What we’ll miss about our Postgraduate Researcher Development Officer, Dr. Loriel Anderson

Dr Loriel Anderson

Whether you’ve only recently started your degree, or you’ve been a PGR for a while, the chances are you’ve come across Loriel, our PGR Development Officer.

Originally a Classics PhD student, she started her career in Professional Services as an intern when the Bristol Doctoral College was first founded in October 2013 – making it a total of 5.5 years she has been working to make our University’s environment better for our postgraduate research students.

Today, the BDC team and wider PGR community bid farewell to Loriel as she returns with her family back to Canada, where she originally hails from. Just like the geese in winter, she is going back home – but not before we commemorate some of the initiatives she has left with us that have helped make our PGR community feel like a home for researchers.

She helped set up the PPD programme

The BDC’s Personal and Professional Development programme, commended by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) as a shining example of good practice, is a curated catalogue of opportunities designed specifically with postgraduate researchers in mind.

Loriel was there at its conception, and has been the driving force behind the programme as it has grown and developed every year. While the programme extends out far beyond the seminars and courses offered centrally within the BDC, Loriel has played a huge role in working with colleagues across the University to ensure that the postgraduate research community knows what support is available to them in their personal and professional needs throughout their time at Bristol.

Setting up the Ventures Fund – a pot of money reserved for students to run development activities and initiatives they’d like to see offered – is part of one of the many amazing incredible gifts she has brought to the University’s PPD offering. Along with assistance from other colleagues in the BDC team, she even started running and delivering in-house workshops on Thesis Mapping and how to manage different stages of a research degree.

She is one of the brains behind Research without Borders

Some say that the Research without Borders festival is one of the PGR parties of the academic year – it’s both a showcase and a celebration of the amazing work that research students accomplish at the University.

The first Research without Borders festival was run by Loriel in the BDC’s early days, and while the festival itself has grown and evolved into its Colston Hall showcase and Watershed discussion series format of today, its aims have always remained the same: to give students the chance to communicate their work, train them about how to talk to different groups in effective ways, and to create space and opportunity for our researchers to meet people outside of their disciplines.

Loriel is the team member who described the festival as a chance for students to “raise their gaze” from their desk and look around at the wide, wonderful and wacky world of research happening all around us everyday. And this is a reminder and a gift we now celebrate annually!

She’s a constant champion for the PGR community – including making the PGR Hub happen!

A space dedicated to researcher development and wellbeing is something that felt like a faraway dream when Loriel first began with the BDC in 2013.

After years of setting up the PPD programme across various University rooms – from windowless holes in the basement of Wills Memorial Building to the beautiful views found on the 4th floor of the School of Education (she is still a font of knowledge about what rooms to avoid when booking meetings…!) – the PGR Hub became instated as part of the Campus Heart project.

Shaping the space, defining its mission, and being a champion for the significance of a PGR-specific space and the activities it can run, have been hallmarks of Loriel’s last year with us. She was even the ideas-person behind our Five Weeks of Wellbeing initiative.

She brings her job title to life

What is in a job title, you ask? In 2013, “researcher development” was still a phrase few in the world of academia understood. Why is researcher development important, and how is it different to other kinds of development?

Researcher development – as the BDC applies it in the world of postgraduate research – is about helping students at the beginning of their degree feel equipped and empowered to grow into effective researchers who feel able to apply the skills and experience they gain in a variety of interesting and engaging areas.

No one has brought this quite to life like Loriel: she has proven, as all the above have indicated, that growing into an “effective researcher” means more than just delivering a skills programme, or hosting one fun community event. It is about making sure the soil to plant ideas in is fertile, and that the seeds and plants are well-tended and watered. She has given us an entire garden that will continue to grow and flourish, because she has given it the attention and care that it needed to take root in the first place.

So – this isn’t goodbye, but a “thank you”. Thank you, Loriel. You will be missed, but you have given us a number of gifts that we can carry with us on our side of the pond!

Tried and Tested: PhD is the New Boss

On the 21st of September 2016, I marked one year at the University of Bristol. People have compared the first year of a PhD programme to the “honeymoon phase” after a wedding. Since I have never been on a honeymoon, I cannot relate to that metaphor. I can however assure you that it has been an amazing academic year with huge learning experiences for me. I like to think that I have become smarter than I was a year ago. You have to take my word for it though. My research proposal has also gone through some changes, a process similar to the metamorphosis of a butterfly. However, it doesn’t look as pretty as a butterfly yet, but I hope it will, in the coming months. The research problem that intrigued me hasn’t changed yet. I am only changing the ways I wish to address the problem. These changes have been necessitated by the need to clarify the focus of my research and fine-tune the research process. During this period, I attended several seminars, workshops and conferences, in addition to my compulsory coursework units. I can attest to the fact that all of these platforms equipped me with vital skills for doing research. Particularly, there was one seminar organized by the Bristol Doctoral College (BDC) for Postgraduate Researchers (PGRs), which literally changed my PhD life. It was held sometime in February 2016 and made significant impact on my attitude towards the PhD. They called it the ‘Seven Secrets of Highly Successful Researchers’ seminar with Hugh Kearns.

I will not give away too many details about the seminar, so that I do not ruin the experience for those who might be attending the next one. I will instead talk about the three important lessons I took away from the seminar. The first was to treat the PhD like a job, because it is a job. Prior to that time, I viewed the PhD programme as my ‘last’ schooling endeavor. I had resigned from my ‘job’ to go to ‘school’. That demarcating line meant I could afford some luxuries like procrastination and distractions. As a full-time student, it also meant that I was in full control of how I spent my flexible time. Of course, I was busy with lectures, pre-readings, assessments and preparations for supervision meetings, but most of it happened within a schedule that was subject to my whims. To treat my PhD as a job I had to have regular working hours and specific targets with deadlines. I had to be responsible with how I spent my time and self. I had to be accountable to the PhD because it was my new Boss. It put money in my account and paid my bills literally, courtesy of my scholarship. Would I spend all day browsing the social media around a Boss, in an organization where I was an employee? Would I still be in bed by 9am when that organization’s resumption time is 8am? Would I just decide to stay off work without a legitimate reason like ill-health? I definitely would not. To treat the PhD as a job, my ways had to change — and they did, gradually. Today, I am doing my best to please my Boss and show this Boss that I deserve to be here.  Treating my PhD as a job has engendered in me a high sense of responsibility and accountability for what I must do per time.

Jane's previous 'Home Office'.
Jane’s previous ‘Home Office’.

The second lesson for me was the need to write as I read, and not leave writing to a time in the future. Hugh Kearns problematized the notion of a ‘writing-up’ phase of the PhD and insists that writing must begin from the beginning – as we read articles, run experiments etc. This lesson has benefitted me a lot as it reduces the chances of me having a ‘writer’s block’. As I read articles or books, I review in writing the areas that are relevant to my research. Indeed, I end with MANY drafts but it’s a good thing for me because I also think by writing.

The third lesson for me was Hugh Kearns emphasis on the fact that the PhD is not the pursuit of a Nobel Prize. The aim of my PhD is not to submit a perfect thesis. Rather, it is to finish the PhD and submit the thesis. Therefore, my expectations of what I can and will accomplish within the three years of the programme must be realistic. I am grateful to my supervisors who spent our first meetings insisting that I narrow my research focus to something feasible within the timeframe I had.

I am also grateful to the BDC for organizing the seminar and numerous others that I have attended. I look forward to the new courses that I have booked to attend in the coming months. If I may ask, which seminar or workshop at the University has greatly impacted your PhD life?

The next ‘Seven Secrets of Highly Successful Researchers’ seminar will run on Friday, November 11, from 9:00-12:00 in the Helen Wodehouse Lecture Theatre, 35 Berkeley Square. Register via OnCourse.