WISPS Postgrad Info
This page is meant to be a repository for information and links for our postgrad members. Suggestions for additional content are always welcome-please get in touch with the Postgrad Rep or the website administrator if you have some links you’d like to add or some additional information that you think would be beneficial to share on this page.
First of all I’d like to say thank you for taking the time to navigate over to this page. It is my hope that we can get more of a network going of fellow postgraduate students who are working on topic aligned to the general interests of WISPS members. Whether you are a historian, a language or literature specialist or perhaps an art historian, hopefully we can build a network that leverages our common interests and helps us to learn from our own diverse areas of study. Please do get in touch via email (e.woodacre [at] bathspa.ac.uk), on the Facebook page or in person at our annual conference. It would be lovely to meet you all and I hope to set up some special events for our postgrad students. Let me know what you feel would be most helpful/interesting-a workshop? A symposium? A social event, such as a dinner or drinks at the conference perhaps? Feedback would be much appreciated.
My best tip for all postgrads is-get out there! So many of us are just stuck in the library, hiding behind our books. The best thing I ever did was going to conferences and presenting my work. Yes, it is nerve racking but it is incredibly helpful to get feedback on your work and meet other researchers. It can be difficult to mingle in a room full of people you don’t know, but you will inevitably meet some interesting people and learn a lot about topics either related to your own work or sometimes the most fascinating papers are on something you’ve never heard about before! In addition, writing conference papers can be very helpful in forcing you to get writing and focusing your arguments. Don’t be shy, keep your eye on the emails from WISPS and hook yourself up to H-Net and keep an eye out for a call for papers that is a good fit for your research. Make sure you write an interesting, clear proposal for a paper that really fits the theme of the conference. You can always draw on your MA (or even BA) research if it’s suitable and you don’t feel ready to write something on your current project. Your university may also have grants to help with travel expenses and conference fees to support you presenting your research. Don’t forget that WISPS has a postgrad bursary for our conference too!
Below are some links to sites that you may find of interest:
WIGS postgrad page (full of wonderful info which they have been adding to over the last few years to make a comprehensive advice page for students):
Academia.edu (if you’re not on it, get on it! Extremely useful for posting information about your research and finding out about other researcher whose work you are interested in. Can also link up to Facebook):
Prospects ‘funding my further study’ page: (useful if like so many of us you are struggling with funding issues):
www.prospects.ac.uk/funding_my_further_study.htm
The Guardian’s postgraduate page, with articles, advice and links:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/specialreports/postgrad/0,5477,330227,00.html
UK GRAD events page (conferences and seminars geared to researchers):
www.vitae.ac.uk/policy-practice/916/Events.html
IHR History Lab (for those of us who are historians, this is a very valuable network that hosts seminars, conferences and workshops based at the IHR in London but with some developing regional networks as well):
Advice on getting published:
www.medievalstudies.uconn.edu/Greenia.pdf
www.phil.cam.ac.uk/teaching_staff/Smith/students/published.html
Postgraduate Forum (online forum for students worldwide that you can post to):