First things first – having a child has been one of the biggest blessings of my life, if not the biggest. And equally, having enrolled in a PhD in Clinical Psychology, here at the University of Edinburgh, is also a big milestone for me. As I came to realise, each …
New Year 2020 (little did I know the isolation that was coming), I spent the best part of a week, a rare week off work, filling in funding applications, stressing about the deadlines and the fact that I needed references from people who were themselves on holiday. I knew I …
Doing our PhD is so much more than just our research. It is a transformation in our way of life. Especially if like me, you have moved abroad to do it. It is a life change – a huge one – and it sometimes feels like a lonely process. Those …
Back in October 2015, I was competing for an elusive space in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. My sport was canoe slalom; a technically, physically, and mentally demanding sport that requires its athletes to navigate a canoe/kayak through a set course of gates, without touching or missing any of them, …
“That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” – Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake The pandemic has changed our lives in many ways and sometimes it feels like it is hard to escape the monotony, work stress and/or boredom that we are still faced with. Even though I miss many things (and even …
When I tell people that I am studying gestational diabetes as part of my PhD, I mostly receive a blank stare or a vague “oh, that’s interesting…” in return. As a disease of pregnancy, gestational diabetes doesn’t affect half of the population and for those it does impact, it usually goes away …
“Access to adequate food is a human right, and belongs to the economic, social and cultural rights” Human rights exist to protect human dignity and they are characterized by principles such as being universal, indivisible, and interlinked. This means that access to food should be a universal experience, which implies that all people all over the world should have access to adequate …
During this lockdown we are staying at home more than we are used to—spending most of our days sitting and lying down, maybe moving from the living room to the bathroom, then perhaps to the kitchen, and then back to the living room! As PhD students, we are trying to work on …
