So, today is the final day of my semester-long sabbatical. In fact, there are 95-minutes left...! No, make that 94. Ah, crap... I'll probably post something about that separately as the return to teaching etc. allows, but for now it seems like a logical point to post again about the 'subject book' and where things have got with this and the Levinas-related 'stuff' I've been working on. I'm likely to work a little bit more on it next week (are few things I want to finish reading / re-reading - some of Sara Ahmed's writings on Levinas, Paul Harrison's papers on Levinas and Derrida, etc.) but then it will be a case of putting it aside to marinate for a while and, around teaching, going back to the NRT book.

So, since the last post I've moved from reading Levinas ('Totality and Infinity' and 'Time and Other', as well as some of the shorter texts) on to reading Derrida's long essay on Levinas in 'Writing and Difference' and Irigaray's critique of Levinas in 'An Ethics of Sexual Difference'. I've also read various secondary texts on Levinas. That's been mixed together, alongside some digression into psychoanalytic geographies, and I've drafted a (roughly) 14,500 word chapter. As always it's much longer than I'd intended, but it also feels fairly concise - there's just a fair bit to work through.

As with the other chapters in the book, it unfolds in conversation with a specific encounter (or rather, set of encounters) from 'the real world'. In this case, it's more the 'reel world' - the movie 'Shame'. That might seem like an odd combination, but hopefully I'm showing in the chapter that 'Shame' presents a useful backdrop to think through Levinas. There is, most obviously, a host of faces and encounters with faces in the movie (both between characters and between character and viewer). There's also an interesting sort of sociality in those relations - mostly objectifying and so, in Levinas's sense, not ethical, but also moments where the other might be something that troubles a little more. The sex addiction theme of the movie led to the psychoanalytic geographies jaunt, but I basically argue that while 'Shame' has been read by many in psychoanalytic ways, the cinematography and story telling of the movie actually work away from that. Rather than it being about past trauma, talking about that trauma, etc., it's more about the immediacy and surface of encounters. 

That does, though, lead to a couple of critical comments I'm still working on in relation to Levinas's account, specifically of the face-to-face relation...

1) I'm not convinced by his account of communication and the emphasis on language and discourse in that. One of the interesting things, to me at least, about 'Shame' is the lack of talking, the lingering (often awkward) shots of faces in various states and between faces. While little is often said here, there is another sort of communication going on...

2) I'm not convinced by Levinas's a-social account of the face-to-face. The other here seems to come out of nowhere in the way that it interrupts. While I can see that, I also wonder about the sorts of dispositions bodies arrive at such encounters with and how that might influence the interruption (or lack of interruption) that the other brings about. I guess, in the context of 'Shame' again, I'm thinking about how someone can be numbed to the face of the other through repetition and so resist (with out actively doing so) the face of another and responding to it in the sort of way Levinas suggests. This is very much to go against Levinas's line of thinking, but it seems significant. I'm not looking to re-insert a social constructivist position here about intersubjective relations. But I think the latter chapter in the book (partly through Nancy, more through Esposito) might lead somewhere on this...

I'm also hoping to present some material from this chapter latter in the year at a couple of things - it'll be interesting to see what comes back from that. One of the things I'm finding about working on this (and the NRT book) is that it is quite odd to be working this long and writing this much without the dialogue of peer review. It feels like I'm not really making proper, audit-able progress on anything as it's just still 'in progress'. There's also the linger fear of going down a dead-end or starting to second guess what readers / reviews won't like. So, feedback I think it's going to be a very useful thing here...

There are some things I've not got to on the chapter and will leave for the moment. I'm thinking of venturing back into Deleuze, for example, and his (and Guattari's) account of faciality in 'A Thousand Plateaus' and his discussion of the close-up in the 'Cinema' books. But I'm not sure there's either space or the narrative opportunity to do that. It's something that can wait a while though as it's more something I can do in coming back to the text with other critical thoughts... There is also the question of the extent to which I also look to 'Otherwise than Being' and whether I respond to some of the critiques above through that or not... I remember reading that during my PhD and it proving 'interesting' to get through. I'm not sure from glancing through my notes what that will offer. But I guess I'll see where it goes... 

In ‘A Machiavellian guide to getting ahead in academia’ (published in THES on 21 Dec. 2017). Rogier Creemers provides a number of suggestions for navigating the post-PhD world. There are moments of truth in this – it is really tough both getting a post-PhD academic job AND once in that job the pressures can be immense. There will obviously be different experiences based on your discipline. However, across this there will be a wide range of demands on your time. Often these demands will pull you in opposite directions. Publishing for most is what will help you into the next job and grant applications will weight on your mind (either to pay your salary or enhance your CV). But teaching and teaching prep. (if you’re not in a research-only post) will take up the bulk of your time. And if you’re in a research-only job, you’re most likely going to be working most if not all of the time on someone else’s agenda rather than your own. This all, of course, is not to factor in ‘life’ – family, dependents, partners, pets, etc. etc. etc.. There are also, unfortunately, some academic who are less than nice. And academia may turn out to not be for everyone and, in some cases, it very much is a good thing to have an exit strategy.
 
I was left with a distinct feeling of sadness, though, as I read through the advice Creemers offers in response to this given the bleak and egoist picture it portrays of both academia and of what is needed to succeed within it. This may be a product of having had a very different experience of post-PhD early career life. This might be a product of a different national or disciplinary context. I may have just been lucky with the jobs I’ve had and the departments I’ve found myself in. Or, it may just be a product of the Christmas season being upon us. But as a rejoinder, I’d like to suggest a more positive take …:  
 

• Value your peers

Yes, it’s important to know what you want and to listen to advice from those in the know. This is very good advice. The best advice I got at the start of my career was from such a notable figure in my discipline (see below). But it is also important to develop a network of peers and to maintain the links that you have (hopefully) built up with those you did your PhD around. Don’t just suck up to those you deem more important and try to ride their coat tails. Mentors can be great. But such a network of peers, more so than ‘the great and the good’, will more likely sustain you throughout your career. Recognize that, give time to them, and work together. It’s likely that these ‘lesser’ figures are the ones that you will be able to turn to to bitch, whinge, complain, as well as seek consolation from and reassurance. They are, after all, going through much of what you are going through. Recognize that, develop a community of support rather than competition, help each other succeed (or manage failure).
 
 

• Be driven by interest and temper that with pragmatism

It is possible to be focused without being ‘blinkered’. Your standard answer should not be ‘no’ to invitations to do things – to write chapters, review articles, to present etc.. Rather, you should think carefully about what you’re asked to do and whether you want to do it or not and whether you can do it or not. If it immediately looks interesting, think pragmatically: how are you placed with your probation / tenure criteria? Does the request work in that context or not? Equally, how does it relate to things like REF, TEF or your national equivalent, if they’re significant to your contract. If no, you may have to say no to ensure imminent future employment / employability. But also, think about whether it is intellectually stimulating or not? Does it help your name circulate where it might not have so far? Will it help you as a stepping stone to something else? Will it give you the chance to work with someone interesting? Can you use it to road test an idea?
 
It’s likely that you’re going to have something like 35-40 years of work ahead of you when you get out of the PhD. Thinking in terms of what’s REFable etc only and so solely writing journal articles and grant applications is going to get pretty dull pretty quick. So, vary what you do, gain satisfaction out of pursuing what’s interesting, be part of your academic community and embody the sort of practice that you would like to see in others. In all likelihood, so long as there is a bit of self-awareness and pragmatism mixed in (i.e. ticking the big boxes first), you’ll be fine.
 
Also on this, the idea that once you’ve got a ‘proper job’ you’ll have more time for various requests is, well, a bit naive; it’s more likely the case that such requests will accelerate along with the expectations your employer has of you. So, you need to develop a more balanced / heathy / rounded approach from the start if you’re going to do this for 35-40 years.
 
 

• Recognize collegiality and act accordingly

There are ‘dicks’ out there who may well try to take advantage of early career staff or use them in some way to advance their own cause. We’ve all seen the person at a conference who puts their hand up and, with a horrible question to a PhD student, announces to those collected there ‘Yes, I’m the biggest dick in the room’. I’ve had that happen to me and it wasn’t nice. There are also, on occasion, ‘colleagues’ who appear Teflon coated, who make a mess for those around them, or drop balls that you end up catching. However, there are also a lot of very well meaning, very nice, very collegiate folk out there who will try to work with you and support the development of your career if you seem worth investing in (i.e. if you’re enthusiastic, hard working, well-meaning etc). Sometimes they are overt mentor figures who’ll take you under their wing. There are, though, many more who’ll just be collegiate people who contribute to this in much more subtle ways.  
 
The advice I mentioned above, received from an eminent figure, was delivered on the news I’d got a short-term lectureship. It was simply: ‘make yourself indispensable’. That might go against any kind of blinkered egoism that Creemers advocates. But there’s something in that – it got a lot of people on my side early on who wanted me to succeed. It meant that they didn’t want to lose me at the end of the contract I was on and tried to stop that happening. It meant one or two wrote me a nice reference. They also identified possible collaborations and invited me to be involved in things. They got back in touch when jobs subsequently came up and encountered me to apply. They read drafts of papers for me. They read drafts of grant applications for me. I reciprocated. Generally, it got a bunch of people on my side.
 
Yes, some are dicks and will try to take advantage. But in many cases, if you’ve set a positive tone / positioned yourself as a valuable colleague, it is more likely that others will try to to include and involve you, help you to get the chance to do something interesting or that you’ve not had the chance to do. It could be something as simple as someone in your department asking you to give a guest lecture on your specialism on their module as a break from the generic stuff you’ve been lumped with (I’m looking at you, methods modules out there). It might be a hand-me-down invitation to write something that will probably do more for your name circulating than theirs. It might be to be involved in a supervision committee as a 3rd or 4th supervisor. These are all small things that won’t be headline points on your CV. They rarely add up to REF-able publications or pounds and pence. But they’re a part of what being an academic is. So, by all means be wary, watch out for dicks, heed when others flag such dicks up for you, but don’t assume the worst of every invitation or request that a) isn’t from a ‘superstar’ and b) isn’t about a fairly myopic aspect of being an academic. Some of the time, at least, your colleagues will be trying to be collegiate and something interesting looking is just that!
 

• Be Nice!

The best concluding advice I can think of, then, is: just be nice! Or, to quote the Last Leg, ‘Don’t be a dick’. Creemers suggests that “Being a nice person … is secondary to not getting shafted”. This is probably the worst advice that I have seen in any early career advice context. Quite simply, not everyone is going to be out to get you. Not everyone immediately sees early career academics as ripe for the ‘shafting’. I’d go as far as to say most aren’t out to shaft you. However, if you act like a dick to everyone you’ll get treated like one. And if we all act like dicks, then we’ll all be pretty much shafted, won’t we? It is possible to balance the pressures you’ll experience (to produce, to teach, not to mention all the life ‘stuff’ you’ll be dealing with). It won’t be easy and you need to be careful in how you navigate this. It may also be the case that you need support through that from those around you; from colleagues, broader networks, etc. That’s part of being in an academic community. So, be a positive part of it.
 
 

For the past 3 weeks-ish I've been in Australia with a base in Perth / at the University of Western Australia. The time's flown by and has been great. I can really understand why so many folk move down here from Britain...

I've mostly just been working away at the subject book (see below) but have also been mixing in some time off around work; I've managed a roughly 60/40 or 50/50 split between work and not work. My wife and daughter are here and I've been staying with family for part of it so was always meant to be part-holiday, part-work. It's also been great see Matthew Tonts and Paul Maginn - they've been great hosts - and meeting a few others. I co-taught a field trip with Matthew a few years ago (mixing Plymouth and UWA students) and Paul did his sabbatical in Plymouth / the office next to me a couple of years ago. 

There are some things I've learned while I'm here...
​
1) Coffee here is awesome. Like, really awesome. The least-good coffee I've had here is probably somewhere above average at home and the best, way better. I've drunk far to much of it.

2) It's hard to do work when: a) it's 35 degrees and humid, and b) there are beaches within 20minutes drive away. 

3) Public parks here, and play-parks in particular, a so much better than at home. I'm assuming this has something to do with all the revenues from big oil companies etc. that are based here... But it also seems like people actually take pride in the surroundings and appreciate them. All those I've been to - and that's a lot... - have great equipment, are clear, aren't vandalised, etc.. My daughter has loved it and is going to be so disappointed when we get back to Plymouth!

4) It's not just the poisonous stuff that you have to look out for (snakes, spiders etc) but also the flies - there are billions at this time of year - and the birds. The latter 'swoop' you quite aggressively. Oh, and flies are attracted to beard oil. Really attracted...

5) UWA campus is really, really nice (see images).

​
In terms of work, mostly I've been reading about Levinas and reading Levinas, particularly "Time and the Other" and "Totality and Infinity". It's taking me a while to get through this - I remember that about Levinas and his style being hard work - but being here in Perth has been a good context to do that in.

My initial ideas about how I might think / write critically on Levinas and his 'face-to-face' relation in the context of the book seem to be panning out and developing, which has been nice. I think there are ways that the case / example / foil (I'm still not quite sure how I'm going to refer to the 'empirical' moments...) I wanted to work with in this chapter - the movie Shame - is going to work. It's in no way exemplary of anything in Levinas but it sits in odd constructive tension - all the long and lingering face-to-face looks that take place, the distance in that, the (lack of) history given, the role of 'eros' / sexual encounters in both, etc. etc. all have given me things to think about / ways of mapping out the discussion and where it might go.

Also, everything I've found in terms of academic literature on Shame is psychoanalytic in approach - it all focuses on childhood trauma (never explained in the movie), parental / sibling relations, the nature of addiction etc.

This is all usual and will hopefully mean that Shame will play a dual role in the chapter: 1) throwing into relief points from Levinas (the basic thing I hoped it would do) and 2) allowing me to contrast the post-phenomenology of (inter)subjectivity I'm trying to develop to a more psychoanalytical account of subjectivity. I think the latter will be important less to the chapter and more to the book given that there's a range of psychoanalytic work in geography which I could have risked passing by / just name checking in the intro....

But back to more pressing concerns - we leave in a couple of days and so that means an even longer journey than the one out; 19hours of flying plus 5 waiting in Singapore airport. Time to download more Peppa Pig...

I mentioned in my last post that I was switching focus to a different book project - one focused on subjectivity and provisionally titled 'encountering the subject'. It's basically a more sustained attempt to develop a post-phenomenology of subjectivity, taking forward what I've written about in shorter form in various places (including with James Ash).

Having been to France for a few days for a project meeting with Damien Masson, Sara Fregonese and Simon Runkel (which was really stimulating, though I didn't take photos for some reason [hence none here]), I've been getting back into that over the past two or three weeks and have made some slow progress... It's probably daft to be working on two books at once, but I'm enjoying being able to switch between two things I'm working on because I want to rather than as a result of other pressures (REF etc). There is something mutually supporting between the projects even if they are a bit different in focus and approach...

The biggest difference I've been facing here thus far compared with the NRT book is that a lot of what I'm working on exists in some form and requires editing / finalising / adapting to fit within the narrative of the book. So, while with the NRT book I was starting with an entirely blank page and trying to explain a series of points / concepts / themes clearly, here I've mostly been trying to whittle, refine, reorientate etc. existing material and it's taking much more time.

So, much of the past few weeks has been spent working with a long and sprawling draft of material I've worked at off and on for a few years that engages with the writings of Roberto Esposito. I came across Esposito through his book Communitas which was mentioned somewhere when I was reading lots and lots of Jean-Luc Nancy. This was back in 2009 or 2010 and I think it was just translated (so - may have been a 'you might be interested in' success for Amazon...). That book sat on my shelves for a while and moved between offices as job changes happened.

A few years ago now, though, I sat down and read through Esposito that and, realising I wished I'd not waited, I went on and read the rest of his key works related to that / available in English at that time. That covered his Immunitas, Bios, and The Third Person. These all revolve around his project of developing an 'affirmative biopolitics'. I also read his 'Terms of the Political' and have recently read 'Persons and Things'. The initial writing I did from that was very much in a 'what does Esposito say' vein which was trying to help clarify his arguments largely for myself. It seems very few geographers have really engaged or written in detail on that. That draft led to a couple of conference presentations back in 2013 and 2014 but was put aside for reasons I can't really remember. Oh, that's right - impending parenthood.

When I returned to it last year, I realised that I didn't want to write a book that just outlined the position of a range of thinkers and instead try to do something that bounced their ideas of a specific 'real-world' encounter which might speak to that theory but also question it. I wanted something less 'textbooky'. So, I spent a bit of time trying to do that, ballooning things up to nearly 17,000 words. Returning to this now, I've been trying to both cut down some of the length explanations / exposition and building more of a narrative argument into the text. I'm not done with that, but I've got a first draft that I'm happier with. It still needs to be cut and the arguments pulled out more, but it's getting there and I'm happy to move on with the rest of the chapters before coming back for a final push / edit when all the pieces are there. This will actually be chapter 3 of the book (after the intro, a chapter 1 and a chapter 2) so I'll need the chapters before it finished before it can be finalised, anyway.

Very recently, then, I've been trying to work at some other existing material that'll form parts of the book - my paper in Emotion, Space and Society that works with Jean-Luc Nancy and such a case / encounter and my recent Geography Compass paper. The former with be the basis for the book's chapter 2 is more in the style I want the book to take but I'm using the freedom of a book manuscript to expand and clarify some of the points in there, as well as introduce a little standardisation between this material and the other chapters (i.e. having some common context about the people I'm engaged with near the start of each chapter). I've also recently received a couple of recent / 'new' Nancy books - Ego Sum and The Disavowed Community, so I want to read those and include references if / where appropriate. For the latter material, I'm using the Compass piece as a starting point for the book's introduction chapter. The key challenge there is removing a bit of the reviewing tone and pushing it again more towards the arguments I want to make / situating what's to come. It's really useful having that review material there as I can situate the book within it, but it needs more 'me' through that and a clearer articulation of the book project within it. I won't finalise it until all the other chapters are written and I'm clear fully on where they all end up, but tinkering with it now has been helpful both in realising I've got stuff I can use but also what I need to be clearer on to myself as much as in writing.

The remaining two main chapters for the book (what will be Chapter 1 and Chapter 4) will engage critically with Levinas's discussion of the face and Jean-Luc Marion's discussion of 'givenness', respectively. I'm going to be working on the Levinas material next while I'm in Australia. He's probably the most established / familiar face (excuse the pun) in geography when it comes to critical engagements with subjectivity (though more so for ethics), but I'm hoping to take that in original directions based on the critical disposition I take with his work. I read a fair bit of Levinas towards the end of my PhD but not since. From what I remember there, it does a lot in terms of the sort of critical engagement with certain understandings of subjectivity I'm trying to develop in the book but also that there's quite a bit of stuff I'm not comfortable with. But that's also the case (but to a lesser degree) with Nancy, which is why I became interested in Esposito. The narrative of the book is less about a synthesis of the positions of these thinkers or picking one ahead of others and more about how we can move forward through each, taking something up, adding something in, responding to issues along the way, etc.. There will be, I think, a short conclusion chapter in the book that tries to draw some of that out and make clear where things have got to (and still need to go) but I'm leaving that for now. 

I'm guessing my next post will either be from or after Australia. That may well resemble holiday snaps that anything academic...

As of yesterday, I've (pretty much) drafted the first 3 chapters of the NRT book. I say pretty much as there's one gap I can't do anything about now that will lead to the production of a figure, but the text is pretty much drafted. 

It has been an interesting start and I've managed to stick largely to the rules I set myself (see 1st post). I've started at the start and I'm writing in a linear way, both chapter-by-chapter and within each chapter. I'm not editing as I go or worrying about it being quite right yet. I've written more than my target words each week / day, though that's also meant I've gone WAY over the chapter limits I set myself. But I've not worried about it / will edit later (for a sense of what WAY means - I should have 21,000 words at this point and I've more than 34,000...). Looking back at the proposal though, I don't think I'm going overboard and it's a case that the plan was far to ambitious in terms of what would be covered in the words allocated. But again, I'll edit that when I've a full draft. 

I've worked almost exclusively on the book for the past 9 weeks. At times, a little too exclusively. About half way through that I realised that I needed to find a slightly healthier way to work. That became quite a literal issue when a muscle in my back spasmed... Part of the problem is that before starting working on this I was Programme Co-Ordinator and Senior Tutor for all of our geography programmes at Plymouth. That translated into constant interruption. So, often, while I'd try to sit down for a long time to work on something, I was perpetually interrupted and so ended up down corridors speaking to people, talking to our professional support staff, etc etc. Being on sabbatical and working from home has meant almost no distraction (other than toddlers and cats demanding cuddles / strokes, respectively). That translated into me sitting down at my desk at 8.30-9 and staying there writing / thinking / reading / writing for hours and hours on end. It's reach time to get my daughter from nursery and I'd realised I hadn't left the house since dropping her in the morning. And I was absolutely exhausted because of the work I was doing. A lot of the admin I did before wasn't exactly mentally taxing so gave me a break from thinking to hard. I've totally lost that type of semi-down time.

So, a few weeks ago I worked out a schedule for my days. There are some subtle differences for each day based on things like when my daughter is or isn't at nursery, but each generally consists of the following:
1) a trip one of a couple of favourite cafes where I tend to get on with writing. Normally I can get my day's words done then alone...
2) some kind of exercise / going outside for a walk. I'm lucky to live next to a large park so I've worked our a few 15-20min loops to walk.
3) set periods at home for writing (usually no longer than 3 hrs)
4) set periods at home for reading (usually around 2 hours long)
5) some time to do something that doesn't involve a lot of thought (emails, research related admin, writing up some notes from reading, some 'data' transcription I've got to do etc.)  

This has seemed much healthier and I think now that I'm a couple of weeks into the official sabbatical period I'm losing the slightly panicked feeling that 'must make it count, must produce, might not this sort of opportunity again' etc.).

But all that said, I'm setting the NRT book aside for the next 8 weeks or so. I tend to work like this normally, just on a different scale, when it comes to articles etc. I'll work on one fairly intensely then leave it aside at an appropriate point (a draft, getting 'stuck' etc.), while I pick up another. The first tends to drop to the back of my mind and I can come back to it with a fresher feeling and some different perspectives. Until recently it wasn't a conscious decision and more a product of waiting for review comments etc. to come back. But I think I work better this way that trying to have multiple strands going at the same time.

So, as the NRT book stuff goes into a drawer, there are a couple of other things going on...

First up, I've got a quick trip to Cergy-Pointoise for the rest of this week for a project meeting with Damien Masson and others. This is the first meeting for a project we're starting a project on 'Living in the City with Terror' that extends the work I did with Damien on Atmospheres and Security. It's going to be interesting to see how that develops...

Second, when I get back, next week I'm going to move back to a longer running book project, provisionally titled 'Encountering the Subject'. This is really different to the NRT one in a number of senses. While I started the NRT one relatively from scratch, this book aims to draw together and develop some strands of my work that have gone on for some time now. The book will basically be about subjectivity (or rather, intersubjectivity) after a range of post-phenomenological ideas. My paper in Emotion, Space and Society will form the basis for one chapter and mirror the approach I'm hoping to take throughout - of staging a conversation between conceptual material and some kind of encounter that sets the scene for it / asks questions back. Also, my very recent paper in Geography Compass will provide a range of review-based material for the introduction.

Before starting the NRT book I'd been working for some time with Roberto Esposito's writing on community-immunity, including a presentation years ago at the IBG and another in Bristol a little  more recently. That's work has  built up to a very bloated draft (somewhere in the region of 17,000 words) that I want to spend the next few weeks whittling down / getting into better shape as a proper draft (more like 12,000). After that, will be further work on the introduction (building on the Compass paper) and what will be the first chapter that comes before the Nancy and Esposito material. I haven't gone looking for a contract yet but I wanted to get at least two or three chapters in so I could article the point / argument more clearly in that and provide sample material.

I'm aiming to post more about that project separately / once I've got back into it and update and things go along. 

Oh, and I'm off to Perth in Australia for much of November where I'll have a desk at the University of Western Australia and, mostly, be staying with my brother who lives there. So some of the subjectivity work will be done on the move which should be interesting in terms of fairly banal logistical questions / managing access to resources etc. I'm not sure how many books I can take that aren't about Peppa pig so I'm going to have to think quite strategically about what work I plan for that trip...

​Since the last post I've been making fairly steady progress with writing. As I'd hoped, the modest weekly word target I'd set has been well below what I've been managing so I've kept ahead of that pretty consistently. At the same time, as always, I've been rubbish as sticking to planned chapter lengths (by some way) but I'm not worry about that right now and just carrying on with writing (i.e. sticking to the write now edit later approach I want to get better at). That means I've pretty much drafted the first two chapters - the introduction and 'NRT and Geography' - and so I'm now writing the 'Geography and Practice' chapter. That's proving to be a little more of a trudge than the previous two given the nature of the material I'm covering - it's not an introduction chapter but it's also potentially fairly broad / abstract so not easy to built up a story / make it accessible and / or avoid getting side tracked into length discussions of things that aren't that important to cover at this point in the book... Hopefully, in the end, it's going to work its way through discussions (and critiques) of performativity / events, rhythm, habit, passivity as well as give some context to 'the practice turn'. 

One thing away from writing that I did last week was take a 'fieldtrip' to Bristol. In the 'NRT and Geography' chapter I'm talking a bit about the background to NRT's emergence. That means covering some of the intellectual background / context for NRT emerging - the usual comparisons to New Cultural Geography as well as some less commonly discussed comparisons to, for example, Humanistic Geography, Structuration, Time-Geography etc.. However, I'm also trying to take seriously something Tim Cresswell talks about in his review of Ben Anderson and Paul Harrison's 'Taking-place' book - that there is a history to be written about the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol when it comes to NRT.

I'm not quite sure where this will go at present. I partly got the idea from some things I've read about the 'Berkeley School' - where 5 or 6 generations of that work has traced onwards from Sauer based on his PhD students, their students etc., though that's on a much large scale and longer time frame. I'm doing a bit of that here though it isn't quite so straightforward in terms of who to include or discount in that.

That said, as part of this I have been looking a bit into both who was at Geography at Bristol alongside Thrift around the time NRT emerged, the PhD students and other postgrads he worked with at that time (and, hopefully, who they in turn supervised for PhDs), and so on. Effectively, I'm trying to gain a sense of the range of work being done that relates to NRT both at Bristol and beyond as people moved on, what was being thought about in that place at that time, and so on. I was lucky enough to bump into Mark Jackson who provided me with a copy of a book the School published to mark the University's centenary year (which, I'd forgotten, includes an image that I appear in - it was 2009 / the year I finished at Bristol and I now remember a whole-School photo being taken...). That includes a full list of all higher degrees awarded and staff present in the School so will be really useful.

Mostly, though,, I spent an afternoon in the Wills Memorial library going through all the dissertations produced for the MSc Society and Space degree. That degree was set up by Thrift (and others) and has become known for producing a lot of academics. Mark also provided me with a list of all graduates from that a while ago and I've been going through it to identify as far as possible who went on to academic jobs and what they're doing. However, the dissertations give much more of an insight into what people were working on. I'm focusing for the most part on a combination of title, supervisor, and reference lists to get a sense of the focus / what people were reading. That's largely because it's covering 20+ years of dissertations so there's no way I'm going to read them all. However, as I went through (largely photographing things to look more at later) there's a definite trend from 'new cultural geography' projects that look at the representation of x in y in the mid-90s to much more that could be thought of as NRT-based in the early 2000s onwards (questions of the body, technology, affect, etc). In the former there's lots of citations of Cosgrove, Daniels, etc. and in the latter, lots of Thrift, Massumi, Deleuze, etc. But I need to look in more detail.

In lots of ways, I'm thinking there's a whole journal article on trends in cultural geography by looking at these reference lists (i.e. doing some time of massive frequency count by year of each of the 100s and 100s of source cited and looking at patterns / trends in that) but I'm trying to not get sidetracked from actually writing the book... Perhaps next year...

I'm hoping to get back to Bristol at some point in the next month or so once I've looked through the info on PhD graduates so that I can start to look at the theses in the Arts and Social Science library there, who the supervisor was, again what was being read, etc..

This is all probably going to translate to no more than a few hundred words in the book / a box or two, but for some reason it's turning into a very interesting rabbit hole to burrow down into...

As I tweeted last week, I've just started working on a book project. The book is simply titled 'Nonrepresentational Theory' and has been contracted to appear in Routledge's 'Key Ideas in Geography series'. I really like this series - it sits somewhere between research monograph and textbook, and I think that suites writing and NRT. I decided I wanted to do it after writing a couple of reference-type works on it (for the recent AAG encyclopaedia and for 'Oxford Bibliographies').

[Well, technically it is *another* book project - I've got another one that's on the go / has rumbling away in the background as time and motivation allows, but without any really target deadline. But this NRT one is different in that it's a self contained project, isn't emerging directly from papers etc, and is going to be my main focus for the foreseeable / until it's done...]

In an attempt to blog a bit again, I'm going to keep a bit of a running commentary on the writing of the book. In particular, I'm going to try to flag things that I'm trying to do in terms of writing process, if that's working or not, and anything really that comes up along the way. I'm not really going to say much about the content of the book (I think) though that'll depend on what I'm thinking as things unfold (the book isn't due until December 2018, after all...). Also, I've not idea how often I'll post anything....

At present I'm trying to do a few things a bit differently compared with my usual writing practice (and how the other book has slowly emerged)...

1) I've started by writing the Introduction. For my PhD thesis, that came joint last (along with the conclusion). In most cases (papers, chapters etc) I'll have sketches of this / will do some work to make sure I'm clear on what it is I'm trying to do, but mostly it won't be properly done until the end. For some reason, though, starting at the very start felt right here. I expect, though, that there'll be a fair bit of editing with that around a year from now... In general, the plan is to work through the book in a linear way. So, next will be a chapter on the history of the emergence of NRT. Then one of practice, then affect, then materiality, then landscape, then performance, then technology, the methods. 

2) I'm trying very hard not to edit and tinker as I go. Again, my normal practice is to go over and over things along the way. I don't tend to work to a full draft then edit. Writing tends to come in fits and starts, and when it isn't coming I re-work stuff. Also, I'll often leave gaps of 'say something about x here' highlighted in square brackets to avoid getting bogged down on something. And then when I come back to it, I'll do some reworking of what's around it also. And then when I finally have a full draft, that gets re-drafted too. Here I'm trying to be more strict in writing something, leaving the odd square-bracket gap if I absolutely have to, but then move on until the draft is complete (and any gaps being filled without the concern for the rest around it). Thus far, it feels much more efficient and I've produced a fair bit in a small time. But I guess we'll see how that keeps up.

3) As part of 2) I've set my self a weekly word aim of 1,500 words. That's not very much given I'm basically on sabbatical now until February - I'd hope to be able to write 300 serviceable words a day without too much worry. And I don't generally struggle to write / worry too much about productivity on that front. However, I am also going to have some other stuff on in that time (including a trip to Perth, Australia) and I do intend to dip back into the other book project at times in the coming year. There's also one or two other paper project that are likely to require revision. So, to keep this book in focus, and to try to sustain that, I've produced a spreadsheet that counts up through those 1,500 word weeks until the total limit is hit. So, for example, I'll be able to look 15 weeks in to see that I should be at 22,500 words and gauge how things are from that. I'm adding the week-by-week tally as I go to show where I am / remind myself. The plus/minus thing, I hope, will help me push through. And I'm aiming to have a full draft ready well in advance of the publisher deadline (i.e. 6 months) to allow from a proper re-draft at that stage.

4) I'm finally trying to push towards digitising my print outs of journal articles.  Now I don't print anything - its all PDFs that I read and annotate on my iPad using Goodreader, sync'd with Dropbox. However, I only started doing that maybe 5 or 6 years ago. So, I've still got tattered, heavily annotated papers from my MSc that I read as part of JD Dewsbury's "performative spaces" module relevant to the book. I've even got an original 'off print' (when authors got those...) of Hayden Lorimer's 2005 'more-than representational' Progress Report. He gave it to me after he mentioned it in one of his 'Celtic Geographies' lecturers at Glasgow. I was really interested but the library didn't yet have that issue of Progress on the shelf when I went immediately after that lecture (this was when e-journals were only just appearing, I think). And there's also a bunch from during my PhD / the NRT reading group at Bristol / my first couple of years lecturing. Given I'm largely working at home (or in Oz) over the coming 5 months, I want access to all of the relevant stuff within that without a) carrying it all home, b) realising I haven't carried something home when I'm in the midst of writing / making trips into my work office, or c) needing to download things without my annotations and so more fully re-reading where I might not have to. It'll also mean I can have a massive re-cycling fest and clear out a lot of space in my work office as I go...

 I'll leave it there for now and see what strikes me next...

From: https://psimpsongeography.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/being-an-early-career-lecturer/

I’m not entirely sure why I’ve started thinking about this in the last few days – perhaps it’s the fact the department here has almost entirely disappeared given the start of the school holidays etc.; perhaps it is because I’ve been in Plymouth exactly a year and I’m getting close to being 2 years from my PhD submission; possibly it’s because I acted as an internal examiner for a PhD here in the past couple of weeks; or likely it’s because I’m being forced to be reflexive as part of a teaching course I’m doing (more below) – but I’ve been finding myself thinking about how I’ve ended up where I am and how my life has changed post-PhD.
I think one of the things I’ve really realised it that no matter how hard I work, no matter how many hours I seem to put in, there is always more (and more!!!) to do (more teaching, more admin, more applications to put in, and so on). I’m rapidly realising this is the base-line state of being an academic!
I’m also realising that I need to get better at accepting it and so doing what I can/not getting to caught up in it all. That said, I’ve also been telling myself ‘next year will be easier’ now that I’ve got the vast majority of my teaching prepared based on what I did last year and also that I’ll be free of PGCAP work (again, more below). I’m also thinking that might be horrendously naive, but I guess I’ll see…
I’m not sure I want to really get into the full on ‘advice post’ sort of thing here, but I’ve realised I was probably quite naive when it came to the transition from PhD to lecturer and that the PhD is actually a relatively poor preparation for a large part of being a lecturer! I know of some really useful posts on advice on doing a PhD/what to try to get out of it (see here for example), but I’ve not spotted much on what happens in life post-PhD. I guess then there’s a few hints I’d give that seem to make sense to me now, even if I wasn’t actively pursuing this at the time…
1) Publishing during the PhD
Okay, having said i didn’t want to give advice on what to do during a PhD as others have done this well, I just want to re-state a couple of things that are central to actually being able to make the transition into post-PhD academic life…This might seem obvious to some, but publishing during the PhD was ultimately how I ended up in the interview rooms that I ended up in. In the current job market, you simply need to have something at least forthcoming or else I doubt your application will spend long out of the bin (more on that below). I was really lucky that my PhD supervisor pushed this quite early on, along with *presenting* at conferences (and not just in post-grad sessions). In terms of the former, I know for a fact that at least one of my interviews came about from a rather systematic approach of the recruitment panel who sifted applications by 1) who had actually got the PhD (nope? – in the bin); 2) who had a publication or publications (nope? – in the bin); and 3) who had publications in geography journals (nope? – in the bin). It sounds harsh/might be discouraging, but ultimately that seems to be how it is. Also, I think the latter in particular gets you a lot further than the opportunistic networking that a lot of people advocate/engage in (I’m pretty certain that an interview panel member will be more swayed by an interesting paper they’ve seen you give than by having had you latch onto them and tried to steal away their drinking/socialising time on one of the few times a year they likely see all the people they did their PhD with etc.!).
2) Publishing after the PhD
This is something of a challenge if you end up in a short-term teaching-intensive job when a large part of your working week will be swallowed up with preparing teaching or actually teaching. The first reaction I had was to try to get all the papers out of the PhD as soon as possible so I could get onto something fresh/leave it behind! However, it will likely not be so simple (unless you have been really really strategic in the writing of the thesis….). To get round this, when I was at Keele at least, I set aside 1 day a week for research, though not in the first 2 months of the job as this simply wouldn’t have been possible. That day was spent working at home and staying away from email etc. as much as possible. This did mean the rest of my week had to stretch a bit to fit everything else in (incidentally, I took 0 days of my annual leave allowance while I was there – not something I would advocate as I’m feeling the effects of that still – and was generally the first in and last to leave), but it meant I could submit 2 papers during the time I was there. Interesting, others suggest a more fragmented approach of keep aside an hour here or there throughout the week, though I tend to find I need a bigger block to get into it properly. Increasingly though, finding that whole day hasn’t been easy, so I’m sensing I’ll find myself leaning toward shorter segments of time…
3) Moving
Unless you are lucky enough to find a job in your own department, you will likely end up having to work somewhere significantly distant from your PhD institution. In this case, especially when on a short-term contract, it is tempting to try to avoid moving. While there are cost implications/’life’ might get in the way, I’d advocate moving. As you’re only going to be there in a short time (which will pass before you even notice), if you move you’ll be able to be more of a proper member of that department/integrate to some extent/take the most from the experience.
Being based near to your actual employing institution and actually coming into your department to work will mean you can dive in head first and be an active member of the department. Of course, you don’t want to go to far/make sure you keep you CV ticking over, but the best case scenario will be that you make such an impression they won’t want to lose you so will keep you on/do all they can to try to keep you, or at worst you end up with a great reference for your next employer and some fledgling collaborations with the colleagues you’ve impressed to move your research forward.
I’m sure some will disagree here and argue that you need to be blinkered toward doing only what you want, forsaking all else (or at least as much as you can get away with) unless it will directly fit your master plan, but I do think there is merit in ‘trying to make yourself indispensable’ as a wizened geography professor advised my when I told him I’d got the job at Keele/there is a balance to be struck…
4) TLHE/PGCAP (basically, a teaching qualification you will have to complete)
Sooner or later, more likely when you get into a slightly longer term post given the time implications and actual time taken to complete it, you will encounter the burden that is your institution’s internally run masters level course that they require you to do as part of your probation/that teaches you how to teach (something a PhD really doesn’t do). I believe that these can vary in workload quite widely depending on your institution, but my sense is that these are becoming more extensive (particularly in light of the forthcoming fee-climate).
At Plymouth this worked out to 3 hours in a class room every term-time week and other preparatory work to the equivalent of the rest of that working day (so, basically 1 day a week for something like 24 weeks!). Your line manager will have been told to compensate your workload accordingly, but this may well (to put it politely) not happen. So, the day I mentioned above for research is already gone! There’s not a lot of escaping this, but it’s an obstacle that you might not expect to encounter, but will just have to grin and bear it (and, if you are inclined, there is the option to try to engineer the assignment(s) you produce toward something publishable or more generally useful to your department, either of which will pad your CV and/or keep you in your line manager’s good books). I guess the reason I’m mentioning this is primarily in terms of managing your own expectations of what you should be achieving in terms of productivity.
5) Goals
Leading on from the last point, and in many ways coming back to the publishing front, there will no doubt be a whole load of things you want to achieve in your new job/in terms of your research output etc. One thing I’d say here is that it is dangerous to start looking at what your peers are doing too closely. This is tempting – you’ve just come out of a very competitive job market which can sometimes feel like a bit of an arms race (X has 2 papers, therefore I need 3 to get a job! What, Y has 3, okay, I need 4!! etc.). While you want to try to be productive (especially if you are still on a longer fixed-term contract and still have a wandering eye on the job market), you need to be realistic. There are obviously a few frighteningly productive people out there, but you need to think about your work and what you want to do (and also remember different jobs will land you with different teaching/admin commitments). This might tie into having an REF submission (something your employer will be interested in!) and to an extent this will be a case of QUALITY not QUANTITY. For a full submission here, you obviously need 4 papers, but ONLY 4 are submitted to that. Therefore, you are arguably better off spending a little more time in getting 4 good ones together than trying for 6, 7, 8 or whatever, that are less good/more finely ‘sliced’.
Obviously, having your name very visible through lots of articles can really help your profile, but equally other things might work in your favour also/make your name visible (for example, organising conference sessions, editing journal special issues, getting grant money/being a part of large-scale collaborative project, and so on). That said, on a personal note, spamming CRIT-GEOG is NOT the way to do this!!!
That’s about all I can think of for now. I might add more if it comes to me, but I’d be interesting to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this who might be in a similar position/been through this recently…
​

From: https://psimpsongeography.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/on-academic-job-applications-and-interviews/

Recently i was involved in some discussion emerging from the CRIT-GEOG forum related to early career life and the increasing challenges faced by those coming out of PhDs. This has got me thinking about the job situation etc (also see this from the Times Higher that I know started a twitter discussion). Given I’ve have heard from colleagues that some people have found the ‘early career‘ post I put up here useful and that I should do more, particularly orientated towards early career related themes, I thought i’d write something about academic job applications and interviews…
While quite a bit of useful advice has been given in various places about things like getting the PhD itself (see Place Hacking), and writing practices here and here), I’ve not seen much advice about the job interview process (though, to be fair my blog reading tends to be quite narrow/I’d be interested to see anything that has).
So, below are a range of reflections on my experiences of applying to jobs and going to job interviews over the past few years and some suggestions on what I think worked and that i think didn’t. I should say though that these are by no means to be taken as authoritative statements – I’ve not been on any interview panels and so have less insight from that side of things (but comments from those who have would be very welcome!). Rather, thus far I’ve been to 6 interviews for academic jobs (5 lectureships of various term and one teaching fellowship) and have been offered 4 of those posts…
Also given I’m busy with various deadlines at the moment/there’s a lot to say on this, I will break this up into at least two posts (and may supplement them as I think of things). The second post will come when I get the chance, but with the addition of upcoming big ‘life events’, that may be a little while…
[please excuse the likely high number of typos also – this was written rather rushed on my iPad and I’ve not had time to check it through…]
So, starting with the prep. side of things:
1) getting into the interview room in the first place (a restatement of some relatively obvious points)
As I’ve written elsewhere, increasingly, to get an interview during/after your PhD you have to have a record of publishing, especially if it is a lecturing post. When I was being interviewed at the end of my PhD, I had one paper out and another forthcoming that year. I also had a 3rd in review. Most if not all of the people in those interviews had the same. While short listing panels will take career stage into consideration, they will still want evidence that you can actually publish as this is a key aspect of being an academic.
In addition to publishing, it is also important to show you’ve been ambitious in other ways. So go to, and more importantly, present at, conference. And don’t just limit yourself to postgrad sessions – full sessions will get you greater exposure and will likely help you meet the people who may well be in the department you end up being interviewed in, or even on the panel. This all rounds off your CV and shows you as actively engaging in activities the interviewing department would expect to see you doing once you are in post.
Importantly though, many departments will also want you to have experience of teaching of some kind. This might be tutorials , it might be a guest lecture or two, it might be demonstrating. Whatever it is, they will want to be sure that you can actually stand up in front of a room full of students and deliver. As such, it is really important to take up any opportunities you can during your phd to get some experience. And if this doesn’t come your way during the first year or so of the phd, chase it!! It is very likely that your supervisor will be happy to give you a lecture of too from their load!
Finally, apply to anything and everything. While you may have social ties etc to specific places, while you may not want to move, if you want an academic career, you can’t be picky at the start of your career. There are simply not enough jobs around to allow this. Also, don’t turn your nose up at a short job/expect a permanent post straight off. Some manage this, but they tend to be the exception. Going to Keele on a 9 month lectureship for me was turn out to be a really productive experience – I got lots of teaching and admin experience in a short time and it was instrumental in me getting a longer contract at Plymouth, and then ultimately that played a big part in getting the permanent post back at Keele. It will have meant 3 moves in 4 years, but that’s the way it goes/I know many people who have not been as lucky and are still have to take on year-to-year contracts several years down the line…
2) the application
Different places will have slightly different set ups here, but in all likelihood, you will have to submit: a) a form; b) a statement about your research and teaching (possibly as a covert letter, stand alone document, or as part of the form); and c) a CV.
This might sound so blindingly obvious that you think it wouldn’t need said, but DO WHAT YOU ARE ASKED here!! I was shocked once when reviewing applications to contribute to a short-listing that someone hadn’t submitted the generic application form they were asked to. In some cases departments/unis will state applications will not be considered without this. But even if not, it does suggest either an arrogance or lack of care on behalf of the applicant – not something I’d think many would want to portray in their application! Fair enough, your CV may cover the same info, but take the time to re-type it. You don’t want to put yourself out of the pool of candidates before the applications are even looked at…
As for the statement, it is important to look at the job spec and make sure you show you meet all the essential criteria and as much of the desired criteria as you can. You could do this as a list of statements related to it to make it bluntly clear, but I tend towards a more synthesised statement that covers them all together in a more narrated way. For me this is structured along: a) General research interests; b) Current research activities; c) Future research plans; d) teaching and admin experiences; e) How I would fit teaching/admin in the department. It’s up to you, but make sure you are writing a out what they want you to write about, not just what you want to tell them or think is important or think suites you better. And be concise –  job might get 50 applications with means a lot of reading for the short listing panel!!
You should also be careful with getting this to be balanced. If the role is teaching and research, talk about BOTH in relative depth, not one or the other. One way to check this is as simple as counting paragraphs – 5 on research and 1 on teaching may not be suitable for a teaching fellow post (unless you make it clear how your research will connect to the teaching/why you’ve written so much about it) – above mine normally comes out at 3/2 or 4/2). Again, at an early career stage/just post-phd you may have limited teaching experience, so you need to think about how you can best present what you have (without labouring it by listing the topic of every tutorial you’ve ever run).
Also, throughout, try to connect your application to the post/department – suggest connections to people there that you might work with, the research groups you would fit into, the people in other departments you could build links with, how you could fit into and contribute to existing teaching etc. While you can have a fair amount of generic copy-and -paste text you reuse in your application, you should have points you can tailor to a specific post. I often have a standard document with these bits highlighted in a bright colour so I see them/make sure I edit them for each application I put in (you don’t want to talk about the ‘University of X’ when applying to the ‘University of Y’, but. I’ve seen and heard of people doing it!!).
As for the CV, again there are different ways of doing this. I tend to go for the statements of facts/lists of what I’ve done (teaching history, qualifications, training courses, list of research areas, grants, publications, conference papers etc) rather than the more general listing of ‘skill sets’ and how I am ‘a highly motivated individual who works well with others’ etc. etc.. To me this tends to seem a bit like groundless fluff unless you do it really well and back it up with substantive examples of how you have done that (and this is what your personal statement/cover letter etc can do).
Another thing I’d warn against from discussions with various senior colleague is listing dozens of ‘planned’ papers from your PhD. It is more important to show you have published from it or have things you are working on/in the mix than listing a page of things you plan to write. If you list a dozen papers, this will likely mean years and years of further work (even with the kindest of teaching loads) and a department will likely be more interested in your plans for grant applications etc over that sort of time frame than how you will salami-slice your thesis into the finest of cuts. Remember, for a REF submission, you need at most 4 papers (with some back-ups to give decent set to chose from) and if you are early career, you may not even need a full load…
So, for example, I list my work that is either published or forthcoming/accepted, things I’ve been invited to do/have agreed to, anything under review, and maybe one or two things i am working on or I know are in the works (especially grant-related/co-written).
3) preparing for the day
A final point for now, it is really important that you do your homework! You will be able to find out a lot on most department websites about teaching, research, staff etc.. You can use this on the day (more later) and in your application (as suggested above).
I’ve been surprised by people who I’ve been at interviews with and don’t seem go have done this. Obviously, it is good to ask questions on the day where appropriate (and to have question for the end of the interview itself – more later), but you don’t want to ask about things you could have found out easily in advance…
Related for this, some people advise to always contact the department in advance of applying, either by phone or email, to ask questions or to generally discuss the post/check they’d be interested in having you apply. I’m not so sure of this and I (think I) have only got the jobs that I didn’t enquire about in any way prior to applying!! While I’m sure some will disagree, for me, unless you have a really good reason to (or there is someone that works there you already know) I think this is little more than a waste of both your and the other person’s time. It should be obvious if the post is worth you applying to or not (ie on the questions of if you might fit – it’s worth applying if you sense even the slightest chance of this!!) and given there may be 50 people applying, you will likely do little more than frustrate the person with yet another phone call. I’d try to make your application stand out with the quality of its content/your achievements rather than trying to find other means to get yourself into their consciousness!
That’s enough for now. Again, this is only my perspective and happy to hear the thoughts of others on this. When I get time I will say more about…
– the presentation
– the interview
– the other bits and pieces that might happen on the day