UACES application

Didn't get the UACES fieldwork funding. Disappointed, but they only had 4 awards apparently. Ridiculously competitive. Ah well, never mind.

Francois Duchene Travel Bursary

Just heard that I've got the Francois Duchene Travel Bursary to fund one of my fieldwork trips - hooray!

Francois Duchene Bursary application

Just emailed off my application for a Francois Duchene travel bursary to fund a trip to Kiev in June 2011. More fingers to cross...

UACES scholarship application

Just emailed off my application for a UACES scholarship to fund one of my fieldtrips in 2011. Fingers crossed...

Book review published

Just discovered today that the book review I wrote about 18 months ago has been published in the October 2010 edition of the journal Slavonic and East European Review, Vol.88, No.4.

Bit of a landmark - my first academic publication. So rather chuffed about that.

Fieldwork funding applications

Had supervision yesterday and pretty much finalised my two applications for fieldwork funding. One is to UACES and one is for a Francois Duchene bursary. I could certainly do with some financial assistance, so fingers crossed!

Fieldwork planning

Had a supervision meeting the other day and discussed my fieldwork planning so far. The trips are scheduled for 2011 and it's looking like April to June for the three main ones, with at least one trip to Brussels before that. So I'm working on a proposed budget for the first of those trips, to Zagreb in April, in order to apply for a UACES scholarship. You can apply for up to £1500 to help fund fieldwork. Exciting!

Re-registered for 2nd year

Just re-registered at Sussex for the second year of the PhD. A busy year ahead!

First year complete!

Well, I had a supervision meeting yesterday and my research outline is signed off - so I have completed the first year of my PhD - hooray! Very, very pleased seeing as it's been so hard to keep going. I think my brain needs a bit of a rest for a while.

Comments on research outline

Received today:

"This is an impressive research outline - it shows an excellent command of the literature and it is thorough, clear and viable. So I would recomend progression."

and

"This research outline is extremely well prepared, comprehensive and clear, demonstrating that Peter is already well on the way to completing an interesting and important piece of research. The outline contains an excellent literature survey."

So, very pleased with that. There are more detailed comments to which will require more work, but for now receiving some positive feedback feels really good - I've had precious little of it up to now!

Waiting for comments...

I've got a meeting in a couple of days time to receive comments on my research outline from the two independent reviewers. I have no idea how much more work I may have to do before I can get it all signed off and know that I've completed the first year of the PhD. So I'm feeling pretty frustrated with it as I always hate getting the last bit of any task done. Once it is signed off, I think I really need a holiday!

Annual review

Well, had my annual review yesterday and it was okay. Rather like having a review with a line manager, which I have endured many times. It was with Tim Bale and Alan Mayhew, and I learned that Alan is one of the independent reviewers of my research outline and he has now read it. So comments should be ready soon to review. And Alan offered to help with contacts in Croatia and Ukraine, as I hoped, so that is really useful.

Teaching

Have decided not to do any teaching in the next academic year and to focus exclusively on my research. I enjoyed teaching the British Political History course last Autumn, but it just took so much mental energy and time. There will be plenty of teaching in future, I hope. I think the rest of this year will be about planning fieldwork for 2011.

Submitting research outline

Right, I'm about to submit my research outline for comments from the two independent reviewers. It's 16,000 words, 58 pages long. It's moved on so much since Xmas and it's much, much better. I'm sure there will be more to do on it before it can be signed off and approved, but this is another milestone hence this post. Think I deserve a little rest and maybe even a holiday of some kind!

Research Outline admin forms

Working on the admin forms to go with my research outline. Ethics statements etc. Main issue would seem to be maintaining confidentiality. Data Protection etc. I don't think there's too much to say, but I could be proved wrong when it's discussed with supervisors. Just makes me want to be able to actually get on with some proper data collection.

Work on research outline continues...

Well, I met my supervisors yesterday to disucss my draft research outline. There is still further work to do, but not as much as I thought. Mainly need to sort out the variables - the dependent variable is going to be perceptions of the effectiveness of EU democracy promotion now, to get around the problem of how to measure effectiveness itself. Also, for the independent variables I need to say how I am going to classify them. And the methods section needs rewriting... So, actually quite a lot to do over the next few weeks!

First draft of research outline

I've been working really hard recently and the first draft of the research outline is now ready for my supervisors. I know it's going to come back with loads of red pen and issues to work on, but that's okay - things are moving forward.

Working on research outline

Well, I'm continuing to work on my research outline. I have to produce a first draft for a meeting with my supervisors one week from today. I have done a lot of reading recently on democratization and EU foreign policy and I think I better start writing and see what comes out. How much text I can keep from my original outline (the MSc dissertation) remains to be seen. The deadline is mid May for submitting the outline to the uni for approval - so the next two months are critical really.

Research outline presentation

Well, the research outline presentation is done - what a relief. The 15 minute presentation itself went fine, but the Q&A afterwards was pretty tough. That of course is the point, to get constructive feedback from faculty and your peers. Certainly it's given me plenty to think about, not least my dependent variable and what it is exactly that I'm actually trying to measure!

Next task is to get stuck in to producing the written version of the research outline. It would be nice to have a firm deadline so I know what I'm working towards... I think it's probably due in around Easter, so not long.

Busy year ahead

Well, it's 2010 now and it's going to be a busy year. This coming term I will be teaching Explanatory Concepts in Political Science. I've also got the editorial assistant job starting on the Party Politics journal. And then of course there's the DPhil project itself, the first task of which is presenting my research outline on 3 Feb. Better get on with it then...