GOGSoc Episode V: The GOG Strikes Back

Ugh.
I'm having to redo some of my first-year research, which was extremely time-consuming and dull even back then, but now I've got to do it more thoroughly, which means it's going to take me even longer. I'll spare you the boring details (and trust me, this is *very* boring), but basically I've got to trawl through about 6,000 Short Title Catalogue entries, of which about 95% aren't what I'm looking for, but I've got to look through them anyway. ARGH!

I'm going to raise you one on the boring research , and add depressing... Back when I was a junior research fellow I was helping out on some AIDS research. Now, no-one actually dies of AIDS, they die of X disease (which they have died from because of their depressed immune system). I spent a few days doing nothing but going through life insurance claims from a large insurer, listing causes of death and age, trying to identify which ones were most likely to have been AIDS-related. The absolute worst, most depressing research I have ever done in my life

Having not read what you have written, I am in a bind. Focusing on Wales and labour history hardly makes your parochial, at least in principle. In fact, it puts your in a better position than most nineteenth-century historians (Robert Owen and all that), but I suppose most people will want to know how your specialism applies to everyone else (i.e. which units you could teach undergraduates and all that stuff).

[...] It's not about unionism or nationalism, it's about whether it's historically just for me to take my primary research in Wales and apply it (with a smattering of secondary reading) to Durham or East Anglia on the spurious notion that because it's British or England and Wales, it's all the same. If local history has taught us anything it is that the crass notions of generality rely heavily on assumption and less and less on establishable facts. The Durham and South Wales coalfields may be very similar but there are idiosyncracies which necessitate specific research in both to be able to make sufficiently strong points about them both. Whether the individual scholar is a unionist or nationalist politically is neither here nor there when it comes to scholarly integrity.

This is not really the point I was hinting at though. You can keep your scholarly integrity in tact so far as local interests are concerned, and you are quite right to do so, but I think it is ultimately pointless refusing to place your work within larger dialogues. This includes the idea of Britishness. The only person you are hurting when you do this is yourself. It is simply a matter of changing approach, and it has the benefit of problematising the generalisations you dislike so much. By referencing the generalisations you can show in what ways English and Welsh miners were different, for example, and why it is important for us to differentiate between their different concerns etc., etc.. This is why I mentioned Unionism: I think both the local and general stuff has its place and uses.

This probably comes across very patronizing...

For those who have studied at Oxford, is it standard practice for the university not to upload its doctoral thesis to EThOS, or am I just really unlucky in that whenever I want one it never seems to be available? Is there any way round this (i.e. I do not want to visit to read a thesis)?

It's not really that I need search for work in Wales but that for a historian of Wales, it's more likely that Wales will offer the opportunity for work in the fisrt instance. If you follow my logic. I'm generally interested in leaving this ****ed up country into which I was born and so Australia, New Zealand, Canada, wherever would be great. My experience from the one or two of academic job interviews I've had now is that the RAE is killing our chances - as you said earlier. Maybe it'll change in a couple of years when that's over. Sociology, or at least historical sociology, certainly does interest me.

But to get at the heart of my original point. You cannot take a model of development from one part of the country and apply it generally to others. To do so removes any notions of historical agency from those who live in the other parts of the country and assumes generality of experience. Hell, you cannot even say there is such a thing as an English miner and a Welsh miner since the coalfields of England and Wales are quite different from each other. The South Wales coalfield and the Durham coalfield are most similar but compare them to small coalfields such as the North Wales one or Lancashire or Nottinghamshire and they sure as heck aren't. The geology of a place is different, the way in which miners live is different, the kinds of houses they have are different, home ownership levels are different and so on and so forth. It is by building up the local pictures that the greater sense of history is gained. It is not by generalising that history is understood. It's a pity that so-called "British" historians have yet to fully grasp that.

Quiet panic. Unlike most people here my circumstances mean I have only one option for the course I want to do, and that is Cambridge. And just because I got in once before doesn't mean I'll get in again - different course, different circumstances, and that bloody research proposal. I've suddenly hit a severe self-confidence crisis.

Body found in the river this morning, less than 200m from my boat really sad and a bit scary, could have been us who found them. http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Body-found-in-River-Cam-29012012.htm .

Didn't this happen to you?

I think it would be better for you and cinosia to see this sort of thing in terms of luck. There's a certain minimal level of competence you have to have for your application to be as good as everyone elses'. After that its about a whole bunch of things you can't know or predict, like the politics in a particular department... whether they're trying to increase the research in one particular area and not another, whether the academics there feel in the mood or like your idea...
I don't really think confidence should come into it.

How are you?

Good thanks, you? How's life treating you?

*am managing to keep a vague med interest going as some of my research is med related *

History becomes very limited in terms of what you are expected to be able to do. A historian of modern Britain, it is assumed, cannot teach Ireland or the United States or France whether they are well read in those areas or not. You are what your PhD defines you as. It's equally impossible - from the point of view of departments - to turn yourself from the 19th and 20th century towards early modern periods. Apparently it's not straightforward in their minds to switch from E.P. Thompson to Christopher Hill. I think it's because of the inherent conservatism of history and history departments and you may well be right that Social Science is more accepting of interdisciplinary inputs from its constituent parts but I couldn't tell you one way or the other.




Well, they might but in practice we're told that your PhD defines you to employers and defines your likely research interests for the years to come. In my case it's a bit *******s as I've really little wish to be hemmed in as a "modern British historian" as I don't think in British terms. But that's how you're seen. So unless you did comparative study for your PhD, no one really seems to take seriously your abilities to move from South Wales to East Anglia, for instance.



Well possibly, though I don't think it really applies when they're expecting you to be able to teach certain fields which is where the problem creeps in. It's the RAE that's killing our chances I think but I'm not sure I have 2 years to be able to hang on hoping that a) departments open up a bit more after it and b) the economy doesn't continue to contract and wipe away expansion. When you don't come from families that are wealthy, you have little fall back and in this current environment a PhD is a barrier to employment not a positive.

I'm good too! Life is good too! I am actually quite happy although I have lots of work to do. That sounds interesting. How have you managed to related your history research to med?