From being cited in an Anonymous press release and speaking live on Sun TV, to attending my first slue of conferences and giving my first public lecture, this summer certainly has been full of excitement!
Last I checked in I’d just completed my Transfer of Status, the first milestone in my PhD program. I left Oxford for the summer, sites set on home (Nova Scotia, Canada), where I took up a position as a Visiting Scholar at the Dalhousie Social Media Lab from the end of June through to the beginning of October.
While at the Lab I focused primarily on my own work including preparing for multiple conferences and identifying my list of potential interviewees. I was very fortunate to have been welcomed with open arms — I had the opportunity to present my early thesis work to faculty and students within the Computer Science Faculty, the Information Management Faculty, and to political science undergraduate students.
I also helped the Social Media Lab organize their annual conference, this year called the Social Media and Society 2013 Conference. (I presented work Devin Gaffney and I have been doing on identifying influentials in Twitter networks).
Most recently, I took the lead on the Twitter analysis of the Nova Scotia Election, at the Social Media Lab. We wrote a number of blogs (here, here, and here), and will hopefully produce an academic paper in the coming months.
If there is a single lesson to be learned from this summer, I think it is the importance of connecting with people from all over. Every time I said yes to an interview, a conference, or a speaking engagement, I met new and interesting people with new and interesting perspectives. I’ve been able to start to build a base which can be hard to do when you get stuck in the Oxford bubble.
One of the things that makes me a particularly efficient DPhil student is my focus. When I set out a list of goals for myself I commit fully to the tasks required to achieve those goals. It is easy to spend hours in the office only to be so exhausted at the end of the day I can barely drag myself to rugby training and then home to bed. The last thing I want to do is go to a lecture (however interesting it may be) or a reception (regardless of what yummy treats are on offer) where I have to look presentable and say semi-intelligent things.
Clearly those periods of intense focus are important, but connecting with others – that is a big part of what I want to do also. If I want to help bridge the gap between academic and the general public, I need to be able to find times and places that facilitate that interaction. This summer has been a wonderful step in that direction.
Up next?
I am back in Oxford running Research Methods workshops for MSc students here at the OII, working as a Research Assistant on Bill Dutton’s Fifth Estate project, and working on the literature review and methods chapters of my thesis.
I’ve been taking a quick picture of all the workspaces of my PhD. This is my desk at Dal.
Elizabeth Dubois 