Getting Grants, Getting Published and Staying Sane: Life After the PhD

dav — *Getting Grants: Getting Published and Staying Sane: Life after PhD* was organised by History Lab Plus at the Institute of Historic Research in London on the 15th of July 2016 (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

As I near the end of the third year of my PhD, what comes after is starting to loom increasingly large on my mind. As a result, I signed up for an event organised by History Lab Plus about life after the PhD. Getting Grants, Getting Published and Staying Sane: Life after the PhD took place on the 15th of July at the Institute of Historical Research in London, and I found it very helpful. There was a workshop about our post-PhD hopes and fears, and four panel-based sessions on making the transition, getting funding grants, getting published, and jobs outside academia/impact/public history.

The thing about advice is that it is personal; you can only really talk from your own experience, and it quickly became obvious that the post-PhD period is just as varied as the PhD itself. For example, it is very hard to get an academic job without a publication, but almost everyone seems to know at least one person who managed it. Any career is an individual experience, and people can only really give advice from their own personal experiences, which may not be relevant to yours for any number of reasons. This is something I always try to remember when given advice.

One piece of advice that does seem to be universally applicable is to spend time thinking about what you want to do after your PhD. Do you want an academic career? Do you want to turn your thesis into a book? Do you want to focus more on teaching or research? Think about what you want to achieve, and then decide which jobs/opportunities/ experiences will help you to get there. Also think about what skills you have, what you can offer to a potential employer. What are you interested in, and what are you good at? I spend a lot of time thinking about life after the PhD, but before this event it hadn’t occurred to me to try and think in these practical, concrete terms that might actually be helpful instead of just terrifying.

sdr — There were four panels covering multiple different aspects of life after the PhD (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

There were other bits of advice that I think would be useful for everyone; for example Emily Russell, an editor at Palgrave Macmillan, gave a talk about the process of converting a thesis into a book, but I think the aspect of the day that I found most helpful was the sense that we are all the same boat here. There must have been around 30 people sitting in that room, all of whom are coming close to finishing their PhD, or just recently had, who all had very similar questions about what comes next. As a PhD student, I am constantly being made aware of how difficult it is to get an academic job, how competitive it is (the ‘CV arms race’ is an analogy I like). As a result, I often find it hard to be happy for my contemporaries when they achieve something that might give them an advantage over me if we applied for the same job. My first reaction is frequently jealously, or despair that I haven’t managed to achieve the same thing yet, and I hate it. Life After the PhD was a reminder that we are all in the same boat. We are all dealing with the pressure, we are all getting frustrated about the structural systems that make academia so tough in the first place, and we are all worrying about how we are going to pay rent and feed ourselves when our funding runs out (those of use who were lucky enough to get funding in the first place). So we need to look out for one another. This can take the form of joining a union or a campaign like FACE (Fighting Against Casualisation in Academia), or simply being nice to one another- one of my favourite pieces of advice from the day came from Dr. Will Pooley and is a favourite saying of comedian Adam Hills: “Don’t be a dick!” Will posted the text of his talk on his blog.

I am scared about what is going to happen when I finish my PhD- this is the first time in my life when I don’t know what I’m going to do next, where I don’t have a solid, concrete plan that I know is going to work out. However, events like Life After the PhD help me to put it into perspective. As well as providing advice, the day was an opportunity to discuss my fears, and my ambitions, with others who are going through the same thing, which I found helpful.

I would like to thank History Lab Plus for organising the event, particularly Kelly Spring and Jessica Hammett.

Times Are A Changin’: Temporality, Memory and Social Movements in the Digital Age

I spent Thursday and Friday of last week at Times Are A Changing: Temporality, Memory and Social Movements in the Digital Age, a two-day symposium at the University of Westminster organised by Dr. Samuel Merrill and Dr. Anastasia Kavada. I really enjoyed the chance to meet new people, listen to some fantastic presentations and engage with some new concepts. Most of the other attendees were from Memory Studies or Media Studies, so there were a lot of new ideas for me to think about, particularly around the key themes of the symposium, temporality and memory.

As a Geographer, I am aware of just how significant time is (although space will always be my favourite!) However, the ways that different temporalities can impact, and be used by, activists and social movements is not something I had considered before. In her paper, Dr. Veronica Barassi argued that temporalities are constructed through practice, which means that activists can resist or reproduce hegemonic temporalities through their actions. Dr. Kavada’s presentation about the recent Nuit Debout protests in France provided a good example of this. The activists varied the speed at which they posted on social media depending on when they wanted attention; they would increase the intensity of posts before a important protest or meeting, for example. Dr. Kavada called this ‘temporal agency’; activists can gain power by negotiating with, or interfering in, temporal rhythms. It could be interesting to think through these ideas in the context of my PhD as the activists involved in my case studies had very different media technologies available to them, which all involved different temporalities.

The other key theme of the symposium was memory. For some activists and social movements, the memory of past events, people, and movements can be an important source of inspiration, morale, and identity. There were several papers relating to the various ways in which activists carry out ‘memory-work,’ such as Lorenzo Zamponi’s paper on #ioricordo, a hashtag created to memorialise the 2001 Genoa G8 protests. Archives have a significant role to play in the preservation of memory. Foteini Aravani, the Digital Curator at the Museum of London, gave a fascinating presentation about the museum’s experiences collecting items and digital media relating to recent protests, such as Occupy London. You do not have to be a museum to create an archive, however, and some movements choose to keep their own records. Dr. Anne Kaun’s paper, entitled “Archiving Protest: Changing Temporal Regimes of the Archive,” discussed how modern social movement groups create their own digital archives. Occupy Wall Street had an archiving working group in order to capture representations of the movement from their own perspective. For my case study on the Battle of Cable Street, I am focusing on the various ways in which the Battle has been remembered, and how these memories are constructed and used, so this element of the symposium was also very helpful for me.

I have only mentioned a few of the great papers and speakers from Times Are A Changin’, there was so much interesting research presented that I can’t discuss it all. Suffice it to say that the symposium gave me a lot to think about, and I am confident that my own research will be better because I went. With that in mind, I would like to thank Sam Merrill and Anastasia Kavada for organising the symposium, and particularly Sam Merrill for inviting me. I look forward to seeing what comes next.

Breaking the Peace: A Century of London Protest on Film

This Monday, I went to a talk at the Birkbeck Cinema called Breaking the Peace: A Century of London Protest on Film given by Professor Ian Christie, part of a series of events exploring London on film in association with the Raphael Samuel History Centre. Over the course of an hour and a half, Professor Christie showed us footage of the Suffragettes (1910-13), the 1926 General Strike, a 1932 Hunger March, the Battle of Cable Street (1936), Anti-Vietnam War protests (1968), the disruption of the 1970 Miss World competition at the Royal Albert Hall, the 2003 Anti-Iraq War demonstration, and Occupy London (2011). I had a great afternoon watching the footage, looking out for all the things that have (and haven’t) changed about protest in London over the last one hundred years.

Occupy London Still — A still from a film made by Occupy London about the protests outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in 2011 (Source: Conscious Collective).

Apart from fashion, one of the biggest changes that stood out was the development, and democratisation, of film technology. The afternoon began with grainy, silent, black-and-white newsreel footage, and finished with colour and sound, probably filmed by amateurs with handheld cameras. As film technology has developed, it has also got cheaper, allowing wider excess. In the 1960s the new TV production company Granada started making World in Action, a hard-hitting news programme that presented London protesters in a more balanced light than older, more established sources of news. By the 2010s, the Occupy movement were making and editing their own films, presenting themselves exactly the way they wanted. Organisers of protests want their message to reach further than the people who witnessed the protest directly, and the more control they have over the communication media that spreads that message, the more successful they are likely to be in getting that message out.

One thing which has not changed much is the language used by outsiders to describe protest. In almost every example there was the perception that a largely peaceful protest had been subverted by a small minority of ‘criminals’, ‘anarchists’, or ‘hawks’ (I particularly liked the Cold War terminology creeping in here). Protesters were also frequently described as ‘converging on London’, giving the impression of disgruntled Britons descending on the capital from all corners of the country. London is the political and economic centre of the country, it is no surprise that it is chosen as the site of many national demonstrations.

The tactics of the demonstrators themselves has also remained largely the same. The content and methods of production may have changed, but banners and placards are still an integral part of protest marches, as is costume. The protest march itself has also changed little since the women of the suffrage movement proved it could be done with dignity and respectability. Scholars sometimes talk about ‘repertoires of resistance’- the specific set of tactics available to demonstrators to make their point. These repertoires are often shared between and within communities, including on a national scale. This means that many protests utilise similar strategies. There is also a tendency to take inspiration from what came before; the anti-Vietnam demonstrators may have mimicked the successful strategies of the Suffragettes, for example.

Another constant throughout the films was London itself. Both Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square are described in the newsreels as ‘the home of free speech’, and landmarks such as Nelson’s Column act as a familiar backdrop to events. London is no stranger to protest. Due to its role as the political and economic centre of Britain, the city is full of buildings which can act as symbolic stand-ins for intangible power structures (the Houses of Parliament, the Bank of England, and foreign embassies are some examples). The fact that places like Hyde Park have become known as the home of free speech also attracts more protest groups, reinforcing the city’s reputation for protest.

The purpose of this series of events organised by the Raphael Samuel History Centre and Professor Ian Christie was to think about how film can be used for research. There is a vast amount of film of London protest available, much of it more accessible than ever thanks to resources such as YouTube. Whilst it is important to be wary of possible biases (the early newsreels are almost entirely concerned with the preservation of law and order), film is a perfectly viable source to use for investigating historical research. It’s just a shame half of my case studies occurred before the invention of film!

Practising Historical Geography

Last Wednesday (the 28th of October), the 21st Practising Historical Geography conference took place at the University of Sussex in Brighton. The conference is organised by the Historical Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (or HGRH and RGS-IBG for short!), and is aimed at undergraduates and postgraduates. This was my forth year attending the conference (previously held at the University of Bristol (2014), University of Central Lancashire in Preston (2013) and the University of Hull (2012). I first attended as a Masters student (all those studying the MA Cultural Geography at Royal Holloway are encouraged to attend), and even now, in the third year of my PhD, I still found it to be a beneficial and enjoyable experience.

The conference combines keynote speakers, workshops, and chances to network. The first keynote was given by Dr. Simon Rycroft (University of Sussex) and was entitled ‘Mid-century Representation: John Latham’s Cosmos.’ Using the work of artist John Latham, Dr. Rycroft argued that it is important to be alert to the changing practices of representation. Representations reflect the ways we think about materials, which changes over time. Academics need to take such things into account when analysing representations.

Dr. Simon Rycroft talking about the work of artist John Latham (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

After the first keynote is a section called Postgraduate Voices, where someone who has recently completed their PhD gives advice based on their experiences. This year, Dr. Jake Hodder talked about the 3 major crises he faced during his PhD, which roughly align with the 3(ish) years that a PhD takes:

Imposter syndrome: The fear that someone will realise you are not good enough to be here, and tell you to go home, in a very public and humiliating way.
Project isn’t coming together: At some points it can feel like you will never be able to make a coherent whole out of all the work you have done.
Uncertainty: Particularly in the third and fourth years, financial insecurity and a sense of ‘what the hell am I going to do next?!’ can take its toll.

I found myself agreeing with everything Jake said. It is always reassuring to know that others are facing the same difficulties as you, and knowing that Jake overcame them to become Dr. Hodder is a welcome confidence boost!

Every year, the Historical Geography Research Group runs a competition for undergraduate dissertations in the field of historical geography. This year, the prize was won by Victoria Bellamy (University of Cambridge), who told us about her research on Victoria Park in East London in the second half of the nineteenth century. Parks are ideologically contested spaces; there is constant debate about their purpose and how they can be used. Victoria’s research explores how some of these debates played out in Victoria Park, surrounded by some of the most deprived areas of Victorian London. She did a fantastic job of presenting her work.

2015-10-28 11.20.29 — Victoria Bellamy summarised her prize-winning undergraduate dissertation in just 10 minutes (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

The middle section of the day is taken up by 2 workshops, which focus on what it’s like to actually do historical research. Previous workshops have involved all kinds of things, from taxidermy to the Preston bus station, but this year they focused on extreme weather events in Britain (run by Dr. Lucy Veale, University of Nottingham) and the spatial politics of British households in the nineteenth-century, particularly the relationships between domestic servants and employers (run by Dr. Fae Dussart, University of Sussex). Chances to discuss the practice of researching the past with other researchers are rare, so I always look forward to this part of the day. It is an opportunity to talk about the difficulties of historical research, as well as explore some methodologies that may be unfamiliar.

Lucy Veale running a workshop about researching extreme weather events in the archive (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

The day was rounded off by the second keynote speaker, Dr. James Kneale (University College London), who spoke on the subject of ‘Looking for Drink in the Archive.’ Dr. Kneale has been researching alternative approaches to Victorian understandings of alcohol. There is plenty of evidence of the moral debates surrounding alcohol in the archives, but the Victorians didn’t just talk about alcohol, they experienced it in a whole range of other ways. Dr. Kneale has been using the archive to investigate practice, which is no simple task.

2015-10-28 15.46.58 — James Kneale discussing looking for evidence of alcohol in the archives (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

If all goes according to plan, I will probably be too busy putting the finishing touches to my thesis to attend the 22nd Practising Historical Geography conference next year. This is a shame, as it is a great event. I would thoroughly recommend it for any Masters or PhD students whose work even remotely relates to historical geography, especially if you are relatively new to academia. The atmosphere is friendly and welcoming, and it would be an ideal first conference. I have learnt a lot over the past four years, and met people who have become both colleagues and friends. Thank you to the Historical Geography Research Group (particularly Lucy Veale, who has organised the last 3 conferences) for putting on such wonderful events.

The 2012-3 MA Cultural Geography cohort in a pub in Hull the night before the 18th Practising Historical Geography conference (Photo: Innes Keighren).

The Royal Holloway contingent in a pub in Preston the night before the 19th Practising Historical Geography conference in 2013 (Photo: Innes Keighren).

The Royal Holloway contingent at the 20th Practising Historical Geography conference in Bristol- we don't spend all our time in pubs! (Photo: Innes Keighren). — The Royal Holloway contingent at the 20th Practising Historical Geography conference in Bristol- we don’t spend *all* our time in pubs! (Photo: Innes Keighren).

Following the Chartists around London

Last Monday, I took part in an event organised by Dr. Katrina Navickas of the University of Hertfordshire and British Library Labs called Following the Chartists around London. Dr. Navickas won a competition run by the Labs to develop a project that makes use of the British Library’s digital resources. As a result she is currently working on the Political Meetings Mapper, a project mapping all of the Chartist meetings listed in the Northern Star, one of the most popular Chartist newspapers. The Following the Chartists event was part of this project.

Katrina Navickas, in full Chartist costume, introduces her Political Meetings Mapper project. — Dr. Katrina Navickas, in full Chartist costume, introduces her Political Meetings Mapper project (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

The afternoon began with lunch and a series of talks. Mahendra Mahey, manager of the British Library Labs project, introduced the British Library Labs and their work. Dr. Navickas explained the Political Meetings Mapper and gave a brief history of the Chartists. Dr. Matthew Sangster (Birmingham University) talked about his website romanticlondon.org, which uses contemporary maps and representations to explore romantic-era London. Finally, Professor Ian Haywood (Roehampton University) discussed the visual representations of ‘monster’ meetings- large, outdoor political meetings. The Chartists used this tactic frequently. We then embarked on a rather damp walking tour of Bloomsbury and Soho, visiting the sites of Chartist meeting places. In some cases, the pubs are still there, in others they have become stationary shops, or the building sadly no longer exists. The tour ended at the Red Lion in Kingly Street in Soho, which hosted meetings of both the Chartists and the London Corresponding Society.

Following the Chartists around London walking tour route (Source: Katrina Navickas).

At the Red Lion we re-enacted a Chartist meeting that took place in December 1838. This is where I came in; I played the roles of a female Chartist of St. Pancras/ Mr. Cardo, who proposed the following resolution:

This is the most important crisis that has existed for the working classes. At the present moment we possess a power most mighty in its operation, one that is to be viewed by us with the highest feelings of delight and by our enemies with dread and alarm (Cheers.) … the Radicals are determined to be staunch to a man, and the people united will carry the day.
RESOLUTION: That this meeting considers a perfect union among all the Radicals absolutely necessary for the accomplishment of Universal Suffrage.

A recent Chartist conference in Edinburgh had proved devisive, and there was a sense that all the various groups and factions needed to get back on the same track, quickly. Only with a united front could universal (male) suffrage be won. Mr. Cardo’s motion was passed unanimously by our meeting.

We weren't about to let a little bit of rain stop us! — We weren’t about to let a little bit of rain stop us! (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

The whole afternoon was great fun. I thoroughly enjoyed wearing a bonnet and apron, even if we did get some funny looks as we wandered around London. The talks highlighted the potential of digital research methods in relation to archives. Around 2% of the British Library’s collections have been digitised, which may not sound like a lot, but considering the Library holds well over 150 million items, it is a huge amount. Dr. Navickas has used computer programmes to transcribe newspaper articles, date meetings, and create maps that begin to interpret the data. The transcription software still needs a human to check its results, and all of this could have been done by hand, but it would have taken an awful lot longer. When it is finished, I think the Political Meetings Mapper will be a valuable tool for academics, students, and the simply curious; a resource which others can use to develop our understanding of the Chartist movement.The walking tour and re-enactment demonstrated how the Political Meetings Mapper could be used.

The British Library Labs project is doing valuable work raising awareness and promoting engagement with the Library’s digital collections. I learnt a lot about the possibilities of digital research methods, and would love to try and work it into my own work somehow!

If you want to do the walking tour yourself, see Dr. Navickas’ guide here.

Book Review: Silvertown- The Lost Story of a Strike that Shook London and Helped Launch the Modern Labour Movement

Silvertown by John Tully — *Silvertown: The Lost Story of a Strike that Shook London and Helped Launch the Modern Labour Movement* by John Tully

Silvertown: The Lost Story of a Strike that Shook London and Helped Launch the Modern Labour Movement. Tully, John. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2014.

“Silvertown’s workers and their families were not just passive victims of the industrial system. They were flesh-and-blood human beings who sorrowed and hoped, swore and fought, loved and hated, enjoyed themselves when they could at pub knees-ups or their teetotal equivalents, dreamed of a better life for their children, and bore adversity with simple stoicism and very Cockney, Irish-influenced, irreverent and ironic sense of humor.”
(Tully, 2014; p. 83)

The above quote epitomises John Tully’s approach in Silvertown: The Lost Story of a Strike that Shook London and Helped Launch the Modern Labour Movement. Tully tells the story of this once-forgotten strike without losing sight of the human element. Thoroughly researched and well-written, this book about British labour history, written by an Australian for an American audience is a valuable addition to labour movement literature.

Silvertown is an industrial area in the London borough of Newham north of the Thames. It is dominated by the Tate & Lyle sugar refinery, but the area was named after Silver’s India-Rubber, Gutta-Percha and Telegraph Works that opened in 1852, when the area was little more than marshland. In September 1888, the workers at the Silver Works went out on strike when they were denied a pay rise. The bitter dispute lasted for 3 months before the workers reluctantly returned to work at their original levels of pay- those that weren’t blacklisted, anyway.

The Silvertown Strike was part of a wave of strikes and organisation in the 1880s that is now known as New Unionism. For the first time, semi-skilled and unskilled workers were unionising, and unlike the more established craft unions, they had socialist leanings and were willing to take militant action. Silvertown was not the only strike that has been left out of the dominant narrative of New Unionism, Louise Raw’s excellent book Striking a Light attempts to give the 1888 Bryant and May Matchwomens’ strike the place it deserves in labour history. Silvertown contributes to the constant process of reassessment that is so important for academic research.

There are any number of reasons why a strike or protest might be left out of the history books, and in the case of Silvertown it is probably because the strikers lost. After 3 months of hunger, picketing, marches and victimisation, the strikers were forced back to work. Tully does an excellent job of analysing why the strike did not succeed. His attention to detail is admirable- he even researched the weather conditions during the strike in order to consider the impacts the weather might have had on the strikers’ resolve. Despite the loss, Tully argues that the strike was a turning point in New Unionism, not least because the merciless tactics used by the owners of Silver’s rubber and electrical plant became a blue print for any employer trying to break a strike.

There are some gaps in the story- for example Tully has few sources that detail what the factory managers were thinking during the strike, so he has to make a few educated guesses. To be fair however, Tully always makes it clear that they are educated guesses, and he cannot use sources that don’t exist. Tully also uses too many sub-headings for my liking, which makes the text feels disjointed and awkward, but this is a minor criticism.

John Tully balances considered analysis with descriptive writing that conveys the more emotive, human aspects of the Silvertown strike. Not only is Silvertown: The Lost Story of a Strike that Shook London and Helped Launch the Modern Labour Movement a fantastic piece of scholarly research, it is also an enjoyable read, two qualities that don’t always go hand in hand.

Contesting the Capital: Exploring London’s History of Protest at the International Conference of Historical Geographers

The International Conference of Historical Geography 2015 took place at the RGS-IBG in Kensington, London. — The International Conference of Historical Geography 2015 took place at the RGS-IBG in Kensington, London (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

Between the 5^th and 10^th of July, the International Conference of Historical Geographers (ICHG) took place at the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers in South Kensington, London. The conference takes place every 3 years in a different city; in 2012 it was in Prague, in 2018 it will be in Warsaw. This year the conference was 40 years old, and over 700 delegates, 60% of which came from beyond Britain, gathered to talk all things historical geography.

Along with Diarmaid Kelliher, a PhD student at the University of Glasgow, I convened a session called Contesting the Capital: Historical Geographies of Protest in London, exploring the relationship between protest and London. As regular readers of this blog are probably aware, London has a long and vibrant history of protest. This is often attributed to Londoners themselves; “Londoners have for many centuries been considered far too ‘bolshie’ to do what they are ordered for long” (Bloom, 2010; p.xxxviii). Whether this is the reason or not, London is a particularly contentious city. For example, on the 30^th of May this year (2015), there was a demonstration in Trafalgar Square to support striking workers at the National Gallery; a protest outside the offices of the Daily Mail about the paper’s treatment of Pilipino nurses; and a march organised by UKUncut in Westminster, in which a huge anti-austerity banner was hung from Westminster Bridge. Three major protests, all in one day. London’s rebellious streak makes it fantastic to study, and Contesting the Capital aimed to celebrate and explore this rich history.

Contesting the Capital included 4 papers; by myself, Gavin Brown, Claire Nally and Diarmaid Kelliher. My paper was about the characteristics of urban areas in general, and London specifically, that encourages protest. Gavin Brown discussed the geographies of the 24-hour picket outside the South African embassy between 1986 and 1990. Claire Nally talked about the Crossbones graveyard in Southwark, the ways it has been represented and ways it fits into networks of memorialisation and feminism. Finally, Diarmaid Kelliher presented a paper about solidarity and London support groups for the 1984-5 miner’s strike.

Claire Nally presenting about the Crossbones Graveyard in Southwark (apologies for the poor-quality camera phone!) (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

For me, the session highlighted some of the key issues involved in studying protest in London, one of which is networks. Walter Nicholls (2009) has demonstrated that networks are a useful tool for thinking about the processes and activities of social movements. Fran Tonkiss (2005) has argued that cities tend to have good information and mobilisation networks, which allow the easy circulation of ideas and people. She also points out that cities bring together extensive social networks that can support protest. Contesting the Capital demonstrated how some of these theories work in practice, placing London in national and international networks of solidarity, communication, and support. For example, during the 1984-5 miner’s strike multiple support groups were active in London offering financial, physical and emotional support to the strikers in far flung places like Wales and Yorkshire. The Non-stop picket outside the South African embassy in the 1980s was part of an international anti-apartheid movement that aimed to put pressure on the South African government. Neither of these issues are obviously related to the lives and concerns of Londoners, but nevertheless people felt strongly enough to take action.

Protests in London highlight the city's place in local, nation, and international networks (Source: City of London Anti-Apartheid Group). — Protests in London highlight the city’s place in local, nation, and international networks (Source: City of London Anti-Apartheid Group).

Another key issue which Contesting the Capital highlighted for me is that London is constantly changing. As Roy Porter (2000; p.7) says “change is the essence” of cities. Economically, politically, socially, culturally, demographically, physically; London hasn’t sat still since it was founded two thousand years ago. For example, the Crossbones graveyard in Southwark was rediscovered during the construction of the Jubilee Line; London’s future helped to uncover its forgotten past. In terms of protest, solidarity has to be carefully constructed and maintained. The strong networks of solidarity that were evident during the miner’s strike have arguably been lost; the fierce criticism of workers whenever there is a tube strike is evidence of this. Along with the city’s sheer size, these constant processes of change make it very difficult to make any meaningful generalisations about London as a whole.

Contesting the Capital aimed to explore the relationship between London and the historical geographies of protest, and it was pretty successful, if I do say so myself. The history of protest in London is an almost inexhaustible resource for studying dissent, alternative politics and the urban, and there is lots more work to be done, although I think it’s fair to say we’re making a good start.

Sources and Further Reading

Bloom, Clive. Violent London: 2000 Years of Riots, Rebels and Revolts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Nicholls, Walter. “Place, Networks, Space: Theorising the Geographies of Social Movements.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 33 (2009); 78–93.

Porter, Roy. London: A Social History. London, Penguin, 2000.

Tonkiss, Fran. Space, the City, and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity, 2005.

Experiences of an Inexperienced Blogger

To celebrate one year of the Turbulent London blog, I thought I would put together some of my top tips for blog-writing. I don’t pretend to be an expert, but over the past year I have learnt a few things about blogging. I have found it a really enjoyable and beneficial experience, and I want to encourage as many people as possible to have a go for themselves. So with that in mind, here are my top 5 tips for writing a blog:

People ARE interested in what you have to say. One of the biggest problems I had when I started blogging was that I didn’t believe that anyone would actually want to read my writing. But the longer I’ve been blogging, and the more compliments I’ve had, the more confident I’ve become. Which is also great for my PhD, and my life in general. So if you’re hesitating about starting a blog due to a lack of confidence, don’t!

Turns out people find protest quite interesting actually. This photo was taken at London Pride, on the 27th of June 2015. — Turns out people find protest quite interesting actually. This photo was taken at London Pride, on the 27th of June 2015 (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

Keep it short, stupid! Blog posts are not generally something people are willing to commit a lot of time to reading. I try to keep my posts to between 500 and 700 words. That way, they take less than 5 minutes to read, and you don’t get people not reading your posts because they’re TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read).

Play to your strengths. I take a lot of pictures, and read a lot of books, so I use a lot of photos and review a lot of books in my blog. It just makes sense to do this kind of thing, because it saves me time, and I enjoy it! Think about whether there are any elements of your life that you could incorporate into your blog. If you’re doing a blog based on your PhD, there should be a lot of overlap anyway.

I am a keen amateur photographer, and I use that as much as possible in my blog posts! (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

Think about when to publish. I generally publish a blog post every week on a Thursday morning. I have a list of ideas for potential posts so I rarely get stuck on what to write, and I try to have a ‘back-up’ post ready in case I have a busy week and don’t get a chance to write anything. This way I can post regularly, which I think is more important than posting frequently. I try to publish my posts at about 8 in the morning, so that people will see the post when they are checking social media on the way to work/university, and read it whilst they are travelling. I know of at least one person who reads my blog on their morning commute, so it’s worth considering.

Publicise! A blogger’s job is not over once a post has been written, it’s important to promote your blog if you want lots of people to see it (and trust me you will, the WordPress stats page is addictive!) I publicise every post I write on Facebook and Twitter, and I put links to specific posts on other websites depending on their contents. Think about who might be interested in reading your work, and how you can make them aware of your blog.

Turbulent London's daily viewing stats for June. Trying to improve your viewing stats can become addictive! — Turbulent London’s daily viewing stats for June. Trying to improve your viewing stats can become addictive! (Source: WordPress)

So there you have it, the top 5 lessons I have learnt during my year of writing Turbulent London. Perhaps I’ll have another 5 tips for you in a year’s time!

Understanding Conflict: Protest and Political Violence

Provide tea and biscuits, and you're sure to get a good turnout! — Provide tea and biscuits, and you’re sure to get a good turnout! (Photo: Hannah Awcock)

This Monday, I attended the annual symposium of the University of Brighton’s conflict research group (or to give it it’s full name, Understanding Conflict: Forms and Legacies of Violence Research Cluster). With members from disciplines across the arts and humanities, the group seeks to understand violent conflict and its legacies. The annual symposium was organised by postgraduates from the research cluster, and featured a range of presentations by staff and students on themes that ranged from Belfast’s ‘peace walls’ to the aesthetics of AK-47s.

The first question asked by Professor Bob Brecher during his introduction to the symposium was ‘what is political violence?’ It may be a question that the research cluster never fully answers to their satisfaction, but I wonder if protest will be included in any definition that they do come up with. Certainly some members of the research group are working on protest or protest-related topics; Tim Huzar presented at the symposium on the topic of ‘Black Lives Matter and the Question of Non-Violence’, and Zeina Maasri talked about the aesthetics of the AK-47 rifle, and its symbolic role for anti-imperialist struggles during the Cold War. I have often thought about the role of violence in protest movements, and I was hoping that attending this symposium might crystallise some of my ideas.

At the very least, I was about to draw lots of connections between the papers presented at the symposium and my own work on the historical geographies of protest in London. One interesting idea that came out of a lively discussion about drone warfare was the idea of the threat of violence as a controlling force. Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and the intense surveillance they enable can give the appearance of God-like omnipotence. The threat of a drone strike can have as much as an impact on people, if not more, than a strike itself. In a similar way, the threat of violent and excessive policing can be used to alter the behaviour of protesters and potential protesters. The threat of being arrested, kettled, or manhandled by police can prevent people protesting; I know it has factored into decisions I have made about whether or not to attend protests.

A recurring theme during the symposium was the ways in which violence is remembered and memorialised. Ian Cantoni presented a paper about the new memorial museum at Camp Joffre in southern France, used as an internment camp for much of the 20th Century. Dr. Eugene Michael talked about the use of the Holocaust metaphor to interpret the conflicts in former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Just like conflicts, protests can often have difficult and contested legacies. I am currently working on the Battle Cable Street, which is memorialised in the mural shown below. It is a contentious site, and has been vandalised several times since the project began in 1976. As the name suggests, the Battle of Cable Street was a violent protest, and there are multiple conflicting narratives that surround it. The legacies of violent pasts are difficult to process, yet we continue to try, whether that violence took the form of a protest, a riot, or a war.

The Battle of Cable Street memorial in Cable Street, in Tower Hamlets in East London. — The Battle of Cable Street memorial in Cable Street, in Tower Hamlets in East London (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

There is clearly a lot of overlap between conflict and protest, especially violent protest. Protest has an uneasy relationship with violence; violence is a frequent part of unrest, but many activists reject it, for a whole variety of reasons. Nevertheless, I think that any study of protest (even those about deliberately non-violent protest) would be improved by at least a passing consideration of the causes, characteristics, and impacts of political violence.

Thank you to the Conflict research cluster at the University of Brighton for organising such an interesting day and giving me so much to think about!

Highs and Lows of the AAG: Perspective of a Lone Travelling PhD Researcher

Who Am I?

My name is Llinos Brown and I am a final year EPSRC CASE award PhD student at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), Preston. My PhD research explores energy cultures in a workplace case study environment. I am particularly interested in exploring how energy cultures differ between manufacturing and office environments within the same workplace. If you are interested in hearing more about my research please get in touch – Lbrown5@uclan.ac.uk or follow me on twitter @LlinosBrownGeog

The AAG this year was held in Chicago, the city that invented the skyscraper. The main conference venue was the Hyatt Regency hotel, to the left of this image (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

Like the majority of conferences, the AAG is a great opportunity to catch up with colleagues/friends, build up relationships, meet new people and network…..what you would expect from any conference. But the AAG is a bit different to any conference I had attended. It is extremely big – over 9000 geographers attending, with over 1700 sessions submitted – split over two main venues and two smaller venues, with over 90 parallel sessions. It has a conference app and there are lots of very well-known geographers in attendance (someone should create a Geographer Bingo).

Something that I struggled with and something that overwhelmed me was – how do you systematically go through which session to attend? My approach was first look at the speciality groups, the main one for me– energy, and highlight them. Then look for some key words – for me energy, workplace, and behaviour, and highlight them. Finally if there are any gaps (and I had time to look in more detail) look through particular session slots and highlight anything that you think was a bit different. I spent around 20 minutes each evening going through what I had highlighted for the next day and working out what I really wanted to see. Each day I also popped in something a little bit different into my schedule. I would definitely recommend this, some of the most thought provoking sessions that I attended were sessions that had nothing to do with my sub-discipline of energy geographies. The AAG has a bit of everything, embrace the amazing discipline of Geography and the variety of sessions that are on offer.

The printed program for the AAG is the size of a telephone book! (Photo: Hannah Awcock)

One of the highs of the conference for me that I did not realise until I was on the plane home, was how embracing geography for a week helped me formulated new ideas. It’s not just about presenting your paper, networking, or handing out business cards. The conference has helped me develop empirical chapters for my thesis and it has made it much clearer to me how all the bits of my future thesis will link together. Maybe this wasn’t the AAG and it was just having time away from my desk and not directly thinking about my PhD but it was very extremely beneficial all the same.

One of the lows of the conference for me was its size. It is extremely big and it can be a lonely experience. Lunch and refreshments are not provided by the organisers so you can easily end up on your own at lunchtime. There are not the opportunities to chat to the person in front of you or sit next to someone while eating dinner and get chatting to them – which I’ve done at the RGS Annual Conference. One thing I noticed at the AAG is that there are a lot of British geographers in attendance but they often stay in their university groups which mean if you’re the sole representative from your university it can mean you’re on your own for an evening or two. I was lucky enough to gate crash the Royal Holloway ‘crew’ so most evenings I joined them for food and drink – Thanks guys!

Llinos doing a bit of networking. — Llinos doing a bit of networking (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

The N word – ‘Networking’ – we all know the benefits of it and how beneficial it can be but sometimes it can make you reflect on your experience as a researcher and make you wish you were in the person you are speaking to shoe’s. Yes, there is the saying ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’ and this might link to me being the only person from UCLan attending the AAG but some evenings when I was back in my hotel room and had time to reflect on the day, I was a bit jealous of the additional support networks, the variety of supervision and the diversity of PhD research communities at other universities. This can be a bit of a low but there are also some positives such as realising you’ve got better resources than other PhD students – such as a permanent desk.

So to round up some top tips from me:

Don’t attend every session, there is a lot going on and you need time to digest the information you’ve obtained;
Get in contact with people you have met at previous conferences and see if they are attending, buddy up with them, exchange details and go for a drink.
Follow the twitter hashtag, if you’re ever not sure what session to attend check out twitter and see if something exciting is happening.
Head to a random session not related to your discipline – embrace Geography

Llinos Brown, University of Central Lancashire.