PhD title: Non-citizen commemoration in fifth- and fourth-century BC Attica
Resource booklet 'Cemetery and Society in Ancient Athens, Greece' available on request: k.borrill@sheffield.ac.uk
"I first heard about the Brilliant Club via an email that was circulated towards the end of the third year of my PhD. After completing the Brilliant Club’s assessment in the autumn semester of my fourth year, I started my first placement in January 2018 and am now on my fourth and fifth placements concurrently. The Brilliant Club is a great way to develop and share your research while gaining teaching experience, all of which the Brilliant Club offer training and continuing support to help you do. As a PhD tutor you create a handbook that delivers your research as a short course over seven tutorials, the first of which is hosted at a university. This launch trip is a great way for students to see what universities look and feel like but it is also great for tutors to visit other universities and meet new people.
My PhD is in classical archaeology so I developed a course entitled ‘cemetery and society in ancient Athens,’ which I am delivering to GCSE students for the third time and AS level students for the first time this term, which I am particularly excited about as I will be able to get a bit more in-depth into my research with the older students, but also experience of designing a course for and teaching AS level students can be used on an associate fellow of the HEA application. So that’s one specific way that the Brilliant Club helps PhD tutors with professional development. I have also taught year 7 and 8 students, but when teaching students below GCSE level you deliver a course predesigned by the Brilliant Club, in my case a course on the French Revolution. Whether delivering your own course or a predesigned course, students complete an essay (length dependent on the age of the students). Seeing how much the students have learnt, both about the subject and in terms of new or improved academic skills, is one of the most rewarding parts of the programme, especially when you go into school for the last time on the seventh tutorial to give them their marks and their faces light up when they see what they have achieved.
Brilliant Club, then, is a rare opportunity for PhD students to teach their own research during their PhD. My only regret is that I didn’t find out about the programme sooner because it has been such an enjoyable and rewarding part of my PhD and continues to be so even now I have submitted my thesis and passed my viva. While my aim has been to gain a university position in my own field, I feel I would also be happy in an outreach teaching or outreach facilitating role, and that new self-knowledge and broadening of career options is down to my experience with the Brilliant Club."