Final stage of a long labour

It's been a long haul for the four PhD students The Times Higher is following. Michael North finds them pondering their next career moves.

The arrival of a baby boy, Zeki, has made the last year of her PhD particularly memorable for Helen Taylor, but it has also thrown a spanner in the works in terms of her schedule. "With the break in my studies because of having the baby, I feel like I'm slipping behind, especially as I can see my friends nearing the finishing line. I know I'm not that far off, but because I'm at a standstill at the moment it is a bit frustrating," she says.

Taylor, who is studying at the University of East London, expects her thesis on the commitment of London Cypriot refugees to their lost home and the concept of return to be completed in about six months. "It will depend on whether I can work on it full time or have to juggle it with childcare," she says.

At Manchester Business School, Jane Suter is optimistic that she will finish her thesis by September. She has been researching how line managers interact in the workplace and their potential to lead initiatives in human resources.

Suter says: "I have completed my analysis of the Workplaces Employee Relations Survey and conducted my case studies, which involved interviewing managers and undertaking a survey of their employees. I have just about finished compiling this information, and I now have the massive job of fitting the data together to produce my completed thesis."

But she adds: "With the end in sight, the added pressure has given me the extra drive and motivation to get the job done."

Lisa Willats, who followed her research team from the Institute of Child Health at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London to the Brain Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia halfway through her PhD, feels that she now needs eight months to finish and write up her research into blood flow in the brains of child stroke victims. But she has reservations as she enters the final straight. "It'll be great to have accomplished a significant piece of research, but I'm not looking forward to writing up the thesis or taking the viva examination," she says.

Russian PhD student Alisa Chukanova, who is writing a thesis on the terminology and philosophy of the Spanish writer Americo Castro at Southampton University, must finish her first draft by September and expects to complete a final version in February. "It feels good to come close to the finish, but it also means there is the problem of what to do next," she says.

Chukanova has clearly thrived during her doctoral studies. "I have introduced a new vision of Castro," she says proudly. "I think the main breakthrough was getting into a state of mind where I was able to decide for myself what exactly I wanted my thesis to be like, what the structure of it would be and what the objectives I wanted to achieve were. You can feel the moment when you want to take responsibility for your work and insist on your point of view."

Willats is modest when asked if there have been breakthroughs in her work.

"The work I'm doing is refining the analysis techniques used to determine blood flow in brain tissue. Although I have not made any significant discoveries, my new analysis method is an improvement on the old one."

She says that her work can have "both enjoyable and boring elements". "I enjoy coding up new ideas and seeing if the results are better than with an old method. But I inevitably make many mistakes in my program code, and I really don't enjoy debugging the code, which for me usually takes three or four times as long as writing it in the first place."

Suter is cagey about revealing her findings - "you'll have to read my thesis", she says - but she is happy to speak of other opportunities that have been created through her research, as well as complementing it. She says: "I am working on a project with my supervisor and another lecturer to produce a report on the continuity and change in employee involvement in UK workplaces. This has been great for developing and discussing my ideas, working as part of a team again and has even given me extra motivation for working on my own thesis. We won a grant for the work from the Department of Trade and Industry." The findings were presented last month.

Some of the PhD students' research has also given them the opportunity to travel to conferences abroad, although Chukanova has been unable to leave Britain, as her visa extension took months to process.

Willats, in contrast, recently travelled to Seattle for the annual conference of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

She says: "It has several thousand participants and presentations. Talking to other researchers in the same field is really useful to gain different perspectives and new ideas."

Taylor, meanwhile, organised the fourth Annual Forced Migration Postgraduate Student Conference, at UEL. She says: "It was a hell of a lot of work and quite distracting as far as the thesis-writing was concerned, but it was a success and I hope it will add something to my CV in the future.

"When you're doing the PhD there is always a balancing act where things such as this are concerned. Do you grasp opportunities such as teaching and conference organising to broaden your experience and make contacts, or do you just keep your head down and do the PhD in record time? I chose the former, but I think it does delay you if you go down this route. Let's hope it pays off in the end."

Another potential brake on progress has been the protracted lecturers'

strike over pay, but none of these PhD students has been affected.

Taylor says: "As I haven't been teaching this year it hasn't directly affected me. I know that PhD students were asked to cover for striking staff and, as far as I know, they refused to break the strike."

Willats was blissfully unaware of the turmoil in British academia. "I have to admit I was unaware of the academic strikes. This news hasn't filtered down to Australia."

Asked about the future, all of them say they would like to continue working in academia.

Suter, who nine months ago had doubts about whether academia was for her, has designs on a research or junior lecturer post. "I have been in touch with staff at York University who will support me if I apply for a postdoctorate fellowship. This would give me an opportunity to develop the ideas and findings from my thesis and publish some of my work."

Taylor says: "I'd like to carry on doing more research and, if possible, get some kind of early career funding or research funding so that I can carry on with the work I'm doing and maybe also turn the PhD into a book."

Chukanova's future seems the least certain, in particular as academics are poorly paid in her homeland. "When I finish I was thinking of going back to Russia to spend some time with my family while also looking at my opportunities there. Most likely, it is not going to be a job in the academy but a job that is directly linked to my cultural studies background," she says.

Willats has the clearest view of her future. "I hope to continue research into measuring cerebral perfusion using MRI. If all goes according to plan, I will start a postdoc position with my current supervisors in Melbourne."

The move to Australia has obviously benefited Willats not only professionally but also socially. "Over the past year I have enjoyed a beautiful Australian summer," she says. "The novelty of predictable sunshine and warm evenings led me to spend as much time in parks, by the ocean, hiking, cycling and swimming as I possibly could."

Chukanova has enjoyed the exposure to a foreign culture on Britain's south coast, although most of her new friends at university seem to be international students too. "My experience in the UK can definitely be called positive. I will remember Southampton University as an environment that gave me the valuable opportunity to gather first-hand information about different cultures."

She adds: "I would recommend studying in the UK to others because the approach to humanities is very critical here and it really makes you aware of the variety of possible interpretations of every topic."

Suter looks forward to completing her PhD so that she can get back to a more normal personal life. "The worst has been the sense of isolation, which I think is inevitable when doing a PhD as it can be a very solitary task. And I've been having less of a social life as I am working much longer hours."