The RGS PGF committee is elected for a one-year term at the annual PGF Midterm Conference, and we would like to introduce the 2021-22 committee to you. The committee is comprised of a chair, an inclusivity officer and the conference and digital teams. A number of us have shared our geography journey and thoughts on…
Postgrad Life: The Blog
Revisiting the PGF Mid-Term
Between 19th to 23rd April, the Postgraduate Forum Mid-Term Conference went wholly digital for the first time in its eight year history. Instead of a university to gather and converse in; we instead made our way to Zoom, Slack and Twitter, keen to provide a space in which postgraduate researchers could present their work following…
Together in Electric Dreams: A note from the PGF Chair about the year we all went virtual
This time last year, I was the PGF Masters Representative and, along with several others working on the PGF@Home initiative, focusing on the support we could deliver remotely during lockdown. This was particularly important given the cancellation of both the Mid-Term and Annual Conferences, as we wanted to give postgraduates from across the discipline the…
Why you should get involved in the RGS Postgraduate Forum…
As I’m writing this on a sunny March morning, reflecting on my past year as the blog co-ordinator for RGS-PGF – there is a mixture of both achievement and sadness. As a group, we came together and faced a predicament that no other postgraduate committee before us has faced. On our first meeting, we had…
Completing a PhD in a Pandemic: Feeling ‘Euphoria’ within the the emotional ‘Arcade’?
I don’t really know where to begin. I’m writing this lying on my bed listening to Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds of Love’ album and it is throwing it down with rain outside. There go my plans for a walk out of the window! The start of the COVID-19 pandemic seems years ago now, and we’re coming…
#LoveGeography: 5 questions with Dr Giada Peterle, Editor of Narrative Geographies
Dr Giada Peterle is a geographer and is currently lecturer in Literary Geography at the University of Padua where she worked on a post-doctoral project entitled ‘Urban Literary Geographies: Mapping the City Through Narrative Interpretation and Creative Practice’. Her research looks at narrative forms such as literature, comics and creative maps to understand how we…
Beyond the PhD – Moving from Academia to Industry with Dr Jo Twist OBE
Dr Jo Twist has had a fascinating career after finishing her PhD. As a graduate of the University of Newcastle, she studied with some of the forerunners of digital geographies. Jo used her interest in the internet, power distribution and feminist methodologies to develop her thesis examining articulations of an online/offline community using a place-based computer club in Newham and their associated online social activity around the turn of the millennium. Her interest in technology and the internet is what pushed her post-PhD into becoming a researcher on Newsround and later as a tech reporter for the BBC.
Beyond the PhD – Achieving that First Academic Job
It’s one of those truisms that finding an academic job is hard. And it really is – it feels somehow unlike finding any other kind of job, and the specific knowledge around academic job hiring processes is something you’re also somehow expected to know, maybe by osmosis. It’s no wonder Imposter Syndrome strikes so many of us
PGF@Home: A Very 2020 Story
Home. What a word that has been this year. A multifaceted word which seems simple, yet 2020 has made us reflect on what home means more than ever. ‘Home’ could be our hometown where we grew up as children, ‘home’ could be where we are right now, ‘home’ could be the university campus, a flat…
Working from Home: How to make it work for you
We are very happy to share a blogpost this week from Emma and Liz from the Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group (GCYFRG). They created this post to help other geographers in their group – however, as we now enter ‘Lockdown 2’ in the UK there are plenty of good tips here to…