UKAIS Conference 2012

I have just come back from presenting at the annual UKAIS conference PhD consortium. Last year I had a lovely time with everyone and this year was even better. The conference was held at New College Oxford and we also stayed on the grounds. The weather was glorious and the college was beautiful. It turns out that some scenes from Harry Potter were filmed there and scenes from the book His Dark Materials were based there. As I explored the grounds I could hear the choir singing in the chapel and it really added to the atmosphere.

 We had breakfast and lunch in the Great Hall and I really did feel like I was at Hogwarts.

My presentation at the conference actually went really well. I usually get so nervous when I present my work that I sometimes even have difficultly speaking, but the facilitators made me feel very comfortable and were very positive about my research. One of them made a comment that I was "pretty much there" and we both agreed that I still had to fine tune some aspects of my research. I left the conference with a regained sense of hope that I can actually finish my work in time and to a high standard. I had a really nice time and hopefully will be able to return next year with a full conference paper.

The Knitting Circle

Things are getting pretty crazy as I've only got a few months left of my funding, so I'm in the middle of analyzing the data I've collected. I'm still trying to keep up to date with all the new literature surrounding my subject but decided to take a break and read The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood. I thought that it would be light enough to give my brain a rest but still on topic so it didn't pull me out of thesis.

The Knitting Circle turned out to be more beneficial to me than I had originally thought. As I am using postmodernism with an interpretivist stance to read my data I believe that reality is constructed by little stories and everyone has their own unique world view. The Knitting Circle relates to my research as it tells the individual stories of each character within the group. As my undergrad degree is in English literature using a narrative helped me to cement some of the ideas that everyone has their own little stories to tell.
This has also been beneficial to me as it shown me that inspiration can be found anywhere. Sometimes it's important to take a side step out of the typical academic resources to be open minded in your approach to research.

The view through a kaleidoscope

Analyzing data is like looking through a kaleidoscope -

"Kaleidoscopes consist of many coloured fragments which when turned change pattern and configuration and are unstable" (Waring and Skoumpopoulou, 2011).