This is a quick guide to what I’m doing in Ireland for family and friends who aren’t familiar with academia and/or medieval history. I’ve tried to make it as accessible as possible but of course will continue to answer questions if anything remains unclear.
I am a PhD student at Trinity College Dublin. A PhD or ‘doctorate of philosophy’ is a degree, like a BA ‘Bachelors of Arts’ or MS ‘Masters of Science’, but it is a terminal degree and a research degree. ‘Terminal’ means that it’s the top degree - there’s nothing more after it, educationally speaking. And ‘research’ is the big difference between the PhD and other degrees.
While I have a few additional requirements which I’ll write about below, the main thing that I am doing as a PhD student is writing a ‘thesis’ (‘dissertation’ in the US). The thesis is a roughly 100,000-word document - the size of a small book - that is my own original research. It has chapters, each with their own smaller ideas; mine’s looking like it will be six total.
The pace of my work varies between collecting the information, analysing it (making my own interpretation of what it means), writing out what I’ve found, and then editing so it all reads nicely. I do different sections at different times and sometimes what I find in another section will change what I think about what I’ve already written, so there is a lot of back-and-forth work. I can’t simply write 400 words a day and be done with it in a year because there is a lot of information to wrangle into a very long, multi-part argument. It has to convince the top experts in my field, so it has to be as good as possible.
As a result, it’s hard to say exactly how I am doing and whether I am succeeding or not. I’ve been asked if I’m ‘passing my classes’ which is not really a thing at this point in my education. I have taken some language classes, and I’ve also done a course on reading the way manuscripts are written, but I don’t take exams or are required to ‘pass’ these classes in order to continue.
The way I am evaluated is by the professor in charge of my thesis, my supervisor (‘advisor’ in the US). Mine is Seán Duffy. He’s been at Trinity for several decades and is a brilliant historian, but what I really like about him is that he is very involved in public outreach - everyone in Dublin knows him. He is also married to an archaeologist with her own amazing career and they have a teenaged daughter, so he understands my needs as a student with a family. Seán and I meet every two weeks to discuss what work I’ve done and what I should do next. Once a year, other Trinity professors also read my work and add their own remarks. Together, they decide if I’m making sufficient progress for me to continue. So far, so good!
If I don’t hit any problems then I will be submitting my completed thesis in September 2021. Whether it is accepted is determined by an event called a viva (pronounced ‘VIE-vah’, and called a ‘defense’ in the US). This will happen a few months after submission, so probably between November ’21 and February ’22. My supervisor and another Trinity professor, called an ‘internal’, are on the committee who reads my thesis and decide if it’s good enough to pass. The final member on the committee is called the ‘external’ and they’re the Simon Cowell of the trio. They’re a professor from another university, and at Trinity that often means flying someone over from the UK or even further. The external has no reason to pass me and every reason to say that my work isn’t good enough, so they’re the one to impress. If all three professors agree, then I’m a doctor! Most of the time though they give ‘pass with revisions’ and that means while it’s good enough, there are still a few small things that need more work before its officially published.
Now, my field is small enough that I can guess who my external could be, and it’s almost certain that I’ve met them before. I’m also using this time as a PhD student to go to events and meet people. Reputation is very important in academia, especially the very specific areas that I work in like ‘twelfth century Irish history’ or ‘Middle Irish language’. The more people see my face and hear me speak about my work, the more they’ll remember me when it comes time for jobs or funded projects. It’s also good for me to get to know people who may be my boss or colleague in the future - and those who I’d rather not work with!
Finally, being able to chat with experts means I’m on the cutting edge of new ideas in my field, even further than scholarship, which takes a few years to publish. If I have an idea that I think is brand new, but I find out that someone’s already written it and it hasn’t come out in a book yet, then I can skip that idea or wait until I can read the book myself. These things happen. I wrote a chapter on something never before written and then, a day after discussing it with Seán, heard another Trinity scholar give a paper with a lot of the same information. On the one hand it was nice to know that he and I made the same conclusions, but on the other, his work is now already out there and I have to acknowledge and build on what he’s said.
So, what am I writing about? I’m using three Irish stories written between the years 1030 and 1130 to determine current ideas and opinions. These stories are about heroes who fight Vikings in Ireland in the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries. But I think that they are really about the descendants of the Vikings in Ireland, the Hiberno-Norse, who were very powerful in Ireland but still distinct from the rest of the Irish. Dublin, Limerick, Waterford and Cork were all Hiberno-Norse port towns, while the rest of the country had few centralised populations or ocean-going ships. So I think that these Irish stories about the Vikings are actually more about the Hiberno-Norse. This is just like how Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible was about the 17th century Salem witchcraft trials, but it was really about McCarthyism which was going on when he wrote it.
The documents I’m analysing are in Middle Irish, which was used and written from the 800s to 1200. Irish language is as different from English as Russian or Italian, so I’ve got to work through it being foreign as well as it being old. Middle Irish is different from modern Irish, but they share a lot of grammar and vocabulary, so I keep up studying and using modern Irish to get more familiar with the older form of the language. I’m also reading other documents from the time period for context, and some of these are partially or wholly in Latin, so having taken it in high school is still coming in handy!
My three main sources are available in ‘editions’ which are modern write-ups of the original manuscripts’ text and an English translation. One was done in 1974, another in 1905, and the third in 1857! So this means I have something that is translated and transcribed from the manuscripts to guide me, but the older editions are misleading and obviously missing over a century of work on Middle Irish language and history. I will need to look at the actual medieval manuscripts in archives to check the editors’ work. But since the manuscripts are very fragile and priceless, I’m waiting until I’m more certain about what I will be looking at before going into the archives. The great majority are in Dublin, another reason why I’m there; but there are few in Oxford, England and one important one in Brussels, Belgium.
Therefore, it’s hard to say what a typical day looks like for me. Ideally I spend most of the time that Arthur is in school writing and editing what I’ve already written. I teach for the university and ‘invigilate’ (administer/proctor) exams so that takes some time too. I have a mountain of scholarship to read, not just for my thesis, but because I’m training as a medieval historian and I have to be on top of current ideas about the Middle Ages as a whole. There are lots of events such as one-off lectures and workshops and I go to as many as I can during the weekdays, because evening events require childcare. Even with Arthur, being in Dublin makes this far more possible because there are two big universities and several research centers in town, so there’s always something going on.
I have a desk in my apartment and quite a lot of work gets done at the living room table facing Arthur’s play area, but my main base of operations is the Medieval History Research Centre. Simply called ‘the office’ by those of us who use it, it is a 500+ sq ft room that houses a library of several thousand volumes and full size desks. There are two big windows and a fridge, microwave, and kettle. The office is the back of the second floor of a Georgian-style building circa 1750. There’s a keypad lock on the door, and the building has a security guard on the weekdays and is only keycard accessible on the weekends, so we can leave valuables there safely.
Some people only use it occasionally so they utilise an open desk, but there are a dozen of us who are in there every day and have their own established space. I recently commandeered the in-demand desk in a nook next to the window when I happened to catch the leaving PhD moving out! I’ve got drawings by Arthur and postcards from the national museum up, leave my shawl and teas there, and so on; it’s quite comfortable. I’m usually the first one in the morning around 8, but by noon there will be four or five people there, and when I go home around 4 it’s a full office.
So, hopefully you have a better idea as to what my life is like in Dublin. I work hard on the weekdays so that I can hang out with Arthur in the evenings and all weekend, but sometimes deadlines press or emergencies pop up and I have to do as best I can. By making my own schedule, it’s the ultimate in flexibility, but it also means I have to be very careful to work diligently and regularly. I know I’m making the absolute most of my time in Ireland and at Trinity, and I appreciate your support as I continue on this journey.
