moorland Research Fund to cover some of my fieldwork costs, and ended up spending a considerable proportion of my PhD looking at the effects of peatland restoration, which is something I hadn’t initially considered but almost certainly helped me secure my current job. Early in my second year, one of my supervisors introduced me to The Nicest Man in Geography, Simon Hutchinson (a moniker that is well deserved and almost certainly true), who introduced me to the wonderful world of field portable XRF. This led me to write my first paper and began an invaluable collaborative and mentoring relationship that is still in place today.

Martin, Simon and the XRF

I submitted my PhD in September 2014, and I’ve been working as a Research Associate in the Upland Environment Research Unit at the University of Manchester since August 2014. My job is linked to Tim Allott’s tenure as Head of School, so while he’s being a big cheese, I’m keeping his existing projects going, helping to develop new research agendas for the Unit, and covering his teaching. Those eagle eyed temporal statisticians amongst you will notice I actually started my job a month before I submitted my thesis, which meant I applied and interviewed for the post and started teaching when I was in the throes of writing up. This possibly wasn’t the best way of timing things, but I couldn’t have passed up the opportunity. Luckily, Tim was very understanding and didn’t pile on the work straight away… that came later!

When I first started, Tim had been working on an extensive peatland restoration hydrological monitoring programme called Making Space for Water for more than 5 years, and Phase 2 of the project was months away from wrapping up so I had to hit the ground running! The project had generated huge amounts of data that needed collating and analysing before we could report to the funders, so I had to get my head around the numerous field sites and monitoring campaigns, and more importantly learn everything there is to know about peatland hydrology (I am a simple geomorphologist after all!). At the beginning I felt like I was drowning in spreadsheets and constantly being whisked from one deadline to another without really knowing what was going on, but by the time we produced the final report I’d got to grips with everything and felt like a proper member of the team, and am now helping to plan MS4W Phase 3.

Making Space for Water: Kinder Edge before and after restoration

In addition to working on MS4W, I’ve also had time to continue to develop my own research and outreach interests and get valuable lecturing experience. Now that MS4W Phase 2 is over, I’m concentrating on writing up the final papers from my PhD and moving into new research areas. I’m still involved in the BSG, sitting on the Outreach Committee through my role as the Society’s Press Officer and coordinating the Communicating Geomorphology Working Group, and I’ve also become the EGU GM Division ECR rep. While most of last year was spent covering Tim’s teaching, this year I’ve branched out and am co-convening a final year undergrad module on the British Uplands and I am part of a team which is developing a new residential fieldtrip to the Spanish Pyrenees. I’m also hoping to introduce a new geomorphology module to our teaching programme next year.

The Dream Team, Pyrenees 2016 recce (Christine Lane, me, Will Fletcher, Gareth Clay, Abi Stone)

So, if you’re still with me, why have I just given you a potted history of the last 15 years of my life? I suppose the overarching message from the way I’ve done things, is that it’s OK to not have it all figured out and it’s OK to change. I’ve gone from being a mathematician, to a soil scientist with a side-line in archaeology, to working in the press office of Hollyoaks (that’s a whole other story), to becoming a geomorphologist with a healthy respect for hydrology. It’s good to be flexible – like I said; my PhD ended up a very different beast to how it started out, but by embracing the unexpected I extended my research interests, developed my network, and ultimately made myself more employable. I used to think that a lot of my success had been because I happened to be in the right place at the right time (funding calls that suited my research, happening to know someone who knows someone who could help me out, things cropping up just when I was in a position to take advantage of them) but I’m increasingly realising that I was only in the right place at the right time because I put myself there. There is a certain element of luck and timing when it comes to postdoctoral work, but you massively increase your chances of finding and being a considered for jobs by putting yourself out there, being adaptable and taking advantage of all the opportunities that come your way. It’s worked for me so far anyway!