PhD graduation

Those who know me well have known that I absolutely love graduation - and that this one, for my PhD, would be particularly special because I would finally achieve the "floppy hat" that I'd been working towards for so long.

Outside the Old Building

There's just something about graduation - you spend so much of your time during a degree stressing about your work and whether it's good enough, and so to finally have the occasion to step back and really celebrate what you've achieved is really special. The fact that this graduation would be my last (I cannot see myself doing another PhD!) and that Mum and Dad had made the big trip over from New Zealand for it also made it one that I was really looking forward to.

Proud family!

We had a really lovely day - lunch with my supervisor Richard and some uni friends in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the actual ceremony itself which was great (especially the bit where they read out your thesis title), then cocktails up the Shard and dinner at the Oxo Tower. It was all quite fancy!

The big moment!

I loved my floppy hat and was pretty pleased to have been able to find a maternity dress that would go with my purple robes - not an easy task I tell you! Another special highlight was having Jon from LSE Sustainability open up the Connaught House roof for us so that Mum and Dad could see the beehives that I'd talked so much about! I really miss my bees and so it was lovely to be able to go visit them.

Saying hello to the bees!

All in all a fantastic day - totally made all the hard graft of the PhD worthwhile!

Dr Sharman!

LSE Bees

As you all know, I've been very lucky to be involved with LSE Bees. I went from complete novice who had never even seen a beehive in person, to completely fascinated and in love with beekeeping.

Recently the society asked me to participate in an interview for their blog and it's been posted - and I'm completely blown away and touched by all the lovely things they've said. It also feels really great to know that I've encouraged other people to get involved and become apiarists in their own right!

I also talk about my favourite hive at LSE, what I've learnt from the bees and the most fun thing I've ever done as part of the society. So, if you're interested head over to LSE Bees and have a read!

PhD lockdown

Posting has been light lately, and will continue to be so as I enter into the final phase of the PhD. It's due on the 30th of September and there's still an awful lot of work to be done. I'm starting to spend quite a few late nights and weekends at uni, but I'm confident it will all be finished on time! (It has to be...)

Adrian's also in the final month of training for Challenge Roth (3.9km swim, 180km bike ride, 42km run) which looks like it's going to be a lot of fun (for the spectators, maybe not so much for the competitors). He's working hard - although once that finishes and he becomes man about the house to look after me while I finish, it might not be any less work!

There are lots of things to update on the blog, but here are a few photos from what's been going on lately:

Watching NZ vs England at Lords

"Making it Work" at the Sciences Po climate change negotiation simulation in Paris

My team's tomato plants for our 2015 Green Impact summer challenge - we've got to keep these guys healthy and grow as many tomatoes as we can!

Dumpling making to stock up the freezer

Our delicious strawberry plants - we get fresh strawberries on our breakfast every morning. Can't get any more local than that!

So wish me luck as the PhD lockdown continues. I'm planning to emerge victorious on the 1st of October!

Chaos in the city

We've had a bit of drama in London - an underground electrical fire (which is still burning, more than 24 hours after it started!) meant havoc, evacuation, and power cuts for a fair chunk of the central city yesterday and today.

We were all in the office yesterday when the lights started flickering on and off. Knowing that that couldn't be a good sign I saved everything I was working on and backed it up. Thank goodness I did because a few minutes after that all the power died. Now we're on the 11th floor so have a pretty good view out over the city. We could see people streaming out of the Royal Courts of Justice and someone remarked that they thought it was pretty hazy in the air. We also heard a lot of sirens, so definitely knew it was more than just a small power shortage. Here's a video of the smoke:

Twitter to the rescue meant that we could see it was a fire on Kingsway and there was all sorts of conjecture about what exactly was on fire (initial photos looked like it might be coming from the road underpass under Aldwych but it was actually from a cable fire in an underground tunnel - check out this dramatic photo!).

We, along with apparently 5000 others were then evacuated - we all took our stuff thank goodness, although I had to leave my bicycle as it was chained up downstairs in the basement and we also left all the food in the fridge which was going to be cleared out later in the day due to the Easter break. So, what do you do when you're evacuated in the middle of the day?? Off to the pub of course! The first pub we went to, the Edgar Wallace (great decor with amazing retro cigarette posters and coasters all over the ceiling) eventually lost its power too and so it was off again to one of my favourite nearby pubs, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. Much discussion of divestment, the failure of the economics profession etc. ensued...

Today, I was certain that it would all be fine (naively) and so hopped on a bus to get to uni to spend the day working (even though it's the uni holiday shut-down period already, we're able to go into work on the non-public holiday days). What a mission!! All the buses stopped at Elephant & Castle, it took forever to get to one even near Waterloo, then I had to walk over Waterloo Bridge to LSE as it was shut to vehicles. All of this should have been a sign that power was still out - and is expected to be out until at least midnight tonight. Fortunately I managed to collect my bike, save the perishable food and turn off the main switches to the printers etc. so it wasn't all running while we were all away. But what a palaver! Let's hope it's all systems go by the time I want to go back in on Tuesday...

I love this photo (from this BBC article) taken from the London Eye last night of the area affected. Certainly quite a stark difference to  the rest of the city!

Gratefulness part II

Rounding off the final part of my gratefulness challenge, here are the last two days:

Day six (3rd November):
1. A free workout as a result of doing a favour for a friend
2. After many, many bad kiwifruit this year, finally a perfect one today
3. A beautiful sunset from the office stairwell

Day seven (4th November):
1. My new shampoo bar that arrived in the mail – can’t wait to try it!
2. Looking forward to a (hopefully interesting) talk tonight on the role of language in society as part of the ESRC festival of social science
3. And finally, the best part of each and every day, this guy.

So there you have it, seven days of gratefulness. It was actually pretty good to stop and think about the little (and big) things that make you happy. Some days there were lots of things (like today I found two pennies on the ground within a minute of each other - lots of luck for me!) and while other days were a bit simpler, there was no shortage of good things. I firmly believe that happiness is a state of mind and being optimistic and looking forward to the future plays a big part in that. So here's to lots more exciting things happening in the coming years!

You spin me right round baby right round

It was a pretty exciting week this week as we finally got to taste the honey from our Connaught House beehives for the first time! I went down to the Bee Collective in central London with some other LSE colleagues where we uncapped the frames and then spun out the honey in a centrifuge, before trying our liquid gold for the first time. It was delicious! I can't wait to try it side-by-side with the Passfield Hall honey as I wonder how different it will taste.

You can read all about it (with lots of other photos of us in those fetching hair-nets) on the other blog I currently write: LSE Bees.

And let me know if you'd like a jar! They're selling like hotcakes (I've pre-sold 70 jars already)...

Natural History Museum soapbox

One of the things I'm really interested in is how does research make a difference in the 'real world' - how does it get out there, and get communicated to the public (who are the ones who most often pay for it in the first place!).

So, while it's one of the themes in my research (although mine is more about interactions between research and policy, rather than the general public), I'm also trying to practice what I preach.  I recently had the opportunity to speak at the Natural History Museum's most recent late night as part of their Universities Week programme. 

The late night saw a whole heap of different universities turn up to the museum to talk about their research, and I was involved in the 'soapbox' event, where individual researchers stood on a platform for 45-60 minutes, talking to people as they went by.  We each had a question in front of us to draw people in (mine was, do climate sceptics matter?), and it was surprisingly enjoyable!  It was great interacting with different people and finding out what they thought.

There's photos and more info on the LSE website here.

Next weekend I'm also going to something called LSE Shout, which is a weekend away where we're learning to about creating research impact.  We're going to be looking at posters, web design, stand up comedy and films - should be interesting!

Bibliophilia in Oxford

It's been an absolute age (nearly six months!) since I last posted which is absolutely terrible, as I've been doing so much travelling between then and now and have so many great photos to post, but I'm going to try hard to remedy the gaps and put everything back up - if only for the purposes of helping my memory and nothing else!

But, I thought I'd start with something altogether more recent.  I recently got an email from the LSE Review of Books (who I've written for a few times so far) asking for people to write about their favourite bookshops within a particular town, and I immediately knew I had to write about Oxford.  It's one of the best places for books in the UK in my opinion, particularly because of the Last Bookshop, where they sell remainder specialty books for only £2 each!  It was very hard to restrain myself from buying too many books that's for sure...

The piece is online here, and also talks about Blackwells and the original Oxfam bookshop, so if you're ever in Oxford and in need of inspiration for a book buying mission, check it out!

(c) Peter Titmuss/Alamy

Blogging the bees

As I mentioned back in March, I've joined the LSE Beekeeping Society, and am turning my hand to learning all about honey bees and their interesting ways.

As part of my involvement, I've taken over writing duties on the LSE Bees blog so am documenting our weekly visits up to the hive.  So far we've learnt about the varroa mite, how hungry bees can get while they're producing honey, and what a healthy hive looks like.  You can follow the Apis mellifera action on the blog or on Twitter - check them out!

Beekeeping

Instead of the normal sandwich and reading combo which makes up the most of my lunchtimes, last Wednesday was something a little different.  After having read about it in one of our many newsletters, I decided to join the LSE Beekeeping Society.  For the mighty investment of £1.50, I'm now a fully paid-up apiarist-in-training! 

We had our first session on the roof of Connaught House, one of the main buildings right in the middle of the busy city campus.  There are eight roof gardens dotted around the campus, although because Connaught House is right on a corner and would get a lot of wind, this garden is pretty basic and mostly stones and ground cover plants.

The session was mainly about what a hive consists of, and our instructor went through all the various parts.  The fact that the hive has the outer wooden layer (painted white here) gives it a bit of extra warmth and is apparently a quintissentially English thing.  The bees aren't coming for another two to four weeks, but when they do we'll have another session (although there are only four protective suits so we might have to take turns!) learning how to look after them.  There are also two other hives on the roof of one of the halls of residence further north, so we'll probably head up there at some point too.

It was really interesting to learn about the bees, including things like the fact that the honey bee is the only bee to survive over the winter in any great number (a couple of thousand hunker down in the hive and we'll have to feed them every fortnight over winter).  For example, only the Queen bumble bee survives in that species by hibernating underground while pregnant, and then giving birth come spring.

So watch this space for more on the bees!  The society has a blog as well as a publicly accessible Facebook page.  Check them out for some interesting videos and more photos.



Update: Check out the LSE Bees official album of photos from our first training session!

Soapbox

In honour of my departmental presentation on my research tomorrow, I thought I'd share a little video which I think pretty much sums things up...

First impressions of the LSE

Now that I'm officially a student again (have ID card, will get discount), I feel I should share my experiences at my new university so you can have an idea what it's like to be not just a mature student (+25) but practically an ancient student (+30!).

I'm at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE).  Yes, that's right, the one with the whole Libyan government scandal...  Or maybe I shouldn't be emphasising that one!  In serious terms, it's a pretty good university (46th in the world), although not as good as my previous alma mater (Oxford is now 4th in the world).  More importantly for me though, is its ranking as a social sciences university which is very good (check out this link for more info) and the fact that I'm affiliated with a world-leading climate research institution, the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. 

For my PhD I'm going to be looking at something to do with climate scepticism and impacts on policy-making.  Or so I hope!  I'm sure that it's going to change somewhere along the lines, but hopefully a year from now it should all be pretty settled.

But enough about me, and more about the university.  Well, it's right in the middle of London, minutes from the City, Covent Garden, the Thames, and Trafalgar Square.  Hopefully I won't be too tempted to do much shopping!  The campus itself isn't really like a normal university campus, basically being a small collection of buildings virtually un-isolated from the rest of the city (so I found out the other day when a truck barrelled full-bore down what I had naively assumed to be a quiet pedestrianised street).  It's the usual mixture of brand spanking new buildings and old, falling into disrepair mazes of lecturers' offices and study rooms.  I've heard that it can get to fisticuffs in the library around exam time regarding access to computers, so luckily as a PhD student I have access to dedicated computer rooms so won't ever have to defend my computer with my body...

The other students (mostly PhDs and Post-Docs so far) are all extremely friendly and welcoming which is great, and there seems to be no end of clubs and societies, as well as interesting speakers and events to help you while away the time you ought to be spending studying...

But I'm determined to be focused and to finish on time (your three years starts...NOW!), so hopefully it'll be more reading of books than drinking of pints (although obviously some leisure time is a clear necessity...).

Wish me luck!