Postdoc Diaries #01: Dropping in at the Deep End

What happens after you've done a PhD? A lot of scrambling and writing, basically.

This is a bit of a shift. After nearly two months of posting a weekly prompt for the Bradbury and then writing a short story on the Friday, I've realised that's just kind of boring and not what I want to be doing online. I'm keeping the story part, but shifting away from the separate prompt.

Instead, I'm blatantly stealing Emily Spinach's idea of keeping a diary about academic life as I go for a specific goal. Except that whereas she's preparing to start a PhD in October this year, I'm recording the aftermath, the hinterland that postdoctoral students enter when they graduate.

It feels important to do this because I wanted a personal anchor. Unlike Emily, I cringe at the idea of reading back through old public journals, and although I do have a kind of romantic love of the ivory tower, I've now been precariously employed in academia for a number of years and oh boy, do I have thoughts. Thoughts I'd like to share publicly about what it's like at the other end of a PhD.

I'll start with a little backstory, for those new here. I did a BSc (Hons—don't forget the Hons) Geography and graduated in 2000. I went on to do a PhD I was awarded in 2006. I then left academia, planning to become a world-famous author. Guess what? That never happened. I spent some chaotic years unable to cope with real adult life until the financial crisis broke me and I ended up living on benefits, flirting endlessly with homelessness, never having enough money for food or bills or rent.

It's actually the ten-year anniversary of my first year back at university, studying a Masters in Classics and Ancient History. It's hard to believe it's been that long, in part because the nether years of living in the benefits system has cut a deep wound in the back of my brain. Here I am, though. I re-entered the academy with one solution to my "get off benefits" problem: I'd go back to university, the only place where I'd ever had any success, and win funding to do a PhD.

That was in 2014. In 2017, I got the funding. UKRI AHRC regional doctoral training programme came up with the goods, and I was able to call the DWP and nearly burst into tears when I said I wanted the disability benefits I was on stopped. I'd been able to get that support during the MA because at the time I was on both ESA and DLA, which was the only combination possible for students.

Did I have a plan for what I'd do after the PhD? No, not really. Was that smart? Also no.

I left academia the first time around because, in 2006, finding something stable when I was chronically ill looked like a nightmare proposition. In 2025, that picture is shockingly worse. Academic jobs in the humanities are vanishingly rare, and competition is incredibly tight. During my MA, the UCU held protests against short-term contracts that only covered the teaching period of the year, leaving early career researchers with a five-month hole they had to fill.

Now even those are a fight to get. It's made even worse by being older, disabled, unable to travel to Anywhere In The World For Work. I'm literally only able to carry on trying to do this work because I have a partner with a stable job and we have a house we own outright. I'd be back living with my parents if he wasn't around.

I've tried other options and it turns out that 1. I'm really only good at this particular research/teaching thing in higher ed, and 2. there's almost no work around right now. I've been hunting for "stop gap" work for over a year, after burning out so badly from gig economy jobs last summer I wanted to end my subscription to life, as they say. Nothing. I can't take my four degrees off my CV because that gives me less than three years' evidence of work for over 25 years of being an adult.

That's not a gap in my CV. That's the Marianas Trench.

Here I am, therefore, teaching at a university on a zero-hours contract, waiting to hear about another job based at the university that'd cover me income-wise while I do all the things required to get a postdoctoral position. The aim is to get some kind of big fellowship, the sort that would give me three to five years to work on a major research project. Having spent the last ten years examining the materiality of magic in the ancient world, now I'm curious about how that shows up in the modern world in times of crisis.

Things nearly fell apart completely last semester, but I now have a couple of senior academics in my corner offering help, support, and sponsorship. We've looked at all the available big fellowships I could apply for, but I don't have enough publication credits to stand a chance of being even long-listed.

This is the reality of being a Humanities postdoctoral researcher in the UK right now. If you're reading this and you're doing a Humanities PhD or thinking of doing one, this is what it's like at the other end. Word on the street is that in order to get a look-in at the British Academy, Leverhulme, Wellcome Trust, or any of the other big fellowships, you need to have multiple publications and a book at least in progress.

The book is the key, so that's what I've put all my non-teaching energy into. My examiners liked my work enough they thought it was ready to be a book, so this is less work than if I needed to do a thorough re-development, but it still means I need to spend time re-working chapters into the correct voice for an academic book, and then putting together a proposal.

Somehow, in the last year, I've managed to get three articles at least out to peer review with different journals. I know I'm supposed to focus on REFFability, impact factors, and showing that I have consistent interests, but honestly, writing a whole article about the importance of Moominmamma's handbag as a personal medicinal bundle in The Moomins and the Great Flood gave me life last semester.

I'm autistic, and struggle intensely with aural processing and executive function. The standard for the early ECR years is to work your butt off getting papers out there and applying for things, but I also have a menopausal situation ongoing.

So where am I up to now?

Well, I got lucky. Katelyn E Knox and Allison van Deventer are letting me do their dissertation-to-book workshop for free this month. It's helped to break down the productive procrastination. I've submitted to two conferences, one of which is Classics and the other allows me to explore the Moomins more. I've been asked—invited, I can't tell you how good this feels—to submit an essay to a collection for a book to be published next year.

I'm also planning to write abstracts for two other books, one about ancient world archaeology in horror films, and another about the body in ritual. I decided that, if it turns out I don't get the job I'm waiting to hear about now, or any of the other jobs, then I'll make the most of dire poverty this summer by making sure I have the best possible publication list I can come up with, aside from writing the book itself.

And a tiny joy today when I asked the editor about this archaeology in horror book on BlueSky and a third academic who knows me via one of my other jobs stepped in to recommend me. Senior academics giving lifts to those of us trying to find our way are priceless beings who deserve high praise.

I'm probably going to write about how fascinating it is that supernatural nasties like Gozer the Gozerian, all of the things in the Ark of the Covenant, and the demon in the Exorcist can be contained with the right combination of physical materials. Because why wouldn't I take the opportunity to talk about Indiana Jones and quote Ghostbusters?

I think I'm going to apply for a short fellowship, one I failed to get anywhere near last year, because I've got better credentials now, and we're looking at pump-priming grants where I can set up digital exhibits so people can see what I work on more clearly.

It's a lot. I feel like I'm playing catch up. But then my whole life has always felt like playing catch up. Being autistic in the world feels like being 30 seconds behind everybody else all the time.

If you're already a subscriber and you ask why the hell I'm still somehow doing this Bradbury Challenge and writing a short story a week, it's because of this. I can't focus to get a whole novel together, Amnar needs more retconning, and I want to stay in touch with the world. The more I practice skills in writing and thinking around the edges of the core history, the better anything I do in the future will be.

Oh yes, and it's a wonderful distraction from the now, a way for me to channel the rage and fear and horror and disgust in some productive, creative way. When I'm not teaching, I may also manage to carry on with the Moomin House project.

I've found the only way to cope with all this is to have outlets that aren't about "putting myself out there", that don't come with expectation. Although I thought about trying to blog the Moomin House project, it ruined the joy of creating with it, so I'm stepping back from that unless I feel like it. The other thing is ice hockey, and going to see our local team play.

For the last four months, I've been hoarding teaching money. I applied for Access to Work but other than acknowledging the application, I've heard nothing back from the DWP, so if I want support, I have to pay for it myself. The solution to struggling with public transport is that I run to and from campus. It also saves money (although not in shoes, which are rapidly wearing out).

Is that everything? I think it is, for now. The plan, basically, is that I'll write something more engaging on Mondays and fiction on Fridays, as I start to share aspects of magical research and life in the afterlife of a PhD. And now, on with the job.