Starting a PhD - something I swore I'd never do

When I sat with my family at our graduation celebration, my mum asked me if I was planning on doing my PhD soon. "Absolutely not!" was my reply - unless I had some kush funding and was a few years down the line in my career.

Flash forward seven-ish months, and I was offered pretty much my dream PhD (and apparently the PhD that all my supervisors would choose to do if they had to do one now!). My change of heart was done to a few things - I was ready to move on to greener pastures from my previous job, and I knew I wanted to get back to some of the research elements that I'd enjoyed so much in my Masters degree. Plus, I was working alongside PhD students who had the absolute audacity to love what they did, and encouraged me to do research that was important and made a difference to people's lives.

So in October 2024, I started my PhD in Newcastle. I know, I know - that's about 8 months ago... In my defence, I've moved house (including from Oxford to Newcastle kind of twice) 4 times, bought my first house, and read waaaaaaay more papers than it feels possible to have read. Now that I'm a bit more settled, I'm going to try and keep things here a bit more up-to-date (famous last words, I know) - but in the mean time, if you want more details on what I'm doing now, hopefully this presentation gives you a sense of my PhD (alongside all the other information on here!).