Interview with Dr Audrey Reeves (Master in Political Sciences, ’10), Research Associate at University of Bristol.
Audrey Reeves' expertise is in gender politics, especially where it connects to world politics, international relations, gender and sexuality, and transnational movements. She is a teaching unit organiser in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. She holds a PhD in Politics from that university, a Masters in Political Science/International Relations from the Graduate Institute, and a B.Sc. in Political Science from the Université de Montréal. She has previously worked as a research and programme assistant in gender and security at the Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) in Geneva.
During her PhD, which she completed in 2016, Audrey investigated wartime heritage sites and their insertion in the tourism industry. These institutions increasingly rely on private contributions for their funding - either onsite consumption or conspicuous donation. Her dissertation drew on participant-observation at wartime heritage sites in London, Berlin, Jerusalem, New York City, San Diego, and Honolulu, and analysis of visitor reviews on TripAdvisor.
Laura Hankin interviewed Audrey about her research and her journey in academia so far.
Laura: What drew you to studying museums?
Audrey: I was very keen to do my PhD at the intersection of feminist international studies and peace and conflict and security studies. I originally offered a completely different proposal, derived from my Masters degree, but two years into doing the research I stalled. I was finding all kinds of other things to do that were relevant to my development, like teaching, but I wasn’t doing the PhD. On the side I was doing a museum project that I had started as part of the Discourse Analysis unit I was taking with one of my supervisors. I had really enjoyed writing the assignment and was told I should publish it and so I was trying to develop it further. A year or so later I realised that this had hijacked my thesis. I think at some point your interest evolves and you change as a person. I was making a bold move but I had my supervisors’ support. It did mean that my PhD was longer and that I had a tougher time at my viva.
What were the greatest challenges for you in your PhD?
If you are going to do fieldwork, you need to start looking early on for money, which I did not do as much as I could have. In retrospect, the nature of the project may have made this difficult anyway. Finding funding takes time and the problem was that as my project was evolving organically there was no grand plan or strategy from the start. I had to pay for a lot of it through working other jobs (such as teaching) as there was no time to apply for funding and wait for the response, which can take several months.
What advice do you have in balancing your own development with your PhD project?
For those of us that are looking for an academic job after a PhD the demands are really high. I was lucky with the people that surrounded me, my supervisors and senior PhD students who made it into a lecturing job, so had a good sense of what I had to do. But in terms of how to integrate it into everyday life and balance time management and priorities, that was hard. I got distracted with writing blogs, teaching, conferences and workshops. All these experiences were valuable and I don’t regret doing them – but now I’m finishing my PhD and I only have one peer-reviewed academic publication on my CV. That’s a problem as I can’t get a job with that, but I think I got distracted at times during my PhD as it felt easier to do things that have an immediate impact with instant gratification. Actually, it’s the publishable writing that counts!