End of Year Update

Where have you been??

I know, I know. I promised to update this regularly and I haven't.  I'm sorry.  But here's what I've been up to. 

Since I last posted in September, my article with Religion Compass has been published.  It has been really good to get an article under my belt at this point of my PhD journey.  The article looks at the relationship between Women in the Northamptonshire Boot and Shoe industry and religious organisations. If you would like to have a read you can follow here. 

I am currently working on a book chapter for a collected works following the University of Northampton Centre of Historical Studies Wellbeing conference from earlier in the year. This is proving to be a bit more of a challenge than I originally thought. Chapters are definitely harder to write than seminar papers. However, it has meant that I have spent a lot of time in the archives at Northampton General Hospital. Fred, Sue and Julia who work/volunteer there are always really helpful and friendly and I really enjoy spending a few hours in there. 

Feelings

Other than that since September I haven't done much.  It's always hard to juggle this time of year with work. I'm currently doing two jobs as, as well as doing notetaking/student support, I have also signed up to work for Uni Club at the University which is similar to Brilliant Club and Children's University.  I'll be finishing with my current student for student support in the Summer so will need to decide whether to continue and hope I get another student or to find something else. I might try to build up doing some independent research to earn a bit of money but I'm not sure how to go about this so if anyone has any tips I'd be really grateful. With this in mind, I may set up a new blog. I have previously considered this and had a play around with exporting this blog elsewhere but it didn't have the impact I was hoping for (and it seemed to take a lot of reconfiguration that I honestly don't have time for).  I will, however, keep you updated with that.

Aims for 2024

As I have said, I have got to have a bit of an assessment of the work situation in the next year but also I need to put a lot of work into my PhD.  I am currently at around 50,000 words of words on paper although they obviously need a lot of editing.  My main aim for this year is to have around 60 - 70,000 words by the end of 2024 and also to have caught up with my research.  Covid meant that I had around two years of not being able to get to archives and recent train strikes have also put a bit of a dampener on it.  The archives I hope to visit are

• Northampton General Hospital (although I'm almost finished with what I need there) 
• Northamptonshire Records Office 
• Northampton Local History/Discover 
• Wellcome Library 
• National Archives
• British Library (cyber attack permitting) 
• Leicester Records Office 
• Modern Records Office, Warwick
• Women's Library 
• Bishopsgate

Obviously funding is another issue with these trips and although I have applied for research funding from Royal Historical Society I have yet to hear if I've been successful.  I'm looking for some others in case I don't get that one but if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.  I have set up a Ko-fi account if people want to contribute but I don't like to ask so please don't feel obliged to.

Buy me a Ko-fi (I don't drink coffee but please feel free to fund my tea habit)

I also plan to add a bit more to the blog posts on my women from some of the information I have collated as well as writing a lot more.  Maybe if I change my blog it will inspire me to do just that.  

Other than that things are just ticking along.  

Hope you all have had a lovely Christmas and that you have a fruitful new year. 

Kat