I have been a little absent from my studies in recent times, and it has been a struggle to return to things. Unfortunately, my personal life has got in the way a bit, and a month-long break somehow became four months.

So what have I been up to?

Firstly, in June, I had a few conferences at Manchester Metropolitan University, in which I had various levels of involvement. The first was The Gothic 1980s, organised by my Director of Studies, Dr. Sorcha Ni Fhlainn. This conference was focused on Gothic texts of the decade, how they reflected the anxieties and traumas of the time, and how those traumas are still relevant in our current decade. I presented a paper entitled ‘”There is no straight when you’re 400 years old: The Liminality of the 1980s Bisexual Vampire”. This paper allowed me to transfer some of the research I have been doing (such as the Taxonomy of Bisexuality) and translate it from my own specialism of postmillennial gothic television to 80s cinema, helping me establish the prehistory and context for my thesis. I was lucky enough to share this panel with the excellent Dr Stacey Abbott of Roehampton University, who taught me on my undergraduate degree and first encouraged my love of spooky academia.

In the same week I attended Detecting Pessimism: Thomas Ligotti and the Weird in the Age of Post-Truth. I don’t work in the Weird myself and I only attended the symposium as a guest as opposed to a speaker. The event was organised by another one of my supervisors, Dr. Xavier Aldana Reyes, and Dr. Rachid M’Rabty, one of my fellow MMU PhDs who recently passed his Viva. One of the highlights of the event was a special screening of Rust Cohle’s monologues from the first season of True Detective, and a very rare interview with Ligotti himself!

My final conference of the academic year was also my biggest: Absent Presences: Shifting the Core and Peripheries of the Gothic Mode. This was the first conference I had ever organised and it was a tremendous learning experience, and also a success! The two day event was organised entirely by a group of MMU PhD researchers, from booking keynotes to selecting papers to organising catering! I designed the programme for the event which was my own personal pride and joy as design is one of my side hobbies. We were lucky enough to have in attendance two keynotes, Professor Fred Botting of Kingston University, who delivered a paper on Frankenstein in Baghdad in an experimental style reminiscent of the Creature himself, and Professor Maisha Wester of Indiana University Bloomington, who delivered an especially fascinating and engaging paper on the EthnoGothic. In addition to chairing my first panel, I had to step in at short notice to deliver a paper myself, when one of our speakers was unfortunately unable to make travel plans. Due to the short notice, I had to deliver a paper I already had prepared, on erotic triangles in NBC’s Hannibal (the paper I delivered at the 2018 Finnish Gender Studies Conference), but context of the presentation was very different. While when I previously presented this paper I was speaking to an audience of gender studies theorists, at this conference I was surrounded by Gothicists who had a different perspective on the material.

Following Absent Presences, which came around the same time of a major deadline for me, I intended to take a short break, as I was taking a holiday to Tenerife. This break… extended, as various things got in the way. In the past few months I:

  • Went on holiday to Playa de las Americas, Tenerife.
  • Travelled to London for Drag World UK.
  • Turned 30 years old.
  • Became an auntie for the first time the day after I turned 30.
  • Had surgery.
  • Tried to get back into more creative exercises such as creative writing and playing music.

I have only this week returned to my studies, but I have spoken with my supervisory team and reconnected with the other MMU PhDs, and I’m now feeling more confident to tackle research again. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and the most important thing I have learnt these past few months is that life sometimes gets in the way, and mental and physical health should always be the priority.