- Generation Delta PGR Network Meetup– Wednesday 10th January 2024, CCA Building, Goldsmiths- 1:00 – 2:00
- Launching the Generation Delta Seminar Series – Wednesday 31st January, 1:00- 2:00, MMB 507
- Generation Delta Studentships 2024 – Applicant Information Session – Hosted by the Graduate School, Goldsmiths. Thursday, 8 February on Zoom: please join here
- ‘Building a Career in Academia’ with guest speakers Prof Claudia Bernard and Prof Farzana Shain – Generation Delta PGR Network Wednesday 21 February, Goldsmiths, MMB 507 1:00- 2:00.
- Generation Delta Showcase – Monday 4 March, 15:00- 17:00, Room tbc. Complete this form to register
- ‘Training for Careers’ – One-Day Workshop hosted by Generation Delta Sheffield – Tuesday 12 March, 10.00 – 4.30, Sheffield University. Complete this form to register
- Monthly Meetup – Generation Delta PGR Network – Wednesday 20 March, CCA Building, 1:00- 2:00
- Monthly Meetup – Generation Delta PGR Network – Wednesday 3 April, CCA Building, 1:00- 2:00
- Monthly Meetup – Generation Delta PGR Network – Wednesday 29 May, CCA Building, 1:00- 2:00
- Monthly Meetup – Generation Delta PGR Network- Sunday 30th June, CCA Building, Professor Kiran Grewal
- ‘Voice Workshop’– Generation Delta- Emma Bonnici, Saturday 20th July, CCA Building, 2:00- 7:00pm
- ‘Somatic Breathwork Workshop’– Generation Delta– Clémentine Bedos, Sunday 28th July, CCA Building, 12:00- 5:30pm
- Monthly Meetup- Generation Delta PGR Network– Wednesday 16th October 2024, RHB 300, Richard Hoggart Building. 1:00-2:00pm
- Generation Delta: Retention and Progression Workshop- University of Sunderland– Tuesday 8th October. 10:30-4:30pm. Complete this form to register
- Monthly Meetup- Generation Delta PGR Network– Wednesday 20th November 2024, RHB 300, Richard Hoggart Building, 1:00- 2:00pm
- Monthly Meetup– Generation Delta PGR Network– Wednesday 11th December 2024, RHB 300, Richard Hoggart Building, 1:00- 2:00pm
- Abstract and Publication Session with Professor Farzana Shain (hybrid)– Tuesday 21st January 2025, RHB 141
- Generation Delta Workshop: Retention and Progression – Goldsmiths, University of London- Wednesday 5th March, Professor Stuart Hall Building, 10:00-4:30pm. (Please note this workshop is now fully booked)
What well-being means to me as a part-time doctoral student
Maya Iza Azizan, PhD candidate, Northumbria University
I view well-being as staying ‘in the middle’ or ‘centred. ‘ This means avoiding both stress and boredom, balancing indulgent foods with fruits and vegetables, and delaying purchases of clothes, shoes, and bags. My new strategy is to wait until I finish a chapter or complete a task before buying something, as a treat to myself (though half of the time it’s only window shopping that I can afford at the moment).
To me, well-being means taking proper breaks during daily activities, such as dedicating time to eat and savour my food properly- away from my laptop or computer. It also involves listening to and engaging with the person speaking to me, whether that’s my son, husband, colleagues, PhD networks, or friends, and understanding the message they convey. Well-being also means refraining from checking my emails after logging off my laptop and avoiding Facebook for another five days. I don’t have Facebook notifications on my phone, so I rarely check it; besides, I only have 43 friends, anyway!
Well-being, for me, also involves incorporating enjoyable activities into my sometimes chaotic roles as a part-time worker and student and into my roles as a mother, wife, daughter, and daughter-in-law. These joys include outings with my son, writing my autoethnographic diary at a café or pub, and indulging in a good Netflix show after thesis writing. In essence, that’s my view on well-being. After 22 months into my PhD, I strive to balance work, study, and family life, with 38 months remaining in my PGR journey.
A key part of my routine is walking frequently. I walk to work or university almost four days a week, covering about 2.5 miles each way, totalling nearly 20 miles weekly. I wouldn’t say it has significantly reduced my weight, but it does offer me a peaceful 50-minute period before arriving at work or returning home, which I like.
I treasure it because I can see the colour of the sky in the mornings regardless of the weather. I see secondary school children in their uniforms waiting at the bus stop and think, “I hope the world will be better for them,” or I see primary school children walking with their parents to school and think, “I remember when my son was younger and how I was a parent to a small child back then.” I cherish it when I come home, as I walk past the main street and see the Asian, Middle Eastern, and African shop owners practising their trades – barbers, grocers, shawarma cafes, chippy takeaways, and sundry shops- welcoming their international customers as they come and go, while I return from a white-dominated institution in an office with bright lights, double monitors for each staff member, and a kitchen space where you can get boiling or cold water at the touch of a button.
My day job as an administrator is quite mundane. When I’m not in the office, I either research at the library or at home. Pursuing a PhD is relentless, so I prioritise my well-being through daily actions. I can’t rely on a ‘break’ seven months away or when summer arrives, which in this region might last only two weeks of genuine warmth and dry weather. It’s about appreciating my current routine- nothing spectacular, just small moments to feel grateful for what I have (even though I wish for more!).
As a part-time PhD student later in life, balancing work, family, and a long academic journey compared to a full-time programme is challenging. I need to push myself while avoiding early burnout, ensuring that both my physical and mental well-being sustain me through to (hopefully) a successful completion. Some days are especially tough as I juggle it all, but I remind myself that life remains vast and meaningful, regardless of the circumstances. So, no matter what happens, I must try not to take it too seriously.
Generation Delta at the Purposeful Doctorate Symposium: Some Reflections
Abdul Vajid Punakkath
On December 13, 2023, the Generation Delta team took part in the Purposeful Doctorate Symposium at the University of Oxford. The symposium was co-organised by SKOPE (Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance), CGHE Oxford (Centre for Global Higher Education), and the Graduate School at Goldsmiths. It explored the challenges, potentials, and futures of doctoral education in the UK and beyond.
The title of the symposium reflects a shared understanding of doctoral education as a social practice with far-reaching implications beyond academia. Such a practice faces numerous problems simultaneously rooted in structural social inequalities (race, gender, class among others) and exacerbated by ongoing austerity measures that make education itself wholly precarious. The symposium, which was attended by both doctoral students and staff from both institutions, aimed to create a sustained conversation about these issues. Some of the issues discussed included underfunding, rigid disciplinary boundaries, social exclusion, and inflexible progression structures.
Professor Frances Corner, Warden of Goldsmiths, opened the symposium with an introduction framing the event as an ongoing dialogue between research institutions, their leadership, academic staff and doctoral students. She highlighted a fundamental contradiction where research institutions grappling with austerity, have to make difficult choices that may go against the essence of a truly liberating doctoral education, often against their own commitments. Students can feel isolated, excluded, and disillusioned with the state of academia. Yet, only by bridging this seemingly irreconcilable gap through shared ideals, solidarity, and community can we even begin to imagine sustainable structural change.
Against this backdrop, the Generation Delta team presented our wider cross-institutional project and student-led work at Goldsmiths. We see our work as a crucial response to this contradiction. At the institutional level, Generation Delta works specifically to address the structural exclusion and marginalisation of Black and racially minoritised women in academia through changes in both policy, regulations, and viewpoints. Meanwhile, our student-led initiatives focus on community and network building. We Generation Delta Champions – Clementine Bedos, Sula Douglas Folkes, Devina Paramdeo, Angela Loum and Vajid Punakkath – presented how we built communities of care, solidarity, and intellectual exchange, centering marginalised voices and promoting inclusive and pluralistic values as a way to build resilience while awaiting or anticipating institutional changes. This further included how we designed the network and generated a series of safe space rules with the founding a space located at the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA).
Building on staff contributions on research culture and environment, the afternoon session showcased the meaning of a “purposeful doctorate” through diverse research presentations by doctoral students from Goldsmiths and Oxford. The presentations encompassed a wide range of ambitious research topics, employing cutting-edge and interdisciplinary methodologies. They covered areas such as visual studies of food regimes, the politics of detention architecture, colonial histories of heritage, AI ethics, and the challenges faced by Black doctoral students in elite academic space. Generation Delta champion Angela Loum presented her research on childbirth pain understanding among Black mothers, within the context of their disproportionate mortality rates in the UK.
Each presented project actively pushes and blurs the accepted boundaries of doctoral research, situating it not just as a technical education but also as a social, political, and ethical activist-ic praxis. Whether our current institutional realities and Governmental structures can truly accommodate such an understanding and practice remains an open and turbulent question, as illustrated by AHRC executive chair Dr. Christopher Smith’s keynote conclusion. However, as minoritised and precarious doctoral students, who are simultaneously politicised, it is clear to us that while institutional and systemic changes are essential, we cannot simply rely on institutional goodwill. Our collective power and autonomous self-organisation as minorities, students, workers, and activists must be prioritised and understood also as a crucial site of struggle, equal to and perhaps even antecedent to the questions of institutional change via policy and regulation.
