In September 2023, I announced that The Shelbiad would be going on hiatus. I'd just gotten a new postdoctoral research position at the University of Derby, where I would be researching popular feminist responses to Incels and the manosphere which, for those of you who had been following my research journey, it was fair to say was a big shift in focus from myth retellings.
The postdoctoral role was for one year and at the end of it — amazingly, incredibly, unbelievably — I was offered a permanent role as a lecturer. Since September 2024, I have been a Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Derby.
Getting a PhD in English Literature and becoming a lecturer is pretty much all I've wanted, ever since I learned that those were things you could do. I've been told countless times how unlikely it was that I'd get to do a PhD and, once I started my PhD, I was told how impossible the academic career path is. (This isn't me saying "but actually it's easy" because it's not — I have been incredibly lucky, and that has played just as big a role as my hard work in getting me to where I am now.)
All of this to say, with the relative safety of my position (because what humanities academic really feels safe nowadays?), I feel that I have a lot more flexibility and freedom to follow my interests and see where that takes me, research wise.
For example, I was recently awarded some funding to put on a series of Dungeons & Dragons games in collaboration with a project co-ordinator from the disability charity Breakthrough UK (also known as my dear friend and DM, Katy) to explore how TTRPGs can be used to explore neurodivergent personhood. That's right, since last I posted, I have become a massive D&D nerd. Just to add to all the bookishness, incoordination, and queerness that would still get me beaten up on a playground.
More relevantly, I've felt a bit of a hole in my heart where Classics was, when I had to kind of set it aside for my new project. Well, I say I set it aside, I still posted about it on social media and gave numerous talks on my research, including a public lecture at the Erasmus Darwin House, research seminars at the University of Kent and University of Nottingham, and an invited talk as part of the Transatlantic Literary Women Network's monthly series.
But I want more than that. So this summer I am going to be working on a Big Project (to be announced at a later date), and I thought I would take you all along for the ride, sharing snippets of research, reflections on the latest developments in the field, and rambling diary entries like this one.
To those of you who have supported The Shelbiad before: thank you for coming back!
To those of you who are new here: hi, I'm Shelby, a pseudo-classicist, and I hope you'll stick around.
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