Please welcome to the fireside Dr. Nicole Cochrane (@tinyhistorian), an expert on the histories of art, archaeology, and occasionally Napoleon Bonaparte. In anticipation of the upcoming Napoleon biopic (directed by Ridley Scott and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby), Nicole gives us a brief introduction as to who Napoleon was, what he did,…

Please welcome to the fireside Eleanor Haward, a composer and teacher currently conducting her PhD in Music Composition at the University of Aberdeen. Eleanor's thesis looks at the connections between words and harmony in music, considering whether or not music has an "emotional grammar." 🎶 We chat all things music, but also the importance of culti…

Please welcome to the fireside Brittany (Bee) Eldridge (@BEldridg39), a doctoral candidate studying at University College London! Join us as we chat about the depictions of stepmothers in Disney's expansive corpus. 📽️ Bee breaks down the representations of the "other" mother in three core texts - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, and Tan…

Please welcome to the fireside Hugh Carter (@Hugh_Carter_), a PhD student examining the biogeography of starfish at University College London. He is also the curator of echinoderms at the Natural History Museum London - and so was ready to chat all things starfish-adjacent (e.g., google the brittle star, for a real shock!). We discussed the ups and…

Please welcome to the fireside James Jefferies (@jamesjhistory), a PhD researcher studying at the University of Essex. James discusses his ongoing doctoral project, which focuses on the Second World War "in the air," as depicted by popular culture sources. From video games where you get to play an RAF pilot, to smash-hit films like Dunkirk or the B…

Please welcome to the fireside B. Mackenzie Barnett, a PhD student in Clinical Psychology at Lakehead University, Canada. On today's episode, we talk about how mindfulness-meditation training can be used as a tool to combat systemic racism in the Canadian healthcare system. So take a deep breath and dive in with us as we discuss hope, intentionalit…

Who doesn't want to give pizza a chance? Please give Alex Hughes (@MrAlexHughes) a warm welcome to the fireside! Alex recently finished his PhD from York University, where he explored the topic of pizza-consuming habits in Canada and the US for his doctoral dissertation. We discuss how using the lens of pizza can tell the fascinating story regardin…

Please welcome to the fireside Tasha Kitcher (@tasha_kitcher), a PhD student at Loughborough University who is researching the electrophone: a Victorian-era streaming device. Tasha talks us through what this nineteenth-century invention promised, who it was targeted towards, and hypothesises on some reasons it didn't make the grade. She also shares…

For the second episode of The Fireside Thesis, Claudia Bruhn talks about her ongoing postdoctoral research on the topic of Arctic Environmental Microbiology. Claudia discusses the elegance of the scientific method, the advantages and disadvantages of fieldwork, and how to inject creativity into academic research! She also chats about what it's like…

Welcome to the inaugural episode of The Fireside Thesis, a cozy podcast about emerging work in the postgraduate community. Join me as I chat with my dear friend Fiona Young about her ongoing doctoral research on the subject of natural disaster narratives. Fiona is a PhD researcher in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth Universit…

Welcome to the Fireside Thesis, a cozy podcast about emerging work in the postgraduate community. I'm Clare Church, a PhD history student living in the UK. Join me as I chat with other early-career researchers about their fascinating works in progress. Over the course of this first season, I’ll speak with scholars from around the world about their …