21 - Not in this alone: being supported to break down barriers to PhD success

Summary

My PhD examined Black British and Black Caribbean women's experiences of National Health Service (NHS) work- based education and its impact on their professional identities. I had two White female supervisors; they were very supportive of my intention to break from the conventions of what a PhD thesis should look like when using performative autoethnography to present the women as characters in fictional settings. A non-conventional approach was important for me as it meant that my ‘academic’ work would be accessible to both academics and non- academics, as well as contribute to the discourses on systemic inequities. Since completion in 2017, a scene of the autoethnography has been screened at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre; another scene has been produced as a podcast, which has been used on radio and in presentations nationally for International Women's Day 2020.

I would like to share with prospective students lessons on making academic work accessible to non- academic research participants and our wider communities.

I was born in Birmingham in the UK in the 1960s. My father, who had left school aged 11 following the death of his father in the 1940s, has a brilliant mind and guided me into education as a profession. After my O- levels, I pursued a further education teacher's certificate course, followed by a range of subject specialist stand- alone higher education modules. I studied part time for over a decade completing my Bachelor of Arts (BA) Honours and Master of Arts (MA). One professor who marked my MA dissertation ended her assessment with the following: ‘Must publish. Consider pursuing a PhD.’

I did not know what a PhD was. Following exploration, I was amused that she would make such a suggestion. That was certainly not part of my plan. I felt that the personal and institutional barriers to me undertaking a PhD would be: (1) finances and support; (2) my dislike of PhD theses as dense volumes of work inaccessible to non- academics.