Anyway, I had always been fascinated by conflict and the results of conflict, and had a vague sense that I was interested in refugees, and then when I was in South Africa I ended up staying for a week or so in Mpumalanga, near the Mozambican border, with a friend of a friend who was working on a repatriation project with Mozambican refugees, and I guess something clicked, and I was suddenly fascinated with forced migration and post-conflict reconstruction because, I guess, I believe it's something that has to be managed incredibly well to stop a continuous cycle of conflict and migration, and I don't think it really is managed that well as it currently stands. So I went back to university for my third year and didn't really know what I wanted to do and had plans to go to Canada for a year and have a think and figure things out but then Mark and I got together and that scuppered those plans. I started applying for Masters' in development, but had left it too late to start next academic year, so I had a year in hand, and decided that, given that I was so interested in post-conflict reconstruction and forced migration it might be a good idea for me to go and live in a country that was dealing with those issues to get a better understanding. So I got a TEFL qualification so that I would be employable, and narrowed down my geographical interest to the Caucasus, as I didn't want (and couldn't afford) to go to far away from Europe, and I joined a mailing list and sent out my CV to see if anyone wanted to hire me. I was offered a job teaching at a university in Azerbaijan, and so I went off to teach there for a semester, and in my spare time I volunteered with an NGO that was working with refugees and it was great.
So then I came back and I did my Masters' (and wrote my dissertation on internally displaced people in Azerbaijan) and applied for the fast stream because I was hoping to get into DfID, but ended up in the Home Office instead, and over the next few years I did quite a bit of travel to the US and Europe but nowhere further afield. Then I moved to Nottingham and wrote my first novel and failed to sell it for ages, and then realised I was quite miserable in Nottingham and had been thinking for years about doing a PhD in forced migration and so I decided that before I did the PhD I should get some move overseas experience. I'd always wanted to go back to Africa since I'd first been there as a student, and then I found out about the Sudan Volunteer Project in a guide to taking a year out, and did some research and found out that Sudan is basically mecca for people interested in forced migration, especially internal migration, and so I applied to the programme and got accepted and came out here. In the meantime I'd stuck in PhD applications with a fairly vague 'um, it's about refugees...in Sudan'-type research proposal, and when I got here I started trying to firm up my ideas. Initially I thought it would be about internally displaced southern Sudanese in the Khartoum, but then I moved to the south myself and decided that actually it was going to be about refugee returns to south Sudan in the context of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
So then I came back and started the PhD and then didn't have the time or the money to continue it, and now here we are. I would LOVE to finish it one day but realistically I don't think it's going to happen; I'm unlikely to get funding and even if I do, the further I get into my 30s the less appealing it is to think about taking three years plus out of earning for something that's unlikely to end up being a career (as I've never seen myself as an academic). Still, I do think I may well do a PhD (likely part-time) in something, someday, so we will see.
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part 2!
Date: 2009-10-24 07:03 am (UTC)So then I came back and I did my Masters' (and wrote my dissertation on internally displaced people in Azerbaijan) and applied for the fast stream because I was hoping to get into DfID, but ended up in the Home Office instead, and over the next few years I did quite a bit of travel to the US and Europe but nowhere further afield. Then I moved to Nottingham and wrote my first novel and failed to sell it for ages, and then realised I was quite miserable in Nottingham and had been thinking for years about doing a PhD in forced migration and so I decided that before I did the PhD I should get some move overseas experience. I'd always wanted to go back to Africa since I'd first been there as a student, and then I found out about the Sudan Volunteer Project in a guide to taking a year out, and did some research and found out that Sudan is basically mecca for people interested in forced migration, especially internal migration, and so I applied to the programme and got accepted and came out here. In the meantime I'd stuck in PhD applications with a fairly vague 'um, it's about refugees...in Sudan'-type research proposal, and when I got here I started trying to firm up my ideas. Initially I thought it would be about internally displaced southern Sudanese in the Khartoum, but then I moved to the south myself and decided that actually it was going to be about refugee returns to south Sudan in the context of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
So then I came back and started the PhD and then didn't have the time or the money to continue it, and now here we are. I would LOVE to finish it one day but realistically I don't think it's going to happen; I'm unlikely to get funding and even if I do, the further I get into my 30s the less appealing it is to think about taking three years plus out of earning for something that's unlikely to end up being a career (as I've never seen myself as an academic). Still, I do think I may well do a PhD (likely part-time) in something, someday, so we will see.
Sorry for the MASSIVE LENGTH of this comment!