In 1991 (I think it was) I picked up a postcard ‘Women of Britain‘ at the Imperial War Museum. So started a fascination with British wartime propaganda posters… With an A-Level project, a BA dissertation, and a PhD in the subject, as well as chapters, articles and press coverage, I think you can call me the world’s No 1 authority on the subject.. And with my specialist knowledge on Keep Calm and Carry On, why have I not published?

Why publish?

I work in academia, and publishing is core to moving forward in the sector, but I’m now working outside of my core discipline of history, so the core reason for me is that I want to see MY book on the shelves. I really won’t feel that the PhD is ‘done’ until I see that, although I have put the PhD (minus images) on my website under a Creative Commons attribution licence.

So why haven’t I published before now?

There are two big reasons. Time is one of them. Those of you who know me, know that I have multiple different interests and get involved in lots of things, and for a while the project felt ‘done’, although I’ve always known that I wanted to publish. A bigger reason, however, is that I haven’t had a stable job (well, a stable/horrible job followed by redundancy/world travels, then contracts), and that I keep moving house. At present, I haven’t moved house for 1.5 years, and have 0.5 of a permanent job, combined with variety of interesting projects… So time is still tight, but I’m thinking a minimum of an evening a week will start to move me forward… The other issue is image rights… And I’ll come back to those. I suspect there’s also a fear of putting the material out there, but it’s currently been outweighed by the fear that someone else (less qualified clearly) may publish first!!

What have I already got in place?

Well, of course, the PhD is already written, but needs to be re-written for that elusive ‘non-academic specialist’ or ‘academic non-specialist’ audience! I have already written a chapter for London Transport Museum, and have journal articles in process. I also have a promise from Lord Asa Briggs (who was one of my PhD examiners and described my work as ‘highly readable’) to write the foreword, so I should chase that up! I have some ideas of publishers, and need to pull that together into a list, and decide where to approach. I can do this with the help of my PhD supervisor, Dr Martin Polley, who I’ve helped to create a website for (expect him to be in demand in Olympics year, it’s one of his specialisms), and who is going to help me get to book proposal stage.

So how to overcome the obstacles?

OK, so time: start! I’ve set myself the start of Semester 2 (15th January) to get the book proposal done, and need to organise times with Martin to do that. I have already been told by someone from Manchester University Press that should I get the image rights sorted I I’ll have publishers biting my hand off … And that was before Keep Calm and Carry On kicked off. So, the image rights. The majority of the posters are out of (Crown) copyright, but as I don’t own the originals I would need to obtain materials from the Imperial War Museum or the National Archives – potentially in a deal to co-publish (although the IWM recently published a text, but it’s very much a populist text), otherwise with at least £8000 of costs. I do wonder, however, about an opportunity to crowd-source poster owners, who would probably love to see their images in a book, and Onslow’s may be interested co-publishing. All avenues to be explored when the book proposal is complete. Then there’s the question of developing a timescale/plan to write the book itself… But that can be broken down to a chapter at a time.

Why now?

On our office wall is a quote: “It always looks impossible until it’s done” (Nelson Mandela), and that was reiterated tonight, when I attended Scanner’s Night – which focused upon ‘idea-storming’.

Stage 1) Identify what you want to do in one sentence (publish my PhD as a book)’ and what excites you about that (holding my book in my hands.. And knowing that others can enjoy it). There’s a sheet to write ideas that you want help with – and others can offer that help.

Stage 2) Identify the major obstacles stopping you, and, in a group, storm ideas to get past it/them. (Time/image rights/#getbexwriting required)

Stage 3) On the action sheet write name/sentence/an action that you can undertake in an hour or so. (Break the project down as to what needs to be done, clarify the obstacles, and think through ways to get last them).

There was also a sheet to ‘give away’ your ideas. So, there you have it. I think, unlike #getbexrunning, I’m not sure I want to force people into another ‘cheer Bex on’ group, but do feel free to cheer me on/hold me accountable via this blog… Combined will encouragement to chill out!!

See @ww2poster for more on the subject of wartime posters…

When Jorge Cham adapted his hugely popular PhD cartoon for film, he eschewed animation and hired real Caltech students and academics for his comically true-to-life doctoral tales. Paul Jump reports

Absent-minded academics and scientists who are a few base pairs short of a double helix are as much a cinema staple as maverick cops and superheroes with a troubled past. For all the recent rise in 3D film, Jorge Cham believes that researchers are rarely portrayed in ways that transcend that stereotypical dimension.

So when it came to making a film based on his highly successful PhD Comics series, the key theme he wanted to convey was that academics and research students are “real people with relationships, multiple talents and passions”.

Cham has spent the past 14 years highlighting the humorous side of the downsides of life as a research postgraduate – the huge workload and the inherent sense of anonymity and personal limbo. His Piled Higher and Deeper strip, subtitled “the ongoing chronicle of life (or the lack thereof) in grad school”, is syndicated all over the world and his website, where the strips are archived, receives about 7 million unique visitors a year. More recently, the website has also acquired some video content, in which Cham, who holds a PhD in robotics from Stanford University, interviews researchers about scientific concepts such as dark matter.

Read the full story and visit the website.

Those worried about the value of studying the arts and humanities, particularly at the postgraduate level, take heart: Google wants you.In a boldly titled talk at a conference at Stanford University last week, Damon Horowitz, director of engineering – and in-house philosopher – at Google, discussed the question of “Why you should quit your technology job and get a humanities PhD”.

Dr Horowitz was one of several Silicon Valley executives exploring the theme at the BiblioTech conference, an event that united academics with entrepreneurs and senior managers from some of the world’s leading high-tech companies.

For Marissa Mayer, who was the 20th employee taken on by Google and is now its vice-president of consumer products, the situation was clear: “We are going through a period of unbelievable growth and will be hiring about 6,000 people this year – and probably 4,000-5,000 from the humanities or liberal arts.”

Companies such as Google were looking for “people who are smart and get things done” from every possible background, she said, yet the humanities had a particular relevance.

Developing user interfaces, for example, was at least as much about knowing how to observe and understand people as about pure technological skill, she added.

Read full story in the Times Higher… and another bit I particularly love:

Others speakers developed similar themes. For June Cohen, executive producer of TED Media, anyone who had studied for a PhD, however seemingly irrelevant the topic, had “learned stamina and focus and how to listen” – and those skills would always be valuable to employers.

As long as PhDs were regarded as essentially academic qualifications, commented another speaker, many people were likely to feel like failures because there were never going to be enough academic jobs, particularly tenure-track ones at elite universities, to go around. Yet the reality was that PhDs offered transferable skills, that many people with doctorates went into business, and that universities needed to acknowledge and celebrate this.

More information to come on specific transferable skills from my PhD.

In the meantime please read more on http://www.ww2poster.co.uk

The report, What Do PhDs Do?, from the UK GRAD programme, found that about 60 per cent of UK PhDs in physical, engineering and biomedical sciences leave academia, compared with about 30 to 35 per cent of arts, humanities, social science and economic PhDs. The report says that over time these proportions increase as, for example, PhDs on short-term postdoctoral positions move into other employment sectors. Report author Ellen Pearce said: “The figures will raise serious issues about how universities retain PhD students and sustain the teaching base of UK universities.”

The report, which analyses what UK rather than overseas PhD students do, found the students to be highly employable. Nearly three-quarters got jobs – in or outside academia – six months after graduating. This compared with 69 per cent of masters students and 61 per cent of undergraduates. UK PhDs are about 50 per cent less likely to be unemployed (3.2 per cent) than first-degree graduates (6.6 per cent).

“It is hard to say whether this is brain drain or brain circulation,” Ms Pearce said.

The report also found that the percentage of female PhD graduates had increased from 40 per cent in 1999 to 46 per cent in 2003. In all, 12,520 research students were awarded PhDs in 2003. Between 1999 and 2003, there was a 31 per cent rise in the number of PhD students registering for their final year.

“We interviewed employers from different sectors and found them to be highly enthusiastic about PhD students,” said Ms Pearce. “Their response puts all the emphasis on transferable skills into perspective. It is clear that PhD students have a high value in the market.”

Stephen Court, senior research officer for the Association of University Teachers, said there had been a sharp decline in the number of young entrants to academia coming from the UK.

“It is not surprising that a high proportion of people with PhDs do not choose a career in higher education,” he said. “Universities are finding that the prospect of fixed-term contracts and the low pay they offer are extremely unattractive to potential academics.”

In 2002, Sir Gareth Roberts’ report SET for Success put in motion a major programme of transferable skills training for PhD students.

Morgan Kavanagh, a director at recruitment consultants Huxley Finance, said: “We recruit for clients who require high-level quantative skills, so we look only at PhDs – first-degree graduates simply can’t compete.

“PhDs are much more sophisticated in their thinking and have a broader toolkit of skills to draw on in the demanding roles we place them in.”

The general manager in a private engineering firm said: “We’ve found that PhD graduates have a combination of maturity and autonomy that is more useful for our work than engineering graduates with a similar length of experience in industry.”

Jocelyn Prudence, chief executive of the Universities Colleges and Employers Association, said: “Higher education recognises that recruitment and retention of academics is a vital area and for that reason the framework agreement on pay modernisation addresses work-life balance, career development and renumeration. These have been shown to be the most important issues people consider when making decisions about their working life. The framework will deliver on all three. Real progress is already being made to offer postgraduates an academic career that is both attractive and fulfilling.”

The UK GRAD report shows that 38 per cent of PhDs are in the biosciences, 33 per cent in the physical sciences (including engineering), 14 per cent in the arts and humanities, and 11 per cent in the social sciences. Some 4 per cent of PhDs were doing theses in other areas such as education.

Taken from the Times Higher Education Supplement
Claire Sanders
Published: 08 October 2004

“Students often give up when they realise how few jobs there are in their specialism. Believing they have nothing else to offer they end up jobless.”

The long haul is over and the prospect of lucrative job offers are an enticing alternative to months of solitary confinement in the research laboratory. Yet very few PhD students do themselves justice in the job market, often under-selling themselves to prospective employers because they fail to appreciate the value of the special skills they have honed during their research.

Surprisingly few doctoral students are aware of their employability. They often give up when they realise how few jobs are on offer in their specialist area. Believing they have nothing to offer elsewhere, they end up depressed and jobless.

Others cannot see beyond their contribution to their field of study. But most employers do not view findings at the frontiers of knowledge as relevant to their business, except in rare cases.

In order to be more attractive to employers and to prepare for a wider range of careers, PhD students need to thing further than their subject expertise. They need to be able to sell those skills and abilities developed during the process of the PhD, and which are valued in wider settings – the so-called transferable skills.

The Association of Graduate Recruiters in its reports, Skills for the Twenty-First Century, suggests that graduates who are most attractive to employers will possess transferable skills in four broad areas: specialist, generalist, self-reliance, and teamwork.

Specialist skills are easily recognised. Therefore a great deal of work has to be done to shed light on the skills in the other three areas, largely due to the Employment Department’s Enterprise in Higher Education Initiative, but it has been almost entirely for undergraduates. Little work has been done on what additional skills it is reasonable to expect at PhD level. There are a few transferable skills which employers would value, and which it is reasonable to expect from postgraduates. The crucial point about these skills is that they should develop naturally, as part of the PhD process. Students, who are aware of these additional skills should have a competitive edge. Furthermore, in jobs outside their specialisms, they should attract higher salaries than applicants without PhDs. All PhD students will, by the time they finish, have spent three or more years on their research, with its various highs and lows. This feat should develop the transferable skill of being able to see any prolonged task or project through to completion. It should include, to varying extents which depend on the discipline and the research topic, the abilities to plan, to allocate time and money, and to trouble-shoot.

In addition, the PhD research needs to keep up with the subject, to be flexible and able to change direction. The abilities to think laterally and creatively and to develop alternative approaches are also highly necessary. Adaptability is highly valued by employers who need people to anticipate and lead change in a fast-moving world, yet resist it where it is only for its own sake. All PhD students should have learned to set their work in a wider field of knowledge. The process requires an extensive study of literature and should develop the transferable skills of being able to sift through large quantities of information, to take on board other points of view, challenge premises, question procedures and interpret meaning.

All PhD students have to be able to present their work through seminars, progress reports and their thesis. Seminars should develop confident presentation, and group discussion skills. Dealing with criticism and presenting cases ought to be second nature. Report and thesis-writing should develop the skills needed for composing reports, manuals and press releases and for summarising bulky documents.

The doctoral road can be lonely, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. Yet the skills of coping with isolation are transferable and can be valued highly by employers. They include self-direction; self-discipline; self-motivation; resilience; tenacity and the abilities to prioritise and juggle a number of tasks at once. Students working on group projects should be able to claim advance team-working skills.

Further examples of transferable skills are many and depend on the interests of the student and the nature of research. Think about advanced computer literacy, facility with the Internet, and the ability to teach effectively. Negotiation skills in accessing resources can be highly sought after. And doctoral students used to networking with others, using project management techniques, and finding their way round specialist libraries or archives.

Since transferable skills of the type I have suggested should be developed naturally during the PhD, the problem for students does normally not lie in acquiring them, but in appreciating the full scope of what they are, in recognising the extent to which they have been acquired and in being able to demonstrate them to potential employers.

How much better it would be if PhD students could be made aware of their exciting and developing transferable skills as a regular ongoing part of their PhD. This would need only modest amounts of time and money. At institutional level, probably all this would need would be overt encouragement.

The main action would start at the level of the department or research group, to develop a checklist of possible transferable skills along the lines described above, but with an emphasis appropriate for the discipline. Supervisors as well as students would need to contribute to this task, so as to use all the available experience, enthusiasm and creativity. There would then need to be small but regular inputs of awareness raising activities, possibly within supervisions, or as part of a departmental seminar series, or provided centrally, perhaps by a graduate school.

To reach the largest number of students successfully, the provision must be integrated into their PhD programmes, so that supervisors, tutors and heads of department regard it as mainstream rather than peripheral. Bolt-on extras have little appeal as they do not contribute directly to the students’ main aim which is to complete the PhD. Ideally any such provision would also help students to show that they have acquired their transferable skills. There may be a case for a small portfolio containing, for example, photographs of press cuttings, etc. showing the student’s involvement in key activities; products or results of research, or plans, photographs or sketches representing them; and documentation of any special awards or commendations. Very little of this is done at the moment. This is both surprising and unfortunate. It is surprising since training in transferable skills is not uncommon at PhD level. Many PhD students, particularly in large departments in science and professional subjects, are trained in those transferable skills which now have general currency at undergraduate level. Also many PhD students are trained, via an institutional careers service, in the skills for career progression, such as researching the job-market, making applications and performing well in interviews and selection tests.

The lack of provision of the sort I envisage is unfortunate because it would require only modest resourcing and would be highly cost-effective in terms of raising the self-esteem of those PhD students who believe they have little to offer employers outside their field; improving the employment prospects of all participating students; and benefiting society by enabling employers to utilise expertise that they might not otherwise know existed.

At the time of writing Pat Cryer was a senior visiting professor at University College London and the originator and convenor of the Postgraduate Issues Network of the Society for Research into Higher Education. She is now Honorary Professor for Research Student and Supervisor Support and Training at the University of Winchester, so I hope to get the benefit of her wisdom next year.

The Times Higher: Research Opportunities. May 16 1997 p.1

Publish my PhD as a Book
I will never feel like I’ve finished my PhD until I see my name on the spine of a book in the bookstores. There’s plenty of interesting material in my PhD (see http://www.ww2poster.co.uk), lots of interest in it (see the recent furore over ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’: http://drbexl.blogspot.com/2009/03/keep-calm-and-carry-on.html). Originally I intended to call my book “It’s Up To You” after a poster which takes the Kitchener “Your Country Needs You” as a design inspiration, but now Keep Calm and Carry On seems far more appropriate, as I’m particularly interested in why such images still resonate over 60 years later). At my PhD viva we spent most of the time discussing turning the thesis into a book (would probably take around a year on top of a steady job), and the book proposal is in process… meantime, travelling and job-seeking have rather taken away from that!

Visit Israel
OK, so it’s another “visit somewhere”, as the remainder may be… I want to take a trip to Israel with http://www.oakhall.co.uk. I know loads of people who’ve been and they all say the same thing… really tiring, but completely awesome and inspiring (well, that describes pretty much any Oak Hall trip that I’ve been on!)

See a Formula 1 Race live
I used to follow Formula 1 avidly, watching heats, races, repeats, highlights – you name it, and reading all the magazines. I then realised how much of my life this was taking up and pretty much went cold turkey. However, getting to know Emma @ Manchester we chatted about Formula 1 lots, and I would still like to go to see a live race… not sure where yet. I have stood on the starting grid and podium at Albert Park in Australia, and may watch some of this weekend’s… if only to remind me of the time I spent in Australia (and there’s somewhere else to go back to!)… I had a day’s race car driving experience: http://www.bex-lewis.co.uk/career/big_achievements/drivingexperience.htm, whic was great… bring on the skid-pan racing next!

Run the London or New York Marathon
I’ve done a couple of 10ks, and would even need to build back up to that length at the moment, but I’ve always wanted to run the London Marathon (although sometimes I think the New York would suit my traveller mind more). I have actually completed a full-length marathon event: http://www.bex-lewis.co.uk/career/big_achievements/moonwalk.htm, which is maybe almost harder than a daytime marathon, but still, running a marathon beckons…

Stupid as it sounds, it hadn’t really registered in my consciousness that the author was male, and I certainly hadn’t realised that he was American. The author of the book appeared to have got into the mind of a Geisha so well, that many people believe that she was a real character – she’s not, she’s fictional, but he apparently did his research well!

So, last night, I borrowed my friend’s DVD and watched the film and all the extras. I can’t remember the ins and outs of the book, but with the time lapse, I certainly didn’t notice anything particularly jarring/missing, and really enjoyed the film, which was well-paced and intriguing. I enjoyed the extras even more (as always… watching the ‘Making of Shrek’ was very inspirational for writing a chapter on the way an artist approached poster design for my PhD), and it was fascinating to see how the authenticity was approached, with each actress undergoing 6 weeks of Geisha ‘boot camp’, working with Liza Dalby, the only western woman ever to become a Geisha (as a part of her PhD research). 

Even more interesting was that the director/producer said that they looked to establish what were the rules/authenticity, and then looked for ways to re-interpret that in a more modern way that would work for film. 

Links

• Sony official site
• IMDB information
• Wikipedia
• Questions for a Reading Group