The whole doctor title can be a bit confusing. My dad was telling me recently that when he got his PhD my grandma was so excited that she was telling everybody who would listen when they were in a supermarket together. Apparently, she mentioned it to the woman on the checkout who immediately began complaining to my dad about her terrible piles!

I think that's probably something I could do with out.

Ahhhhh - I'm interested in most things Victorian, but I guess I focus mainly on late nineteenth century popular culture. Anything sensational, spectacular, sordid, or scandalous and its likely to be right up my street!

I'm writing a dissertation at the moment exploring the figure of the glamorous criminal in pop culture - train robbers, jewel thieves, swindlers, swell-mobsmen, as well as older figures like highwaymen, smugglers, pirates, etc. My PhD, on the other hand, is going to explore the way in which the Victorians/Edwardians imagined America in the half century before Hollywood. I'm desperate to get on with it!

What sort of area have you drifted into? If you haven't seen it, the VICTORIA mailing list is great to subscribe to if you want to make contact with more passionate Victorianists or spy on what they're all doing in case they steal your ideas.
https://listserv.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/wa-iub.exe?A0=VICTORIA

Hah - I know exactly what you mean about trying to explain research to people who aren't involved in academia. I'm hopeful that my project is going to be a significant and original piece of 19th century cultural history, but I get the feeling that most people think I'd be more useful emptying bins. It was so nice doing an MA in Victorian Studies where everybody was as madly passionate about Victorian culture as I was. Everybody else just gives me very blank expressions whenever I mention it.

It doesn't help that a lot of my friends are science people rather than arts, and that the rest of them didn't do history beyond the Hitler snore-fest that was GSCE and A Level. Given that most people don't care about, understand, or ever see the benefits of our research, its amazing really that we get any kind of public funding at all!

The impression I've got from the AHRC in the last couple of years is that they want to encourage as many interdisciplinary projects as possible, it seems to be a bit of a buzzword at the moment. So, doing something that stretches the disciplinary/panel boundaries is probably a good thing in terms of getting their attention. My project has been sent to panel 4 history, but it could easily have ended up going to American Studies instead.

I instructed the AHRC to deliver to my parents house rather than my uni address thinking I'd be home all summer, but it turns out that I'm heading back to uni today. I'm no longer going to be obsessing about the post, but every time the phone rings I'm going to get the shivers!

It looks like letters of all kinds are still fairly thin on the ground. Am I right in thinking that we haven't heard anything at all from panel 4 yet? Hope you all get some news soon.

That should be pretty comfortable. I got 8k from the AHRC this year for my MA and, whilst living with my fiancé has reduced some costs, I had more than enough to get by. If I hadn't bought a lot of new things (pc, tv, games, sky, antique books, etc) then I'd probably have a fair bit saved up now.

A lot of things depend on your accommodation; we pay £550 pm between us for a 1 bed flat in Manchester, and the electric/gas bill seems to hover between £40 and £80 pm, food I'm not so certain of. Unless you live on lobsters and caviare, with 13k you should be able to live comfortably and have enough spare cash for a few luxuries.

Wow - congratulations! Nice to finally hear some good news come through. The envelope situation is a rather devious development. Perhaps they'll start sending out FLoDs as well, just to mix things up a little; rejection letters packed with a glossy booklet recommending alternate careers....

If they want to cut costs, you would have thought they might move away from snail mail and just do it all online. Interestingly (or not) the royal mail describes 2nd class delivery as "for when time isn't important." WHAT?!

Yeah - I doubt that they'll tell you much at all over the phone. I know what you mean regarding the lost letter nightmare though. I went through a long no-postcard-panic last year worrying that my application or my results letter had been lost or (more bizarrely) stolen. Its so easy to assume the worst once you submit the form and have to trust a series of different people to pass a few bits of paper around the country.

Anyway, should the worst happen I don't think they're all quite as officious and cold hearted as they sometimes seem from our end; they may well ring you to ask what's going on if you haven't replied to an offer. I got a call from them earlier in the year because the DOB on my form was wrong, they seemed strangely human!

Sorry to hear about your husbands result pamplemousse, I hope you get some better news soon. I know we're only drawing upon a small pool of people on these forums, but has anybody anywhere had a FLoJ yet? Is no news, good news?

Haha - hooray for favouritism, bring on the bribes/blackmail!

For some reason the post here doesn't arrive until late morning/early afternoon. I'm sleeping in to make it go faster. Nothing yet :(

I've applied to panel 4 for PhD funding at Manchester and I'm getting increasingly nervous now we've hit August. It's nice to find a place where we can all worry together rather than sitting alone under our kitchen tables, rocking back and forth, anxiously waiting for the postman to come and put us out of our misery.

I got funded last year for my MA and I think I heard from them around the 20th of August - perhaps a little later. What a torturous month. Why does it take so long?! I just wish they would get on with it; so many people are in limbo until they find out. Two years in a row now I've been unable to move out of my flat into somewhere nicer because I have to renew my years contract in July and I don't know if I'll have any income until August.

Anyway, best of luck to everybody. If I hear anything from panel 4 I'll let you all know!