PhD Diary: Anastasia Dukova, TCD

Contributed by Anastasia Dukova, TCD.

Do you consider your PhD to be a job or a vocation? For me it’s is certainly more of a vocation than a job – I think a little inspiration is needed to begin, and to carry on.

In 20 words or less tell us why you decided to do a PhD? Really to follow untold stories and themes and to present them in a way that is relevant and useful today.

Anastasia’s Diary: Pursuing a PhD has opened doors to me to all the archives and repositories I could find good reason to visit. The prospect of endless records and the sense of excitement that I just might be the very first person to look at them since their compilation still is incredible.

Although I am Russian, and studied history in Canada, I felt a strong draw to study Irish history. I was introduced to Irish history when I studied British history at university in Toronto. I was always drawn to the subjects least familiar to me. Irish history was as strange to me as the sound of Gaelic language, which I made a go at as well, although it is hard to believe that now!

My first year in Dublin lead me realize how much there was to read that was of interest to me, and of relevance to my subject. I spent most of my time ‘catching up’ on Irish historiography. After lots of reading, I came to thinking of my subject in relation to other countries and cities, and so I came up with a comparative model. To ensure I cover as many aspects of my research as widely as I can, I chose to travel to Queensland, Australia (the University of Queensland, Brisbane, where I undertook my research is the photo above)  and so search the archives that are oceans apart, quite literally.