In June this year, I presented at the International Association for the Study of Affective Touch (IASAT) conference in Jena, Germany. It was nice to be back among the affective touch community, after having met many researchers two years prior at the Marseille conference. There were also some new faces. Sometimes, it’s the little things — the cherry on top, as I delivered an oral presentation about data collected at the Infancy and Sleep Centre at Durham University over summer 2024, was when people laughed at my joke. This tells you how well my jokes usually go over, for this to be remarkable.
This spring and summer, I gained more research experience helping a colleague in my department run LJMU’s contribution to a multi-centre, international EMA (ecological momentary assessment) touch study, and helping another PhD student, one of the best and brightest I know, with her systematic review. I juggled a short-term post in Public Health while writing up the Durham study which has now been submitted for peer review, and volunteered as a participant in other PhD students’ studies. When autumn was in full-swing, I gave a physiology lecture to MSc students, recruited several times in person in two local hospitals, and entered the Carve Your PhD contest, winning the people’s choice vote.
This year I also visited my first participants for the physiological study, making many trips across the Liverpool City Region, Cheshire, and North Wales. Some were at the very edges of my catchment, so I was able to visit places I’d only ever driven to before with my family while on vacation. I got to know a lot of A-roads in Cheshire, and didn’t die on the M6!
The mums and infants I meet are not just numbers in a spreadsheet, I see them as mums like me. When my daughter was very young, it felt like getting dressed and out for the day was an achievement in itself. This feeling lasted for several years, actually, and it took me that long to get rid of my comfy trousers with the elasticated waist. Had I not forced myself to give them to a charity shop, I would probably still be wearing them now. Instead, as I write this I am wearing my LL Bean fleece-lined “mom jeans” for the third day in a row. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. I feel my recruitment materials might as well have read, “put on your best tracksuit”. I salute you mums.
Doing a PhD can feel solitary, like being at home with an infant. There are okay days, shitty days, and moments of pride. You have to try really hard not to compare yourself to others, you face financial insecurity when your mat leave or funding runs out, there are often frustrations, things happen that are out of your control, and on top of everything you may feel unseen. Maybe you have a question, and when you ask for help, people pass the responsibility to someone else.
Now, even though I don a two-piece suit more often than a tracksuit, it’s the memory of the latter that makes me care about the work that I do and gives me resilience and determination. Whether you are caring for a baby or nursing an idea, it can be exhausting and get devalued, so it takes strength to keep caring. For any mums or PhD students reading this, you are not a just a number.
(Picture from Jena this summer)