Resources and films
Here are some of the films from recent careers events. Find out about the paths that former Glasgow PhD Graduates have taken in their careers.
Suzy Houston, PhD Phonetics and Sociolinguistics
Neil Croll, PhD Central and Eastern Studies
Kimm Curran, PhD Medieval Religious Women in Scotland
Fiona Porter, PhD in the use of laser measurement techniques to improve combustion efficiency
John Gardner, PhD English Literature
Nalini Paul, PhD English Literature
Martin Bellamy [mp4]
Martin initially trained as a naval architect, but then worked on a series of temporary contracts in museum and galleries. He graduated with a PhD in history in 1997. This combined with previous experience enabled him to secure a job as Museums Curator for North Ayrshire Council. A PhD was not a requirement but the research training was ideal for curatorial work and was useful in gaining contracts for two books.
The PhD and the publishing track record were vital in gaining a post as research manager at Glasgow Museums. His work has evolved from specific subject knowledge work to building partnerships between the museum service and academia to develop research projects across a wide variety of subject areas.
Suzy Houston [mp4]Suzy, originally from Stamford in Lincolnshire, came to Glasgow University to study English language in 1998, and went on to complete her Masters and Doctorate in the area of Phonetics and Sociolinguistics.
Since graduating in 2008, she has moved into the area of Learning Technology, and has worked in this area in both corporate and academic institutions and across a range of disciplines. Her previous post was as Learning Technologies Manager for accountancy professional body, ACCA, and she is currently employed as e-Learning Development Manager for the School of Law here at the University of Glasgow. She has been an Associate Lecturer for the Open University since 2005, and is one of the authors on the satirical site The Daily Mash.
Neil Croll [mp4]Neil graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1996 with an MA (Hons) History degree; from the University of Strathclyde in 1997 with a Postgraduate Diploma in Russian Language; and in 2003, from the University of Glasgow with PhD in Central and Eastern Studies. He began working in the field of Widening Participation in 2001 as a tutor on the University of Glasgow Top-Up Programme schools project and became Administrator of this programme in 2003. (The Top-Up Programme is the University of Glasgow's flagship WP schools project working with circa 1,200 S6 pupils across 40 schools annually. The schools have low progression rates to Higher Education and Top-Up assists in admissions and also induction and retention of students from WP backgrounds).
Neil became Director of the Top-Up Programme in May 2007 and added the role of University of Glasgow Care Leaver Support Coordinator to this in February 2009. Since November 2009, he has been the Acting Head of Widening Participation for the University of Glasgow.
Kimm Curran [mp4]Kimm is originally from the United States and graduated from the University of Idaho in History and American Studies. She came to the University of Glasgow to study her PhD in Medieval Scottish History in 2001 and went on to complete her PhD in 2005/6 on Medieval Religious Women in Scotland.
Since 2005, she has worked in a number of sectors in and outwith academia. She has worked in the Heritage sector as a research assistant for the Aberdeen City Council Archaeology Unit; a project officer supporting Early Career academics in History for the Higher Education Academy; a volunteer support officer for the NHS; an academic secretary in Education and currently residing in Recruitment and International office as a Postgraduate Admissions officer for the College of Arts and Social Sciences, and Chair of History Lab+ at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. She keeps her fingers in the academic pie by supporting teaching initiatives in Medieval History at international congresses, writing briefing reports for the Higher Education Academy and supporting Early Career Academic in her role at the IHR.
Fiona Porter [mp4]Fiona is currently Regional Co-ordinator for the Researchers in Residence Programme in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Fiona received an honours degree from Aberdeen University in Natural Philosophy (Physics) before carrying out a PhD in the use of laser measurement techniques to improve combustion efficiency at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority in partnership with the University of Surrey.
Fiona continued researching combustion diagnostics, managing a range of studies and programmes. Fiona then changed field to understanding corrosion behaviour, initially for gas pipelines and subsequently managing research and programmes in relation to nuclear waste disposal. Since 1998, she has carried out business consultancy work in support of innovation and energy technology and policy studies.
John Gardner [mp4]John joined Anglia Ruskin as a Lecturer in English Literature in 2004, having previously taught at the University of Glasgow. He is currently the Programme Leader for English, Writing and Publishing, and is Principal Lecturer in English Literature. John teaches English Literature from Chaucer to the present day, but his research interests are mainly in Romantic period poetry and eighteenth/nineteenth century culture.
He has published on a range of authors and topics, including Lord Byron, William Hone, Charles Lamb, Percy Shelley, William Wordsworth, the Cato Street Conspiracy, the Queen Caroline Affair and the Peterloo Massacre. His monograph, Poetry and Popular Protest, is to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011.
Rachel is a phonetician and linguist whose research interests concern how people produce and understand speech. After beginning her undergraduate studies in English Literature, she graduated from King's College, Cambridge in 1998 with a degree in Modern Languages (Czech, Spanish and Linguistics). She obtained an M.Phil. (1999) and Ph.D. (2004) from the Department of Linguistics, University of Cambridge, where she subsequently held a three-year lectureship between 2003 and 2006.
She took up the RCUK Academic Fellowship at the University of Glasgow in 2006. This post began as research-intensive and has allowed her a gradual transition, over five years, into a full teaching and administrative load. In 2009, she became Principal Investigator on an ESRC-funded First Grant award for a two-year project researching Timing in Accents of English.
Nalini Paul [mp4]Nalini combines her teaching career with a successful writing career. She currently teaches Creative Writing at DACE. She has recently returned from Orkney where she spent a year as the George Mackay Brown Writing Fellow. Prior to this she taught at the Open University.
She graduated with a PhD in English Literature at Glasgow University in 2008. She studied Philosophy and Englsih Literature at Edinburgh University and has an MLitt in Creative Writing at Strathclyde and Glasgow Universities. She has been widely published in poetry, fiction and journalism, in Canada, where she grew up, the UK and the US. She is currently working on a collection of poetry inspired by nature and migration, and is writing a novel based on her family history in India and Canada, for which she received a Scottish Arts Council grant. Nalini has worked collaboratively with artists in Glasgow and Biggar, where she was writer in residence at the Ruby Orange Gallery. Her collaborative book, Leaf Fall, Seeing by Touch, was published by Grimalkin Press in 2006.
Rebecca Kay [mp4]Rebecca has worked in higher education in the UK since 1998 and at the University of Glasgow since 1999. She is a specialist in Russian Area Studies, especially gender, care and rural transformations. Her teaching and research are grounded in qualitative, ethnographic inquiry into everyday lives, identities and experiences.
Rebecca received a first class honours degree in Russian and French languages from Bradford University in 1993 before moving on to undertake PhD research into women's experiences of early post-Soviet transformations in Moscow and provincial Russia.
Prior to taking up her first academic post at University of Birmingham in 1998, Rebecca worked for an International Non-Governmental Youth Organisation in Brussels. In 2010 Rebecca co-founded the Glasgow Refugee Asylum and Migration Network (GRAMNet) a research and knowledge exchange network for researchers, activists, public and third sector organisations, which she co-convenes with Professor Alison Phipps.