Having intended to blog throughout the PhD journey and made three unsuccessful beginnings, I seem to have been looking for a suitable point in time to try again. I anticipated that the PhD journey would feel like it had ended after the viva, but it didn’t. Then perhaps after resubmitting after minor corrections four weeks later, or maybe after receiving the confirmation letter. Maybe I’ll feel it after a graduation ceremony in December, but I doubt it. As I attend my first international conference next week, and start a new role as Lecturer in Digital Technologies, Communication and Education at the University of Manchester, in many ways now feels like the real beginning of the PhD journey and everything that went before was just the groundwork. Not an end or a beginning but a joining of a circle perhaps. I like circles.

I walked into the Kilburn building on our campus today to reconnect with some former colleagues in the School of Computer Science, and the sense of ‘coming full circle’ was strong, as I joined the university working there as a Learning Technologist just over ten years ago.

The next academic year will be one of creating new circles and connecting these with old. I hope to use this blog to reflect on the experience and make sense of journeys through my transdisciplinary landscape (I expect to use the journey metaphor more heavily even than the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing presenters). I’m really excited to be developing a module in digital making pedagogy for the MIE (Manchester Institute of Education) MA DTCE, to the opportunity for more exploration in how we learn through making, to connecting with colleagues in MIE, and to working again with friends and colleagues in Digital Biology, Computing At School and other education and digital innovation organisations across Manchester. I deliberately fell off this community’s radar for a couple of years in order to finish the PhD process, and whether that has ended or begun, I’m going to enjoy circling back in to the community now.