Nicola is currently a PhD student in History at the University of Strathclyde
Tell us a little bit about your background before beginning the course..
I started my university studies in Padua (Padova), Italy, where I got my undergraduate degree in History at the Università degli Studi di Padova. I then moved to London (UCL), where I continued with an MA in History in 2015. During this period, I decided that I would continue with a PhD as the first step in a possible academic career. I started the next year at the University of Reading with Professor Christopher Duggan, who sadly passed away soon after. This event forced me to relocate, and I was lucky enough to find in Professor Philip Cooke and the staff at Strathclyde University a great support network to help me put things back together.
What drew you towards undertaking a research degree?
For me, deciding to begin a PhD was a gradual process. I always conceptualised it as a commitment to an academic career and this held me back as I was aware of the difficulties in pursuing such a career in the humanities. However, working on my dissertation during my undergraduate and MA convinced me that that was the kind of work I wanted to do, as I found the process of constructing a research hypothesis and conducting fieldwork in the archives extremely rewarding. It was, in other words, a process of realising that career plans were secondary to my enjoyment of the subject of study. I must say that my decision was correct.
Tell us about the format of the programme. What is a typical working week like?
As a PhD in history, you spend most of your time either in the library or in the archives. The process of historical research (especially if you don’t use oral sources) makes this a somewhat lonely work as you are the sole member of your ‘research team’. Typically, a week of work includes a lot of reading (either secondary literature or primary sources), note-taking, organising new sources in your personal archive, and writing. I made a habit of writing at least 500 words a day, every day, since very early in my PhD. While not all material produced in this way was useful to advance my research project (or even worth using in a publication), the process helped me in two ways: first, I quickly had at my disposal a large amount of written material, and second it allowed me to improve my writing skills. Writing, like anything else, is a skill, and it must be honed.
While this might seem like a very tedious working process, it must be said that there are moments of incredible joy in the process of historical research. The first is the bridging of the distance between the past and the present, thanks to the use of the documents. The feeling you get, as a researcher, of finally understanding how the people you study were thinking and being able to walk in their shoes. Second, the experience of discovering an exceptional document, something that maybe you were not even looking for but that gives you a confirmation of your theory (or perhaps gives you a different perspective on the problems you are facing). There is a pleasure to discover in the ongoing relationship between you, as a researcher, and your sources. Finally, I would very much say that the process of building your thesis as an argumentative piece of writing is, at times, exhilarating. It is, for the most part, a menial task of constructing multiple argumentative blocks using sources, but when you are finally able to see the thing in its complete (or almost complete) form, it is extremely rewarding. It is not unlike building something with your own hands for the first time, there is an almost infantile joy to it.
Tell us about the research you are conducting..
I am currently involved in a research project at the Istituto Nazionale Ferruccio Parri (Milan). The Istituto is the lead institution in Italy concerning research on the Italian antifascist Resistance before and during the Second World War. The project I am working on, co-founded by the British Monte San Martino Trust, regards the Allies Prisoners of War (PoW) held in Italy during WW2 and their fate after Italy surrendered to the Allies in September 1943. We therefore made a database concerning the prison camps in Italy before the Armistice, and another one recounting some notable escape stories after the Italian surrender. The database is currently available to the public as an online portal and the research project is still ongoing as we are researching more escape stories but also opening a new phase focused on the Italians who aided the escaped PoWs avoid recapture.
What is the research community like at Strathclyde?
I found the research community at Strathclyde to be quite lively and engaged. As I mentioned before, historical research can feel quite lonely. However, perhaps precisely because of this, PhD students in the humanities tend to band together strictly. The interaction with your peers provides you a much-needed psychological support during the research process, but also the chance to debate ideas or research possibilities. People are always eager to ‘compare notes’ even if your area of study might be very distant, chronologically speaking.
What are your future career goals?
I envisioned myself as an academic since essentially my undergraduate, and therefore, my goal is to become one (meaning become a full professor somewhere). Naturally, from a strictly bureaucratic point of view, a PhD degree is required for such a career, but I must also say that it gave me the bedrock of skills required to be a competent researcher.
What advice would you give to someone considering applying for this course?
A PhD in history is not a sprint, it is a marathon. When you go for a climb, the first thing they say to you is not to look at the top, as it is very far away, and you might get frustrated and give up. You must instead focus on your feet, make one step at a time and through this process, you will reach the top. This is especially true, I believe, for the act of writing, which is why it is important to practice every day. Take your time and remember there will be days when you end up trashing all you wrote (and maybe even something you wrote in the past weeks), but this is the normal process of intellectual (and also physical) creation. Slowly but surely, you will reach the top. And, along the way, you will learn a lot of disparate things and skills, which will all contribute to your growth as a researcher, but also as a person. For example, I shamelessly stole the climbing-writing metaphor from an old interview with Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa (and I am fairly sure he stole it too), which I once saw while I was looking for material to use in a side-project of my thesis concerning movies produced during or immediately after the Second World War. It has served me well ever since.