About The Historian's Desk
The desk is owned, worked at, and cluttered up by Dawn Hollis, a historian and postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Classics, University of St Andrews. I am part of a Leverhulme Trust Research Project considering 'Mountains in ancient literature and culture and their postclassical reception' (try saying that in a hurry!).
I completed my Ph.D. in History at the University of St Andrews in 2016. I have previously attended the University of Cambridge (Queens' College), where I undertook an MPhil in Early Modern History, and the University of Oxford (Balliol College), where I studied for my undergraduate degree in History. By virtue of my personal (and, never fear, ongoing!) association with the excellent Scots Antiquary, I was briefly known as Dawn Jackson Williams.
I started blogging at the Historian's Desk during my Ph.D, and in the archives you can find many posts about my experiences as a postgraduate researcher, as well as writings about early modern mountains and the madcap adventures of seventeenth-century travellers. Now 'beyond the Ph.D' I fully intend to keep writing about historical topics and the experience of being an early career researcher here.
During the course of my doctorate, however, I also became very interested in what is known as 'researcher development'. For me this basically means figuring out how the experience of doctoral researchers can be enriched and improved. I am most interested in developing practical writing techniques (how do you write 80,000-100,000 words in three years without going mad?) and in the possibilities offered by viewing the Ph.D as an 'apprenticeship' involving the development of a whole range of skills - not just the production of a PhD thesis. So the Historian's Desk blog is also a space in which I will explore these issues further.
You can also find me occasionally writing at Scribetur, and (for some light relief) web comic-ing at The Pink Narwhal. I also Twit(ter) from @HistoriansDesk.
I completed my Ph.D. in History at the University of St Andrews in 2016. I have previously attended the University of Cambridge (Queens' College), where I undertook an MPhil in Early Modern History, and the University of Oxford (Balliol College), where I studied for my undergraduate degree in History. By virtue of my personal (and, never fear, ongoing!) association with the excellent Scots Antiquary, I was briefly known as Dawn Jackson Williams.
I started blogging at the Historian's Desk during my Ph.D, and in the archives you can find many posts about my experiences as a postgraduate researcher, as well as writings about early modern mountains and the madcap adventures of seventeenth-century travellers. Now 'beyond the Ph.D' I fully intend to keep writing about historical topics and the experience of being an early career researcher here.
During the course of my doctorate, however, I also became very interested in what is known as 'researcher development'. For me this basically means figuring out how the experience of doctoral researchers can be enriched and improved. I am most interested in developing practical writing techniques (how do you write 80,000-100,000 words in three years without going mad?) and in the possibilities offered by viewing the Ph.D as an 'apprenticeship' involving the development of a whole range of skills - not just the production of a PhD thesis. So the Historian's Desk blog is also a space in which I will explore these issues further.
You can also find me occasionally writing at Scribetur, and (for some light relief) web comic-ing at The Pink Narwhal. I also Twit(ter) from @HistoriansDesk.