First six weeks

Eastbourne is supposed to be on the “sunshine coast”, one of the sunniest places in Britain. Haven’t seen much of it since I’ve been here. Rain and more rain with one or two days of sun. But on the positive side, I’m about 2 minutes walk from the sea, and I get to do a morning run along it most days. The sea looks different every day, and I can see the white chalk cliffs of beachy head looming in the distance. The smooth rolling hills of the south downs go past the window of the train every day on the way to university, a place of rare biodiversity, much of which has unfortunately been lost, but there are still a few places where it clings on. I have an excellent local nature book by anti-capitalist nature-lover Dave Bangs, which will be of great use in exploring the local area. In my flat, there are still a few boxes about, but we now have most of the furniture that we need in. We have also won the battle against mould for now, although we must be vigilant against further attacks on our bedside tables.

I started a PhD about six weeks ago. I don’t know what I’m doing, but apparently that’s fine, nobody knows what they are doing after six weeks, and most people have even less idea when they are a year or two in. Somehow I wrote down some ideas and submitted them as a “plan”, a plan which everyone says will change hundreds of times over the course of the research. In the shared office space, where there are 16 other PhD students, I hear someone say “ah, I know what my PhD is about now,” about once a week, and its usually the same person. It’s great to be in an office with so many other people who are new to research too. The campus is good, based in the countryside, and small enough to be a community, while the transport links are excellent. The only disappointment is the student bar which closes at 9pm! The people in my office are friendly and I have made a few friends. However it will take time until I get to know people better and I miss my close friends from Manchester that I have known well for years. I look forward to a few Manchester friends visiting!

The PhD title is currently about rewilding social policy. However, my original proposal was pretty out there, and I was surprised that they accepted my proposal. As such, I didn’t really expect to be held to delivering policy stuff when I started. However, one of my supervisors who is a conservationist is still keen on influencing policy. And I have been feeling awkward about the meeting. I would probably prefer to research some radical stuff that nobody in policy would go near (unless Corbyn power soon sweeps the country in an unstoppable wave). After going to the Historical Materialism conference, I decided I absolutely had to get more Marx in. So I put in part about process of commodifying nature, as I can look at how the value of rewilding sites is measured in financial terms and how this alters our relationship to it. (Once an ecosystem is measured finanically, how are the ecosystem functions and complexities obscured by a price? does a forest become an investment instead of, well, a forest?) I’m not sure how the supervisor will take this, perhaps not so well! But I’ll have to argue its relevance. Perhaps to influence policy and other conservationists, the Marxist concepts will have to be hidden, so that unless you know Marx’s work then you’d not realise where the ideas come from…