(This is part of a series of conversations I’ve had with PhD students, doctors and teachers here at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History in Lund during the summer of 2022. For some the original conversation were in English, but for some in Swedish. When that’s the case I’ve done a translation as well, and any faults or strange word choices are to be considered mine. This is such a translation. You’ll find the Swedish original here.)
Sara Williamsson is a PhD student here at the department in the subject of Historical Archaeology. She has completed her first year with us and therefore has the application process fresh in her mind. It was when I heard her talk about how she did it that I thought it was a conversation many other hopeful PhD applicants would want to listen to – and so this series of conversations came about. I caught up with Sara for a chat just before the summer holiday and asked her about everything to do with her application. This is a summary of that conversation.
“When did you decide you wanted to do a PhD?”
”I wanted to become a PhD student early on, while I was still writing my Undergraduate thesis. I read letters from when Glimmingehus Castle was being renovated from the Antiquarian Topographical Archive (ATA, archive of the National Heritage Board/Riksantikvarieämbetet) and there I found details that others hadn’t looked at. Going deeper, connecting clues, looking at the actual finds or the first sources, and not just reading literature – all this led to an aha-moment that cannot be beaten for feeling! So I wanted to do more of that.”
“What happened next?”
“After the Undergraduate thesis, I continued to take advanced courses in architectural archaeology, the part of Historical Archaeology I knew I wanted to pursue. I went deeper instead of broader and all future coursework was done with that focus. But when I graduated, there were no PhD positions to apply for, so in the meantime I did other things. Got my first job at Glimmingehus Castle, and more guide work and positions on different projects followed. I applied for jobs that were close to my intended research area even if they didn’t lead directly to research.
“Ten years ago, a position came up that I applied for but my idea wasn’t ready yet and I could see that after I applied and didn’t get in. I wasn’t clear on how to limit my research and I hadn’t chosen a reasonable amount of material. It was just an idea, an idea of a research question, at the time. But the response I got was good, although of course I was sorry I didn’t get the position. It was clear that putting together a good application would require a full-time focus, and that I would need to start the study I wanted to do in order to show how I wanted to do my research when accepted. That kind of focus is hard to combine with a full-time job, which at the time was at the Skåne Heritage Federation, where I benefited from the museum teaching and outreach I had picked up earlier, and I got to work with source material even if it were for other people’s projects.
“Then I applied for a grant with a friend, Tina Westergren, through the Altin Foundation for a project that led to an article, and that project gave me in-depth knowledge for my PhD application. I also attended seminars when I could and was at a conference where PhD students affiliated with Linné University presented how they worked half-time on their research and half-time on their permanent jobs, and then I started to investigate whether there was room for research at my workplace. I began to identify what was the knowledge ’missing’ there, and what gaps I could fill.”
“Is that how your topic came about?”
“Yes, I organised a one-day seminar on croft landscape survey and crofter life with the aim of bringing together the non-profit and academic spheres, and Martin Hansson (who has done research on, among other things, the archaeology of the dispossessed and is currently head of the department) took part. In discussions there, I identified the piece of the puzzle I would like to do myself: The location of the crofts in the landscape, the factors that influenced it and how the crofters organised their sites.
“I haven’t done excavation fieldwork because I’m more interested in the historical side of material and in the part of history that isn’t material. There are other types of fieldwork within archaeology than excavation that can be a specialisation. Communicating the subject for an audience is also a fun job, but research is the most fun! And for research purposes there is field surveying, that is also fieldwork. By doing fieldwalking and knowing what you are looking for, there is the possibility of finding traces of human activity that are not previously recorded, and in the case of croft survey, there is also the possibility of finding remains that the local population has a relationship to. This makes the survey particularly exciting. Because field walking can be carried out in different ways, at different intervals and for different purposes, the records are full of gaps that it is satisfying to fill. Some of my friends and I have it as a hobby, to find a sparsely inventoried area and go there to do field walking!
“So how did your application process go then?”
“Once I decided to give it a real go, I spent a whole autumn reading up on the subject and wrote the application itself over six weeks, full time every weekend and several hours every evening. I also realised that a knowledge gap for the subject I wanted to study was paleography (old handwriting) for reading church records and the like, so I took a course in that too. That’s the application I got in on. I also wrote applications to other places than Lund, but never sent them off, I knew this was where I wanted to be.”
“Do you have any advice you’d like to share?”
“Find that thing that you really care about! It should be something you get so excited about that it will keep you going for four years. Identify a gap in your niche that you’d like to fill and read up carefully on the current and historical research that has been done on your subject. Also, check out your intended material beforehand so you can narrow down your research question. Identify your own knowledge gaps as well and fill them in advance, as your ability to carry out the research will also be assessed. I have benefited from subjects other than archaeology, as I have a more modern context, so I highlighted that in my application too. Take help from others to read through the application, it is easy to become blind to your own text, so both subject experts and others can be useful. I didn’t grow up in an academic environment and you don’t have to, there are opportunities to work academically anyway but it can be harder to imagine yourself in that role.
“Now the first year of your PhD has passed, how does it feel?”
“It feels great! I have friends who have done PhDs so my experience meets my expectations. I chose to put my study year (a PhD in Sweden is three years of research plus one year of study) at the beginning to get into the theoretical side. It has been a drastic change from the practical nature of my previous job but it has gone well. I have accepted a post for the doctoral student union and that’s an assignment for which I get an extension on my research time. It gives me a bit more time to think. Also, I treat the department like a regular workplace so it feels like going to work and not studying. I think it’s given me a good foundation to go into writing.”
It sounds like that to me too, so good luck with the research and writing Sara, and thanks for sharing your experiences!