PhD blog: 7 | Prospects.ac.uk

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'The Vibrant Research Community'

There’s a term that's heard from the very first day of applying to do a PhD, right through your study. It pops up all over the place, and you find yourself writing it in applications for funding, registration forms, and emails. You find yourself saying it to other students, in meetings or in the pub. It pops up so often that it has now become a catchphrase. It is, of course, ‘the vibrant research community’.

But is the phrase meaningless? Is it a nauseating buzzword that is just used to ‘market’ yourself to people who are going to give you money/a job/a research placement? Well… Yes and no.

It is a part of something a PhD student has to learn how to do: sell, sell, sell. Or in the words of the great David Mamet: ‘Always be closing’. As I’ve talked about before, a postgraduate student has to continually prove him/herself in repeated forms, meetings and interviews. The language of advertising is really not that much different to the language of academia, but that is a subject for another time…

Warmth in the office

The (catch)phrase ‘the vibrant research community’ is, in my case, also very true. At MMU all the research students in the English department share an office. It’s frequently hot, clammy and dotted with broken computers, but there is an overwhelming sense of comradeship. People talk to each other about their work but, more than that, people just talk to each other about anything. This, in my opinion, is very important. Doing a PhD can be a lonely business, and knowing there is a place to go full of people who are going through the same thing is very comforting.

Not everybody can work in the research office – some citing distractions such as the heat, the tiny window, the chatter of fellow postgraduates – but it’s almost not the point of the place. Work can be done at home, or in the library, or a million other places where distractions are not worried about. The office allows PhD students to interact, something they would probably not do if they didn’t have a central hub.

But also having a place on campus to base yourself makes life a whole lot easier. ‘The vibrant research community’ doesn’t stop at your fellow students, but extends out to your supervisory team, and the rest of the faculty, and being able to walk across the hall to see anybody is a liberation, you feel inside the belly of the beast as it were, and this all makes the solitude of your own personal research easier to cope with. That said, some people prefer to be on their own, slogging through their own 80,000 words in isolation. That’s fine too, but I would probably eat my own head if I did that.

Hardcore texts

Another part of ‘the vibrant research community’ (and I realise always putting it in inverted commas makes me sound sneeringly sarcastic, but I can assure you that’s not the case) are the reading groups. At MMU, there is a reading group called Hardcore Texts, run by postgraduate students for postgraduate students. It’s an arena where complex critical theory can be worked through by a group. Sounds like a blast, huh? But let me tell you, it’s much better to have six people round a table getting to grips with Jacques Derrida, than it is on your own, quietly doubting your own intelligence and worrying that a PhD is far beyond your position as King of the Imbeciles. Dialogue is important, and you quickly realise that your own viewpoint is just as valid as everybody else’s. And that’s what ‘the vibrant research community’ brings you: dialogue, support, a kind of membership into a club, and sometimes even a pint of quality ale after a hard day’s research.

So let’s all raise a cheer for ‘vibrant research communities’ everywhere. May they thrive and prosper. Even if they are continually referred to in strange marketing speak…

Read Graham's previous blogs:

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