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Lycia, Churches, and PhDs featuring Audrey Scardina - Ep 13
35 Plays4 years ago
In this episode, we talk to Audrey Scardina (future Dr.) about her journey through life from her undergrad in theater to finishing up a Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh in Archaeology.
Contact
- Show
- Twitter: @idigitpodcast
- Email: [email protected]
- Alyssa
- Instagram: aal.archaeology
- Twitter: Lyssakemi
- Michaela
- Instagram: mm_digitalized
- Twitter: m_mauriello
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to the iDigit podcast, a podcast where we talk about the student perspective of navigating the world of archaeology and anthropology. I'm your host, Michaela, and I'm your host, Alyssa. Welcome to today's podcast episode. We have a special guest today, Audrey Skordina, who is a future master doctor
00:00:30
Speaker
from the University of Edinburgh. Welcome, Audrey. Hi. Thank you for inviting me. So good to have you. So Audrey and I connected through a Facebook page called How Not to Grad School Like a Basic Bitch. That is where we first connected.
Audrey's Academic Journey Begins
00:00:51
Speaker
I posted something about iDigit, and Audrey reached out saying that she is also doing archaeology. So we wanted to get her on the podcast.
00:00:59
Speaker
And I think I think we should probably like shout out to Dr. Keona of how not to travel like a basic bitch on Instagram for connecting us. Incredible, incredible resources. Yeah. And what a great account if anybody doesn't follow it. It's worth typing out the handle for.
00:01:18
Speaker
Agreed, agreed. On Facebook and Instagram, both amazing resources. I've met so many awesome academics on these pages too. And yeah, it's just incredible stuff going on. Audrey, tell us a little bit about yourself. What are you doing currently? Where are you? What I'm doing is a more interesting question in that it's a pandemic and no one knows what we're doing. But I'm currently living in Edinburgh. I've been here for eight years on September 1st, actually.
00:01:48
Speaker
which is the longest I've ever lived anywhere consecutively. Yes, that is a true statement. I started doing a PhD in January of 2014. It's kind of a long story about how I got to doing a PhD in Edinburgh in archaeology. So yeah, my PhD is in archaeology. Actually,
00:02:07
Speaker
When I started undergrad, I went to Sarah Lawrence College and Sarah Lawrence has a really good theater department. And that's actually why I went there in the first place because I wanted to do stage management and work backstage in theater.
00:02:20
Speaker
And I think I was really fortunate that I picked Sarah Lawrence because they have a really good program for like being involved in the theater department, but also being able to take classes outside because they don't have majors. And so if you do theater, you also have to take two other classes outside of theater. So in theory, you take like a block of theater classes and then two other classes. And normally you would just take three classes a semester.
00:02:46
Speaker
And each academic class, you take the class, but you also do an independent research project. Interesting. Yeah, which is really, it's a really cool school. But because of that, I think I had the opportunity to do more outside of theater than I would have if I had gone somewhere else like
00:03:02
Speaker
I can't remember where else I applied a really long time ago. But Sarah Lawrence gave me that opportunity. And so when I studied abroad in my third year, my junior year, I went to Trinity College Dublin and I actually took archaeology classes there.
Choosing Archaeology Over Theater
00:03:18
Speaker
And because of taking kind of official archaeology classes, because the ones at Sarah Lawrence were like amazing classes, but it was kind of like religion with a bit of archaeology and art history and history and, you know, art history with kind of everything else rolled in or kind of, yeah, I think they were mainly people in the art history department or in the kind of religious studies that did things that were related to archaeology.
00:03:38
Speaker
And so I decided, well, basically my senior year, I was trying to decide if I potentially wanted to do a degree in archaeology. And I think it was partially because theater is really hard and it's really hard to get into. And being a stage manager, I was almost already burnt out from college.
00:04:00
Speaker
because you're the first one at rehearsal, you're the last one to leave rehearsal, you're emailing at the end of rehearsals, you're reminding people every day to be at rehearsal. And I'd be at rehearsal like, I guess like five days a week. So I would do like, or like six to 10, four days a week, and then like a six hour rehearsal on the weekend. And so I couldn't really be
00:04:19
Speaker
engaged in being an academic at the same level as a lot of other people doing undergraduate degrees. I mean, obviously there are some people that were not very engaged and they still had a great time. I remember sitting down and talking to my directing teacher. He's a guy called Will Frears. He still directs shows in New York. And he was saying to me that he wished that he had gone to grad school directly after undergraduate or very soon after.
00:04:41
Speaker
because now, like, kind of five years afterwards, he was like, you know, I have a kid. And well, it was been more than five years, I think, for him, but he was like, a family in New York, which needed money made to look after them, even though his wife also worked full time because New York, you know, and he was like, it's also just it's just hard to stop and decide to like, learn again. And so I applied to a master's in archaeology at Edinburgh.
00:05:07
Speaker
which I started in the fall of 2013. So I graduated undergrad in 2012, a long time ago. Yeah. And so, and it's funny cause he's one of those people that like, you know, when people say things to you and like, they probably don't remember saying explicitly something to you, but you're like, that changed my life. Like that's definitely him. I feel like I always tell people that when I'm like, I decided to do archeology. And I also always say like, I decided to do archeology because it was,
00:05:35
Speaker
you know, there are more opportunities and it was better paid than theater. And everyone in archaeology laughs at this. Because we know it's not that like, you know, there are limited opportunities, but it actually is still better paid and there are more jobs. Yeah, so then I decided I did a master's in archaeology and I really loved it. And I wanted to, and I think like, when I look back on like, why did I do a PhD? I think it was mainly because I did a master's and wanted to learn more and there weren't many other opportunities
00:06:04
Speaker
And also, yeah, and I think you guys talked about this a bit in one of your other podcasts I listened to. If you do an undergraduate degree in archaeology, you kind of need to do a master's to get to a certain level, I guess, especially in the States. But for me, what was difficult is not having done an undergraduate degree in archaeology,
00:06:22
Speaker
I didn't feel like I could easily get a job kind of anywhere with just like a one year degree. And I think like I could have gotten some jobs because I have like project management experience from doing theater, but I don't know if they would have been the kind of jobs I wanted to do because they were kind of the jobs I wanted to avoid by switching careers. So.
00:06:44
Speaker
I decided to do a PhD. Because again, when I was listening to you guys, you were talking about how it's easy when you've done a PhD to tell people not to do them, which I think is definitely true.
PhD Pursuit and Challenges
00:06:57
Speaker
But I also think if you want to do a PhD by the time that you've told people about it, you're the type of person that's probably already thought about it so much that no one's going to change your mind. I agree with that.
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah. And it's because it's so hard to like, it's such a weird thing to do. Like we live in a world where it's kind of common or I do at least. When you talk to people outside of kind of the academia sphere, they're like, what a PhD. That's so crazy. Like, wow. And you're like, I guess I thought everyone was doing this. I guess so. Or you're like, I'm always like, it's not that weird. But then I'm like, probably it is right. They're like, it's not that unique. But I mean, it is to an extent. And
00:07:36
Speaker
So I think the thing is, once you've gotten to that point, and also people who do PhDs are not easily unconvinced of things once they've made up their minds. I think in academia, to an extent, you kind of have to be. And so it's like, once you decide to tell people you want to do a PhD, nothing people say is going to stop you, basically. And I think that's both good and bad, because I think
00:07:59
Speaker
It's good because if you start doing a PhD and you have these really great ideas, you will encounter people that will be like, um, excuse me, like in our field, that's not how we do things. And if you're like, and I mean, I mean, definitely has happened to me, but if it's upsetting, like.
00:08:16
Speaker
at least you as a person are already probably the type of person to be like, okay, screw that. I know I'm getting that kind of criticism. So I'm going to build that into my research, into my writing, et cetera, rather than being like, okay, I need to
Research Focus on Early Christian Churches
00:08:29
Speaker
change gears. Cause one person told me my research was weird. It's like a motivation.
00:08:33
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that that kind of personality is like kind of necessary to get through kind of the emotional trauma that can sometimes be involved. But I think the thing is even me saying that I'm like, oh, I don't want to scare you from doing what you want to do. And you're probably like, I'm going to do it, you know, because again, you're already. This is actually encouraging as I'm starting my next week for the first first day of class next week. Yeah, Michaela is thinking about.
00:09:02
Speaker
Yeah, so sorry, I've rambled a lot without actually saying what my PhD is on. So what's it on? My, what was my thesis called? A quantitative analysis of the early Christian churches of Central Lycia. So let me break that down. Basically, using
00:09:20
Speaker
Quantitative analysis using statistics and geographic data to analyze churches that were built in the southwest of Turkey during the Christian period. So I say early Christian periodization is like.
00:09:35
Speaker
worth a book on its own. But essentially, I'm talking about from the point churches start getting built, which is probably like the fourth or fifth century AD. We don't actually know when the earliest churches were built in this region in Lycia until they stopped getting built, which is possibly the 1300s. Wow. How'd you come across the spatial data for all this? Is there already a big database for that?
00:09:59
Speaker
No. There's not. So there are 162 churches in central Lycia. And that's a bit of a confusing number, because we get this thing where you get a church from original phase of construction that's built. And then in a later phase, you get a smaller church, which are often called chapels. But I would argue that is not a good thing to do, say, because it assumes there is a difference in the function. And we don't know that.
00:10:29
Speaker
There's a smaller church built inside of another church. I'm doing this with my hands, which you can't see. But it's really interesting. And I usually count those as two separate structures because they are not the same, basically. But you also get churches where you get the wall off the aisles. So there'll be a three-aisle church and the wall off the aisles, so only the central aisle and the apps. And the stuff associated with it are still in use. And sometimes they're shortened as well. And so that's also another
00:10:58
Speaker
church. But anyway, so that's 162 churches. I think only 30 of them, well, it's a significant amount, but maybe it's not the definition of the word significant in a statistical way, but it's a reasonable amount. But 30 of them, I guess we're still under, we're still a high data set without them, but 30 of them are around that are internal churches. But
00:11:19
Speaker
There was a research project slash kind of tourism project called the St. Nicholas Way that was run and carried out by a woman called Kate Clow, who's British, but lives in Lycia. And it's a hiking trail, but she did it in conjunction with some academics. So there was a certain set of the churches that have
00:11:37
Speaker
And GPS points associated with them, but you can sometimes find them on Google maps. Like, if you zoom in, you're like, that's a church. I can see the plan of the church because of the landscape. It's not so it's quite arid and it's quite dry. You can see mounds really easily.
00:11:55
Speaker
Yeah, but it's not even mounds, it's like the extant remains of the churches, like you can see the apse and you can see the aisles and because they're usually made of like a white limestone, there we go, which is local to the region, so it really sticks out among the green. And so sometimes, so I got a set of data from her and that's a combination of her work and a work by two
00:12:16
Speaker
Turkish scholars Mehmet Azlan and Bulind Isher. Hopefully I pronounced their names correctly. I did learn Turkish, but it's been a while and I'm not looking at their names on the screen. And so it's a combination of that data. But she thankfully was, I met her at a conference in Turkey and she was kind enough to send that to me. So that was probably like 30 churches of the 162. And then I've been to Turkey a few times and visited the sites when I've been there.
00:12:44
Speaker
With that in mind, I was able to kind of put GPS points on those sites. And then the other thing is that there's been, there's a massive study that's been done in another half of those. So there are kind of three sub regions and like one third of it, but actually there are a hundred churches in that subset, 101. There was a massive survey carried out there, but it's run for like 15 years. And so the data is
00:13:08
Speaker
all over the place in the sense that obviously when they started there was very little kind of access to maybe GIS and stuff and they might have a GIS database but it's not something I was able to get my hands on from my thesis and they do have GPS points on some sites in one of the publications but not on the other churches and the rest of the publications. So that was quite a challenging
00:13:34
Speaker
I wonder if some of the data, because I used to work on a project that was monitoring like looting in southern Turkey, northern Iraq, that region. And our data set was just archaeological sites without like descriptive past that. So I wonder if some of the sites that we were looking at for that data set overlap with yours.
00:13:57
Speaker
They might do, but my region is like southwest. So it's like almost at the point where it turns into like being on the Aegean Sea, like Turkey, the Anatolia. So it might be too far out unless you are looking at that area. But also the other issue with churches, I would say, is that maybe they're not the focus of kind of research that is sponsored by the Turkish government. So I think sometimes it's difficult to get data about churches specifically.
00:14:25
Speaker
But I think most of mine is pretty accurate. I mean, I have many, many descriptions of where things are located. And so I was able to go off of that. And sometimes there are maps that are printed that explain where a site is. The maps are at a very low resolution. So it's also trying to figure out where something is based on that. So yeah, that was a big aspect of it, as was the fact that I think I used over 50 sources to compile both the GPS data
00:14:53
Speaker
database and the database of archaeological traits which I then analyzed. So that was the other aspect of my thesis was that I utilized a method called cultural evolution or cultural transmission. I guess that's not the method that's the theoretical framework and the idea is each artifact has information in and about the culture and then kind of change over time
00:15:14
Speaker
of that culture through the way the object looks and changes. I don't know if either of you have ever encountered this. So my favorite explanation, which is maybe not the conference pitch, but the like, I'm talking to people that can get through this.
00:15:28
Speaker
is that it's kind of like toilets are a great example. So toilets are a great example because they all serve the same function. But even if we're talking about like a porcelain stand up toilet, they all vary drastically by the culture that you're in. So in the UK, they're significantly smaller than they are in a lot of the US because they need to fit in smaller spaces.
00:15:53
Speaker
In a lot of the US, and I don't know the reasoning for this, they're a lot closer to the ground. If you wanted to gather a, quotes, cultural trait or one of these traits that can be associated with a cultural idea that you as the toilet builder either learned intentionally or learned subconsciously, you might look at something like the height of the toilet or the width of the bowl of the toilet and you would take those measurements.
00:16:20
Speaker
Morphometric traits are a big aspect of this, but you can also use categorical traits or absence presence traits or GPS data to fill out this database of cultural traits. With toilets, the other thing that I like to say is I lived in the Netherlands for a bit and Dutch toilets are incredibly tall. I don't know if you've ever been to the toilet.
Cultural Differences and Methodology
00:16:41
Speaker
I have not. But Dutch people are the tallest people. Then you go to Southeast Asia and it's just a hole in the ground.
00:16:49
Speaker
Right. And like, and there are different reasons for like why that is. But I think even if you're just talking about like or like in Turkey, I remember one time I was on an excavation and there were two toilets on the dig site and one was a stand up porcelain toilet and one was the one with the like hole in the ground. But it's like got the ceramic thing and a thing for your feet so that it they don't slip.
00:17:10
Speaker
So there and then and actually what you get there is probably two different kind of cultural traits for how to use a restroom kind of appearing in one place because like I think culturally the sitting toilet is definitely more Western I think I mean part of me is like oh god what if I'm wrong but I think so. Well this makes me want to learn more about toilets now.
00:17:31
Speaker
Right? It is interesting when you start to think about it, but it's also things like, I don't know, like the fact that you think about things living in the UK as an American, like the fact that the taps, first of all, are called taps and not faucets. And then cold is on one side and hot is on the other. Yeah. And so even if they're like a joined up tap where you get water coming out of both, like you always have two separate knobs to turn them.
00:17:57
Speaker
Um, but if you, but a lot of times in, in like bathrooms and older houses, you have two separate ones, which apparently I learned, my boyfriend told me this is because they usually had a separate water tank for hot water and the hot water tank is not filtered. And so, yeah, my dorm room in England had the two separate taps for hot and cold. Rough. Yeah, it was, it was rough. It was either scalding or freezing. So you can never have warm water in the dorm.
00:18:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's a challenge. I think mine did as well, actually, in my first year. Did two? Question mark? I don't think you did. I don't remember anymore. It's been too long.
00:18:43
Speaker
Well, you've probably moved so many times since then. Like it sounds like you guys have been. I don't know where I am anymore. I would understand. That's kind of like the longer version of how I got to doing a PhD and the shorter version of what my PhD is actually on. And so yeah, I guess that I had kind of set research questions and then I went about using statistical analysis to analyze these traits. So in the case of churches, I'll just give you a few examples. The number of aisles is a categorical trait that I could analyze.
00:19:12
Speaker
I did like morphometric traits. So I did like, you know, the nave area or the length and width of the external app shape because the external app shape, because whether or not the outside of the apps is semicircular or it has three sides. So it's kind of like half of a hexagon or whether it has multiple sides that more than three, or it has a squared off exterior. So like the outside looks like a square, but the inside looks like.
00:19:41
Speaker
a semicircle or is a semicircle, all of those things are things that potentially tell us something about church. So that's kind of what I was doing. And then I was looking at that with reference to specific questions about kind of the relevance of certain traits within the region and like temporal change. And we'll be back right after this break.
00:20:00
Speaker
And we're back. So, Adri, I wanted to ask how you got into this topic in the first place and also why you chose to go abroad for your degree in archaeology. How did I choose the topic? I guess I went to Istanbul is probably, I mean, I've always been interested in
00:20:22
Speaker
My churches and architecture, I think probably because my mom has always been really into art history and so probably some context. So I went to high school in the Netherlands at an international school and my parents and I moved there in 2005 and my parents actually only left in the spring of 2016. So they were living there for 11 years.
00:20:41
Speaker
So we obviously would kind of travel around Europe on holiday, which I guess was very fortunate that we were able to do that. Whenever we go places, you know, we'd go to the cathedrals and we'd see the site. My mom being really into art history, you know, was aware of kind of the construction and
00:20:58
Speaker
you know, we'd look at, you know, paintings with churches in the background. So being in the Netherlands, you know, things like Rembrandt and Vermeer, and there's kind of a religious aspect of a lot of their paintings as well. And the Netherlands has a lot of great churches and a lot of great architecture as well. So I think I was always just interested in that. And then my, I guess it's my senior year, we went to Istanbul and we went to the churches there and my lecturers
00:21:24
Speaker
or professors at Sarah Lawrence, I think said, oh, wow, you're going to Istanbul, like see these things. And they were, I mean, yeah, there was professor of religious studies doing kind of very early Bible stuff and then kind of my Greek and Roman art history professor.
00:21:40
Speaker
the ones that told me this stuff, but obviously they were really interested in churches and architecture and early Christianity as well.
Influences and Academic Path Reflections
00:21:47
Speaker
And so they told me to look at these things. And I just remember being there and being like, this is so interesting. And it's so interesting how churches developed and just this idea that a church is something we're so used to, obviously, but actually in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth century,
00:22:06
Speaker
and even probably for the entire Christian period of the Byzantine Empire or whatever empire you want to call it, like church architecture wasn't a static thing. I mean, it was to an extent, but there was also, and I guess there still isn't, but, you know, they were creating this form as they were going. So there are all sorts of weird things. And like early Christians were really weird and really like superstitious. And it's just really interesting to me. So I think
00:22:35
Speaker
So that's kind of why I've always been interested in the topic. And then I decided to study abroad again, I think for a couple of reasons. First of all, because I thought if I wanted to go back into theatre doing a single, doing a year masters was the best option because it wouldn't take me out of theatre for so long that I would lose all my contacts and everybody would move on.
00:22:56
Speaker
And I was actually set, I forget this sometimes, to stage manage a show in New York at a theater called Lebama, etc. I don't know exactly what it's called, that had been at Sarah Lawrence, directed by a guy called Dan Harlan. It was puppetry stuff. It was a really cool play. It was about genocide and puppets.
00:23:15
Speaker
But it sounds depressing, but it was really, it was really beautiful. And I was going to stage manage it in for its run in New York, because I stage managed it at Sarah Lawrence, and then I was going to stage manage it when it ran to Washington, DC. And so I kind of gave that up to come abroad. And I think I kind of annoyed him, I thought, like, you know,
00:23:35
Speaker
I'll solve all those contacts and I wanted to go to the UK. I knew they were year masters and also because I studied abroad in Dublin and it's quite a similar system in Ireland to the UK in terms of how programs are run. I felt like it would be easy to switch into doing a UK program where like a European program, there might be some culture shock. There were going to be different things going on. So even if it was an English program, like, because I can't really speak other languages fluently,
00:24:03
Speaker
Unfortunately, I wanted to go somewhere that was English speaking and that it was kind of a system I was familiar with as to why I chose Edinburgh. Basically, I think I had seen something with the Edinburgh Archaeology Department when I was researching study abroad programs. And I think it might have been after I'd already decided to go to Trinity. And then actually I visited my friend Lauren, who was studying abroad in Edinburgh. And I was like, Edinburgh is like an amazing city. I would love to go there.
00:24:29
Speaker
And so I would love to say that I put really a lot of thought into the archaeology department. But I think essentially what happened is I looked it up and I saw that there was a guy that taught like early Christian architecture and taught kind of like Leontic and Byzantine archaeology. And I thought, well, like, that's great. I'll go there. I can take his classes. And there were a few other people that did kind of similar things. And so I was like, perfect. Like, I'll do that. And then I was also still interested in kind of like early
00:24:59
Speaker
Christian Britain, which I also, I mean, I still find really interesting, but I thought there were people that studied that as well. So I was like, well, I can do my thesis on either of those things. I'm sure it would be good and fun for me.
00:25:12
Speaker
So I basically applied to Edinburgh. And if I didn't get into Edinburgh, my plan was to work for a year in the Netherlands because I had a residence permit so I could work. I was to work for a year in the Netherlands and then apply for degrees the next year or decide if I want to go back into theatre. And I got into Edinburgh. So, you know, the person who I saw on the, you know, on the website that did early Christian archaeology ended up being my PhD supervisor. He's called James Crow.
00:25:41
Speaker
He goes by gym, but that's gym. And so that's really, that was really cool because like, obviously in some ways, like I remember sitting in a hotel room in New York when I had moved out of my dorm. Well, I was in New York state and looking at the courses and being like, I can't wait to take classes by this guy. And then he's my supervisor. So that was really cool. Yeah. And I think the thing is like a master's in the UK gave me a good understanding of the UK system, gave me a better understanding of what doing a PhD in the UK would be like.
00:26:11
Speaker
I think because I'd always been interested in early Christian architecture, when I came to do my master's thesis, I had originally had a different topic in mind that I discussed with Jim that had to do with African architecture. So like early Christian, so like late antique sites in Libya, so North Africa. But then as I came to kind of being more interested in churches, Jim said to me, you know, you could look at some of this research about
00:26:36
Speaker
sites in Turkey and Lycia because there's a lot of upstanding remains of churches. So we have a lot of information, but we also don't have a lot of information because basically none of them have been excavated. I didn't say this earlier, but almost all of them have not been excavated. There's very little dating evidence. We have like one epigraphic source.
00:26:55
Speaker
There's like one radiocarbon date somewhere in Lycia, but it's not near the church's eye study. And there's only one written source, which is the life of St. Nicholas of Holy Sion, which is from the sixth century, which is a really important source, but you know,
00:27:07
Speaker
In many ways, there's this kind of gap of data. And so he kind of pushed me in that direction. And I think, and I found it so interesting. And the churches have been written about a lot. And so in some ways it was good for a master's dissertation because there was a lot of resources. And then when I went to do my PhD, I realized there are way more resources. They were just all in German. So I had to read them all in German, which is challenging because like when I started, I didn't have a massively good grasp of German. Like I could speak it.
00:27:36
Speaker
a little bit. Yeah. So I had to, I know a lot about German words for church architecture. Yeah. So basically I think it was, it was a good area because there's a lot of data, but there's not a lot of concrete evidence. And so my research was about collecting all of the material and the data and looking at all the plans and kind of making decisions about what's visible in them and, you know, measuring them and looking at what features like the archaeologists who have worked there have said existed.
00:28:02
Speaker
So I'm working all from preexisting data, even though I've seen some of the sites myself, which obviously helped. I didn't start with the idea of doing quantitative analysis. I started with the idea of kind of doing more traditional qualitative analysis where you're looking at comparing different sites and different sites in different parts of the region and how they've varied. And then Jim really pushed me in the direction of using GIS, but I wasn't sure how. And I think what frustrated me when I was learning it a lot was not really knowing what the research question would be to integrate GIS.
00:28:31
Speaker
So one of the other things that happened in my PhD was I started out with one supervisor, Ina Yakub, who now works at Oxford. And actually,
Adapting Research Methods and Supervision Changes
00:28:38
Speaker
she got the job working at Oxford a year and a half into her fellowship at Edinburgh.
00:28:43
Speaker
And she applied not expecting to get it, even though I think we all expected her to get it, because she's a really excellent researcher. And so she left, and I still was in contact with her, but I needed to switch second supervisors. And she'd been quite a strong influence on the beginning of my thesis. So I switched to somebody else in the department who was familiar with the region, but wasn't really familiar with Christian architecture. But then, unfortunately, she ended up being on research leave
00:29:09
Speaker
like I think the second semester that I'd had her as a second supervisor. So I basically like, and I think she was traveling as well. So I didn't really get a chance to interact with her that much. And then, or maybe it was a year and a half, maybe she was even on a year research leave, I can't remember, or she was like away over the summer as well for excavations, of course. And your program's only three years long total?
00:29:30
Speaker
Programs in the UK are advertised as three year, which I think is crap because almost everyone I know takes four more years. Be warned, anyone listening to this podcast. In theory, you get three years that are funded and then you get an unfunded writing up year. And I think there's a lot of discussion about whether or not that fourth year should be funded because in theory, it's meant to be your extra year for writing up, but in practice, almost everyone needs it. And especially if you're working in a field
00:29:58
Speaker
which includes archaeology and includes a variety of other people in kind of my department who have to go do some variation of field work or data collection. So if you're going to archives, if you're in history or classics or even in literature and you're dealing with kind of non-modern material, if you have to do any field work where you have to visit any part of the world for any period of time, you're obviously
00:30:24
Speaker
It's necessary, but it's also time you're not writing. And so I think for archaeologists, I only know maybe one person that's finished in three years. I know one person that finished in three and a half years. And the person who finished in three years is like a powerhouse and he's incredibly successful. And he just actually co-authored a book. He's called a Manuelle. And my friend Tom, who finished in three and a half years, is also a bit like that. But he did all of his research in Scotland.
00:30:53
Speaker
Um, and I think it was kind of based off of what he did his research masters on. And like a manualized research was, I think on, um, archives relating to Palmyra because he couldn't get to Palmyra. And I'm just not like, I can't, I'm just, I've never been like that. I can never just get everything done. And I think like, for me, it was like, it took a long time to get to a point where I had everything I needed to actually write my thesis. And then it was like, Oh, should I need to write my thesis? Cause it's due, but also confusingly.
00:31:20
Speaker
When I was about, I think two and a half years through my thesis, I started working part time. So full disclosure also, and actually you spoke about this in another podcast. I have an Italian passport. That was a process that me and my dad went through because my great grandfather was Italian. And so we were able to get Italian passports, which is, you know.
00:31:42
Speaker
was really important, and then Brexit happened.
Part-time Work and PhD Timeline
00:31:46
Speaker
And then it's still important in that I have settled status in the UK at the moment. Whatever exactly that's going to mean, I don't think we'll know until January.
00:31:55
Speaker
It does mean that I have indefinite leave to remain and more rights potentially, but it's unclear. And so because of that, I could work part time. I wasn't on a student visa, which is obviously incredibly, I'm incredibly privileged to be able to not be on a student visa because they are restrictive. So I worked part time for a commercial archaeology unit on an archaeological archiving project.
00:32:24
Speaker
Wherein we were essentially going through cataloging each individual item and then sorting cataloging packing and then integrating into.
00:32:35
Speaker
historic environment, Scotland's online database, Canmore, all of this material. I started doing that in July of 2016. The project is actually not done, but it's been halted since the beginning of coronavirus because we are self-employed contractors. And so as soon as they realized that they weren't going to be able to be getting any money in through tourism,
00:32:55
Speaker
They, I mean, reasonably stopped the project. So we're just waiting to hear on that because I've been doing that. Um, part time I was, I, I think. Realize kind of a few months into that, that if I wanted to do that two or three days a week, I needed to go part time on my PhD, which again is, I think an option that's not open to people on visas. So in theory, it's open to anybody that at the moment, if you're EU or UK, you can go part time on your PhD. I don't know what it'll be like post-Brexit for EU students might still be possible, but unclear. And so I went.
00:33:25
Speaker
part-time and worked part-time, which meant that my PhD has ended up taking, I mean, I handed in last July. What does part-time mean with a PhD? Because you're not taking coursework, right?
00:33:43
Speaker
Basically, I was just working on my PhD. So I was working two to three days a week. And so I would work on my PhD the other... I think I usually work two days a week. So I'd usually work on my PhD three days a week, sometimes at the weekend, because I wasn't working on it. It wasn't my full-time thing. I guess in the UK, PhDs are a bit more... They're not officially jobs, but they're a bit more seen in the context of jobs. So when you get funding, you're getting paid to work a certain amount of days a week.
00:34:09
Speaker
if you're on a visa or even if you're not on a visa, you're expected to be working, I guess, 11 months out of the year. And like, in theory, you're meant to be allowed to kind of take like a month of holiday. But if you're taking longer than that, because that's the kind of average in the UK is like 30 days of holiday. But if you're taking more than that, like the assumption is that you're not actually doing the amount of work you should be doing. It gave me more time.
00:34:34
Speaker
to finish my PhD. And in the end, I also had to apply for an extension. It's just a complicated process. But is
PhD Defense and Visa Challenges
00:34:41
Speaker
this partially because of being part-time, but partially also because data collection took longer than anticipated, and because I had to learn how to use R in the fourth year of my PhD? And so definitely, I fit in the category of I'm not, it was not a consistent process. But I think it took me five and a half years to finish my PhD. And so about half of that was part-time. So in total, that
00:35:05
Speaker
ends up being four years and three months if it was a full-time PhD. That's good to know because I was under the impression that all PhDs in the UK are just two to three years and that's it. Absolutely not. No, and I think so many people I know have, I mean, of people I know that have done PhDs, so many of them have had extensions. And then the other thing
00:35:28
Speaker
that's worth talking about is corrections and Viva. So I submitted my thesis in July and my Viva was at the end of September. And that's actually quite a quick turnaround. I know people that have had to wait over six months to have their Viva, which is their defense, sorry. It's called a Viva in the UK. I don't know exactly why. I think because Viva voices, it means something in
00:35:52
Speaker
Latin. And when you have your defence in the UK, you have a number of different options for results. So you can get no corrections, you can get three months corrections, you can get six months corrections, you can get 12 months corrections. And it varies by school, university, what exactly the options are. And then the other thing is that you cannot pass and have to have a second defence in 12 months. And you can also not pass your thesis as a whole.
00:36:19
Speaker
Wow. So you could go a whole year without working on it and having to do it again? I guess usually they try and do it within six months. So you can hand in, have six months not working on it, have your defense, and then have to work on it for an entire year in order to have your defense again to fix the problems. How would that work with people and visas? So you have to just reapply for a visa once you know what your time frame is. What if the visa gets denied?
00:36:49
Speaker
I don't think they normally do for that kind of thing. That's good. That would be intense. Yeah. And I know people, but I know people who have done their PhDs from abroad or like done their defenses and corrections from abroad. So they'll go back to the States or wherever and you can still do the work. Obviously there's like the lack of resources potentially.
00:37:10
Speaker
Um, but there are options. And so some people, maybe if they can't afford renewing the visa, so they'll go back to the U S and they'll do their Viva online or they'll do it in person, then go back to the States and then they'll do their corrections while they're home. I mean, for me, like if I had, I mean, I've done most of my time doing corrections has been in lockdown. So I haven't really needed to use anything but online resources.
00:37:34
Speaker
But yeah, so I pass my defense with like kind of minor corrections. So like, congrats. Thanks. So this is the, that's the confusing thing is like, some people are like, once you've passed your defense, you're a doctor. And the call, the university is like, no, you have to graduate to be a doctor. And I'm like, well, that's crap because like, and also like graduation is like twice a year. So like, I've always kind of been like, well, I'll officially start calling myself a doctor when I hand in the final version of my thesis, because also who knows what I'm going to graduate now.
00:38:03
Speaker
who knows when we're able to be in a place where we can physically graduate. Exactly. If we want to. Just call me doctor. Yeah. And so I think once I hand in my final copy of my thesis, I will call myself a doctor. But it's weird because some people are like, you're a doctor now. And I'm like, I just don't know. But I think it's also one of those things where it's hard to feel it. But I also think some people are maybe more confident and are like, yeah, I'm a doctor now. And I'm just like,
00:38:32
Speaker
What if someone tells me I'm saying it wrong and they get mad at me on a job application or, you know, I don't know. You don't want to step on any toes.
00:38:41
Speaker
Yeah. Or just like have someone be like, well, actually, if you've not handed in your thesis, you shouldn't have put that like in the middle of an interview or something. Well, I hope you have that aha moment of I'm a doctor now. I have to actually, cause I have to hand in my corrections in October. So basically I got kind of slightly more than minor corrections, but actually like upon looking at it, if I did all the things my examiners told me, I probably could have gone and done in a very short period of time. But because I,
00:39:09
Speaker
and perpetually bad at getting things done efficiently. Well, I basically spent a lot of time I was working, you know, at the beginning of the year and at the end of last year, I was working and then I was applying for jobs and working and that took up a lot of time. Yeah. And then lockdown happened and obviously like, it was kind of hard to work on corrections at first when like, you know, the world was on fire. I mean, not that it's not like it was hard to do anything, but when I could do things, I was applying for jobs if there were jobs. And then I started working on my corrections and
00:39:37
Speaker
Basically, I need to finish because I have to hand them in by the end of the year. And that's the other thing is they were like, well, normally we'd probably give you six months corrections and we'd expect you to finish them in less than six months. But because you're part time, I don't think they'll ask us to give you double the amount of time. So they gave me a year. But yeah, again, it's one of those things where I'm like, oh, if I'd had three months, I probably would have gotten them done. And I would have had to get them done. But yeah, so it's weird because I'm like, I've passed my defense, but I have work I have to do.
00:40:07
Speaker
It's such a weird world right now to be in academia because I feel I find myself wanting to focus on everything that's happening in the world right now, but I can't make the time to do that because I have to start focusing on school now too. And I think I'm going to have trouble finding that balance of wanting to be aware of everything, but also wanting to be able to
00:40:32
Speaker
get work done. So yeah, that's gonna be something I'm gonna have to figure out really soon. And I think, I mean, I think the difficulty is like, if you're focusing on kind of politics in America, obviously a big issue, just the state of coronavirus, COVID, just in the world, it's also a big issue.
Ethics in Archiving and Cultural Interactions
00:40:55
Speaker
And it's so difficult because it does take up so much of your mental energy to like pay attention to or focus on any of this stuff.
00:41:02
Speaker
It takes so much mental energy to focus on these things, and I think the other thing is being online is an important way of getting information, and it's an important way of getting stories about people on the ground dealing with things. At my conference, actually, my partner and I presented a paper about archiving, because we actually do the archiving work together, and it was about ethics relating to archiving.
00:41:26
Speaker
We were in a session with a woman who is from Beirut, and she was talking about the situation in Beirut. She said, don't listen to news sources. The best way to get information is to actually look at social media, because so much that's going out into the media, so much stuff is being distorted as well. You need to do that. But then at the same time, phones are terrible for your brain. And looking at stuff online,
00:41:52
Speaker
their Instagram, which I probably spend the most time on, is meant to be addicting. It's meant to be addicting to your brain. And there's research that's shown that it is. And so it's difficult because you have to balance the aspects of engaging with the news and doing what you can to help and taking care of yourself and making sure that you leave space so that when you come to do your work, you're not
00:42:23
Speaker
completely burnt out because there's no point in doing it, you know, if you're not. And with that, we'll take one more break. And we are back. I do have a question. So you did, I mean, like you said, you didn't technically have a major during your bachelor's, but you were specializing in theater and throughout your childhood and
00:42:48
Speaker
travels and stuff, you're focusing, not focusing, but you would always go to like the churches. Have you noticed that with the theater background and the fascination with churches that the visualization of these old early Christian churches in Lecia? Lecia. To be able to visualize these areas more as you've said before that they vary in their designs.
00:43:13
Speaker
in the past, if that makes sense at all. Like with theater background, like I can see, I don't know. I think there are aspects of theaters that are seen in like Greek theaters or Roman, Greek and Roman theaters that are seen in churches. So the, the Skeine or Skeine, there's a relationship between that and, or there has been argued to be a relationship between that and the iconostasis, which is the, um,
00:43:38
Speaker
wall that would separate the clergy from the lay people while the liturgy was taking place or aspects of the liturgy were taking place. I think that one of the confusing things about early Christian architecture to me, and I'm not sure how much people agree with me on this, I think some people agree with me and some people are like, no, there is evidence, it's what exactly the liturgy was. And so I think we know that people
00:44:01
Speaker
moved around the church. I don't know if you're familiar of seen or anyone listening has seen kind of Greek Orthodox liturgical ceremonies. They move around the church. They'll go to the icons. They'll say something in a specific icon. They process to a different bit of the church. They carry out a different aspect of liturgy. And this all goes on while you're sat in the church. So it's not just somebody sitting at the front talking at you.
00:44:23
Speaker
And so we know that something like that was going on. I think it's not always clear how consistent that was across the empire. It's not for the Christian world as a whole and it's not also clear yet exactly what they were doing at every period of time because obviously we can't take a text or I think it's difficult if you take a text from like Constantinople or from Alexandria and and they're like, well, let's directly apply that to something happening in
00:44:48
Speaker
a different region where church construction is different and obviously church construction and the way it's shaped affects how the liturgy is carried out. But it is something I think about, I guess, in the sense of like where were the people and what were they doing and how did they relate to the church? And I think one of the things that I find interesting is that there's often a lot of discussion about how people relate to the church inside of it, but not how they relate to it in their daily lives. So if you have a church that's like on a hilltop, there's this one church that's like,
00:45:19
Speaker
It's like a very small church and it's like up a hill and it is built so it incorporates a bit of this cave that seemingly has water in it or would have had water in it. I think it still does and that's quite typical of the kind of limestone of the region, the way that it's shaped to have these kind of caves and different structures and stuff in them. But obviously there's also a relationship between Christianity and
00:45:44
Speaker
kind of miraculous water. That's something we see a bit and there's actually another church in the region that's associated with a spring and the spring previously was a pagan religious site wherein there was a fish oracle and the fish in the spring they ate certain food certain meat that the oracle would interpret that to mean something and then in the Christian period the church is built by that but actually you can still see physically the temple to Apollo is still there in ruins. This tiny church you think like people had to
00:46:12
Speaker
walk up to it to get to it. And it's not directly near any settlements. I mean, it's not far away, but it's at least half an hour walk, if not more away. And so you think, how does this actually relate to the people in the area? Why is it here and how are they using it? And thinking about that kind of thing is interesting to me because I think it gets us away from thinking about civilization and settlement as
00:46:40
Speaker
things that are directly connected to how much we're building versus how much we're not building. I think it gets us more to thinking about how, I guess you would say maybe actors to tie it in, like relate to their environment and interact within that environment rather than just looking at only how people interact with a church once they're inside of it. I'm not sure if that was a good answer.
00:47:04
Speaker
I think that's so important to think about how people interact with places outside of the places function. I think that's something that you don't think about right away. But yeah, it definitely plays a big part in society in general. Well, it's like, I mean, I don't know. I'm trying to think of a good example.
00:47:32
Speaker
I imagine that in theory, if you were studying modern society in the future, the idea that people climb mountains just to the climb to the top would be bewildering. And like the fact that they kind of create like cairns and stuff at the top, or that there are like trig points and stuff at the top of mountains would be highly confusing. Like would we think that's like a, a ritual, yeah.
00:48:00
Speaker
And I guess it is a bit of a ritual if you, if you climb the same mountain, you know, regularly, or if you, um, the people that kind of do the kind of mountain peak bagging or, or, you know, it's like. Whether they do it kind of out of a competitive nature or just out of kind of like giving them a thing to do, like there's a ritual aspect of that.
00:48:17
Speaker
whether or not they would see it as you know I'm sure if you ask them they wouldn't think too much about it but then it's like we actually are using this landscape that you know potentially we would think of as being at least in the UK as being kind of natural we're actually marking it quite a lot because we have very specific trails you go up and we have very specific places that you like rest and places to throw things away and you know and then you have
00:48:43
Speaker
have a specific place you go up to, the top of the mountain, you go to the trig point, you take the picture there and you leave. If there was evidence of this trig point or a cairn or whatever that people found or bits of rubbish that are shoved into bits of rock in that center top bit because people are crap, but they leave stuff behind. Or graffiti. Yeah, graffiti and all of that stuff. How would you interpret that?
00:49:12
Speaker
Exact issue is an issue in the US where we, I think a lot of times we're taught that a lot of these landscapes that are these natural wild areas are actually places that have been heavily managed and organized and are still great importance to Native American tribes and they're not.
00:49:30
Speaker
wild because they're kept very meticulously. Yeah, it happened for millennia, probably. And we just, you know, and then people came in and went like, all right, let's kick the people out because they don't look good in this wilderness. Right. And like, actually, it's not a wilderness because the way it looks, it looks the way it does because they made sure to keep the landscape thriving through living there.
Modern Adaptations of Historical Churches
00:49:55
Speaker
And in some ways, it's the fact that potentially
00:49:57
Speaker
We're not trained to see, we're trained against seeing their work in the land as human interaction because we're expecting to see things like trig points and manage paths. And that's what we associate with human interaction, but it's not the case. It's so fascinating seeing how
00:50:21
Speaker
we as humans have adapted to the environment and how we have made the environment adapt to us as well. Especially just over time and especially it's like with the churches just out in nature and how that's natural now, even though that was the adaptation that was placed by humans earlier on and how it just become a part of the scenery.
00:50:47
Speaker
Like in Greece, like my PhD supervisor works on, worked on a site, a Greek island called Naxos, and there are small, these like churches or chapels, again, debatable, that are now in the middle of fields. And I think he was saying, hope this is correct, that like, they're kind of maintained by a family. And so,
00:51:11
Speaker
like they're part of that family's land and they're maintained by that family. And the only kind of religious celebrations that happen there now, I think are often like for the saint stay of that saint of that or possibly weddings of the family or people associated with the family. And like for things like that, they'll have to put in like roads or put down like wooden planks or things to get people to it because it's in the middle of a field. That seems so in some ways like because that's like a century old tradition or whatever, like they they're used to that. That seems normal to them.
00:51:41
Speaker
And again, it's like, yeah, that wasn't there originally. So we've adapted to that and they've adapted to making it useful. The whole doing my PhD, having done it for a bit longer when I went part time is when I started working with my current second supervisor, who's actually just moved back to Barcelona and is working there. But he's called Javert Rubio Campio, but he goes by Javi. And Javi is the one that taught me how to
00:52:04
Speaker
do kind of qualitative analysis and it's something he did in his research on Roman material, predominantly, I think, because there's loads of it. And so I can't remember what my point was. Oh, so yeah, one of the other things that's interesting about my thesis when I look at kind of how I got to doing what I'm doing now is like,
00:52:24
Speaker
It definitely was affected by having three different secondary supervisors, which I like, I wouldn't necessarily recommend, even though I'm glad I had them all and I'm glad I ended up with Shavi, who very
00:52:36
Speaker
patiently taught me how to use R, but it's actually one of probably the more interesting things that's come out of my thesis in terms of having that ability to use that methodology and also thinking about how that quantitative analysis can be applied to so many different aspects of kind of the humanities as a whole is something I find really interesting.
Evolving Research and Personal Growth
00:52:54
Speaker
So I'm glad I did that.
00:52:56
Speaker
That just goes to show that, especially with research, you have to be open to change, especially when you have a bunch of different people coming through your life, affecting how you're thinking about things too. Whatever you started off wanting to do, it's probably completely different from what you'll end up doing in the end.
00:53:17
Speaker
And that is fine. Everything's fine. Yeah. I had many moments of being like, it's totally fine. And then like coming home and being like, ah, it's not fine. Yeah. I am the dog in the burning building. This is fine. Yes. Many times in my life doing my PhD. The other thing that's important about PhDs that I think people don't talk about is like, not to get depressing, but like life happens while you're doing your PhD.
00:53:43
Speaker
Like, and I think because it's such a long process, like you kind of think of it, and I think a lot of other people think of it as like a single chunk of time that you're working on a thing, but like,
00:53:52
Speaker
all of my remaining grandparents and all of my partner's remaining grandparents, which I think where all of them have died while I've been doing my PhD, which obviously like was different variations of sad. I mean, some people were ill for a long period of time, some people it was more sudden. And so like, that was challenging. And I mean, challenging when they're in the States and you have to go back. And actually, like my last grandparent, my grandmother passed away very suddenly, like two weeks after I handed in my PhD, which was, I mean,
00:54:20
Speaker
challenging because of the sudden nature of it, challenging because my parents were in, not with me, but they were in the UK. And so we all had to get back to Texas where I'm originally from challenging, you know, because then we had to deal with family. And it was also just really weird because I'd spent two weeks feeling like I was on top of the world. And then suddenly it was like all thrown into chaos. But you know, it's like, yeah. And like people have health problems. Like I know, like I have a friend of a friend, like,
00:54:50
Speaker
was diagnosed with cancer while she was doing her PhD and she's successfully recovered now, but obviously like that affected her process quite significantly. But then it's like, you know, also multiple people that have kids while they're doing their PhD get married, like their partners like get other jobs that mean that their partners move and they're at a distance from each other. You start relationships, you end relationships. I was with my partner the whole time, which is great, but also I'm sure, I mean, yeah.
00:55:17
Speaker
You don't want his perspective on it. And I know people in my department started dating and broke up. They're in the same PhD office. We all had one big office. And so things like that happen, and they affect you. But in some ways, because you're doing this one single thing that seems like a single project, obviously to an extent it is,
00:55:40
Speaker
I feel like people react to it differently than if you were working on the same project at a job.
Balancing Academic and Personal Life
00:55:45
Speaker
Like if you were on a long-term three to four year project. It almost feels like a removed piece of time from your timeline when you think of a PhD. Yeah. And I think that's also just been hard because I think supervisors are maybe getting a bit better about it and maybe British supervisors are a bit
00:56:07
Speaker
sometimes struggle a bit more to talk about personal things sometimes, but not always. That's definitely a stereotype though. It's hard sometimes to just get through because something will happen to you and you're like, well, I can't necessarily, unless you have to travel.
00:56:27
Speaker
can't necessarily like take time off to deal with something and the way that you might with work or the way with work you're like oh like you know my grandmother's really ill it's really stressful for my whole family your boss would hopefully be like okay I understand or even just you know the like
00:56:47
Speaker
Or I understand you might not be present. Yeah, you might not be 100% present if you get in right on time and leave as soon as you can within your contract or whatever. They might be like, okay, that's acceptable because I know you're dealing with a lot. Hopefully, I mean, not every boss in every environment would do that, definitely. But there are potential opportunities to that. Or if you're doing a PhD, it's kind of like, well, you're already working whenever you can. So it's like, well, just do what you can.
00:57:14
Speaker
Yeah. And it's, especially if you have a deadline, you might not easily be able to move that deadline. And obviously, and I think you guys spoke about this in one of your podcasts that I saw the title of like mental health as a big aspect of it. And I think it's difficult when you get started to take time off because you constantly feel like you should be working. And I know that for a lot of my friends, that's been really challenging. It's like, obviously if they have to go away because of a funeral, if they have to go to a friend's wedding and that's good.
00:57:43
Speaker
Um, hopefully like it, it's something that they can enjoy, but then it's like, it's hard to be on a holiday and not feel like you shouldn't be working. It's hard to be on, on a trip to see your family and feel like it shouldn't be working. And it's hard because people are like, Oh, aren't you going to be done soon? And you're like, shut up. I don't need that pressure. I already put enough pressure on myself. I don't need yours too. Yeah, exactly. So.
00:58:10
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I've already felt that a lot. I mean, even in simple things, like I sometimes feel like I can't even read for fun anymore because I feel like I should be reading for research. And then I just end up not doing either. Yeah. Guilting yourself.
00:58:30
Speaker
Yeah, like you can also be like read out. Like when I was editing my thesis, like I couldn't look at anything else. Like I'd read my, I was writing it. I was reading it. I was editing it. I was rereading it. My boyfriend was reading it. Like he was telling me what was wrong with it. I was like, I can't think of how to reword the sentence, but it definitely doesn't make sense. You're correct. How did I not notice? You know, and it's like, how can you, at any time you're editing something, I think it's really hard to like.
00:58:54
Speaker
read other things. But I also know some people like have gone through phases of reading like, I mean, my original second supervisor Ina said that she spent her first year of her PhD, she read like all of Terry Pratchett's books. Because yeah, because I guess she was like, I needed like, she felt like she had to be reading all the time. And so when she'd stop reading, I think this was the reason when she'd stop reading
00:59:19
Speaker
Her research, she felt like she needed to be reading at night so she would read, but she would just read fantasy. But because it was obviously so removed, it was possible for her to read it and feel better. But she was like, I couldn't really read dramatic stuff and I couldn't really read like nonfiction. Yeah. It's like, it's a good stress relief and especially being able to lose yourself in such a world, especially a fantasy world where it's just very, this is so unbelievable. There's no way it could be true.
00:59:49
Speaker
And I can't relate it to my dissipation. I can't relate it to anything. Or can I? Yeah, that's no. That is the problem. Like being an archaeologist, like I was like, immediately I was thinking about this when I said this, there was like a Terry Pratchett, it's called Pyramids. And it's about like, kind of a version of ancient Egypt is kind of part of the storyline. And so you're reading it and you're like,
01:00:14
Speaker
our archaeology of this or like playing video games and like obviously we were saying because you guys went to York like there's a big group of people that did archaeology and video games that have kind of recently come out of York. And so sometimes like we'll be playing a video game or like watching people play something and my partner will be like, oh, archaeology and video games and I'm like, shut up. Well, it's like something when I was working on my dissertation, I was reading a lot of or just throughout the year, I've been reading like a lot of sci fi.
01:00:44
Speaker
because I love sci-fi. And I was reading a lot of Philip Dick's books, like Do You Android Stream of Electric Sheep? And then I was just like, wait, I can correlate this into my dissertation. So I was writing a big sci-fi section and stuff like that. And I'm like, this is PhD. I don't need to go into any of this. So then I left it in there for my supervisor to read. She's like, this isn't relevant. So I took it all out. And I was like, I know it's not, but I wanted to see. It was great.
01:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, I understand that. I feel like sometimes I'm like, oh, like I see something or I do something and I'm like, I could really like do something with this from an academic perspective. And then I'm like, do I want to though? Like, do I want to make, like I know somebody at Edinburgh, I mean, she's probably in her like 30 or now was doing like Tolkien, like doing Lord of the Rings type things for her PhD, like in
Interdisciplinary Insights and Conclusion
01:01:33
Speaker
literature. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know if I would enjoy it. Like,
01:01:38
Speaker
you know, like you think you kind of end up ruining something and overthinking something and over kind of analyzing something that you enjoyed as a kind of literature and as a story and, you know, whatever. I think I'd go a bit crazy. It's like for fun, I stream on Twitch sometimes and I did this one archaeology game called Moonlighter and I was like, archaeologist streams Moonlighter and I was like,
01:02:01
Speaker
this is a real archaeology. I was just like yelling the whole time. I mean, I wasn't yelling, I was just like, this is incorrect. Well, that's like I was actually watching. Yeah, I'm a super nerd. So I was watching a documentary about video games a day ago. And it was about the game Spelunky. I don't know if you guys are familiar with it. But yeah, so
01:02:22
Speaker
it's hard because you kind of are like, I see archaeology and everything, but also I don't want to. It's like, I want to enjoy it and see how it actually is. I'm like, oh, this game is actually just not good. Okay. Well, that's just not because I'm an archaeologist. It's just not fun. Yeah. And like, I kind of, I feel that way about theater sometimes too, because living in Edinburgh, I go to, I mean, I've gone to shows at the French almost every year. Sometimes I've been away, but like, I know so much about the background of theater that I'll be like, oh, like that's gone wrong with the lights or like,
01:02:51
Speaker
you know, whatever, because I'm still familiar with it, even though I haven't done it for years. Sometimes I'm like, or I'll be like, how did they do that? Like, you know, and I'm just trying to think about technically how something was done. And like, the play is happening. You know, like, stop it. But it's also, it's fun in a way, because it's just like, you get to see behind the scenes of different events.
01:03:14
Speaker
that you might find an interest of. And it's just like, I wonder how they're, oh, this is how, like, okay, I can see how they're doing this here and there. And okay, that's, I can see what they're thinking. Yeah, or like, yeah, how you can see, like, again, you can see, like, you play a game and you're like, I can see the different cultures that came into like, inspiring this. Yeah, we're like, someone else might not have been able to. I always think like, does it, yeah, does it make the game better or worse? Or do they think about it? Or do they care? Like, I think that's the other interesting thing. But again, this is me just analyzing everything.
01:03:44
Speaker
Or am I just over analyzing once again? Definitely the case, but whether or not it's relevant is the real question. Well, Audrey, thank you so much for joining us today. It was great hearing about all of your research and chatting and I hope you get everything done in due time and you can finally say you're a doctor with pride.
01:04:08
Speaker
and no reservations. We're rooting for you. Thank you. I'll let you know when I've handed in. We would love to hear. Dr. Dastra, Audrey.
01:04:21
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that's actually how they do it in Turkey. I think they say like, Dr. Master, because if you've got a master's, you're a master. And so it'll be like Professor Dr. Master. And you're like, damn. I want that. That's how I'm going to be addressed after all this is done. I earned all of these degrees. But yes, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah. Anytime. Maybe we'll have you back when all is said and done.
01:04:51
Speaker
Yeah, maybe when I have a job and I can tell you about job applications. They're horrible. That's all I understand. I'll feel better about it probably if I have a job. Starts crying in a corner, I understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Job's are the worst. Now it's the worst time to apply a separate conversation.
01:05:10
Speaker
Anyway, thanks again for having me on. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening, everyone. And tune in next time. Be sure to message us if you have any sort of questions, comments, anything. I did get podcasts at gmail.com. And just search for that on Instagram and Twitter. And we'll see you next time. Bye.
01:05:45
Speaker
This show is produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle, in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.