Today has been quite busy. I spent the morning, for the first time, researching in the British Library. Yesterday I had stopped by to pick up my reader’s card, which was incredibly easy to do. In typical anxious fashion, I had brought five forms of ID, but they only needed two. After gently laughing at my over-preparedness, I was issued my card. Online, I put in the texts I wanted to look at and started this morning off in the reading room.
Because this is my first attempt at serious, sustained research, I was a bit nervous. What if I sneezed too loudly? What if I was over- or under-dressed? Fortunately, I had a great experience today. The staff was incredibly kind, the other readers studious but polite, and I was able to get a lot of work done.
I then went over to King’s and met with Neil Vickers for lunch. Dr. Vickers is in the medical humanities cohort at KCL and we got the chance to chat about my research, connecting UNC scholars with KCL faculty and graduate students, and, in particular, discussed what work Dr. Vickers’s own students are conducting. Overall, it was a great conversation and I now have a more solid sense of what kind of research those in the medical humanities here do.
I rounded off the afternoon by attending a talk given by Dr. Barbara Osimani. I’ll admit that at first I got lost and had to ask about ten different people how to find the seminar room. Once there, though, I learned about current epistemic and logical problems in pharmaceutical testing.
Now I’m back at the British Library reading up on some secondary criticism. Later tonight I’m catching a performance of Wicked!
Katie Walker at UNC and KCL 