Getting the ARC blues

After you finish your Ph.D., the most common question people ask is: what are you going to do now?

My answer for the last twelve months or so has been some variation on sleep, get smashed, learn to breath again, stop worrying about daily word counts, try to publish a couple of articles out of the thesis, find some way of generating income, and preparing an application for a post-doctoral project.  That last one is the standard career track for someone in my position.

The problem is which project to pursue.  I've got three in mind at the moment:

A History of the AMEB

Well, this one is a blindingly obvious follow-on from the thesis...

Professional Paradigms of Music in Australia

More or less a history of the professionalisation of musicians in Australia.  Again, another follow-on from the thesis...

Here's a slightly more off-centre idea:

From Effigies to PowerPoint: Media and Bereavement

This one proceeds from my observation of funerals in churches and other venues.  It is now standard practice for civil celebrant-led funerals to incorporate a slideshow of happy snaps as an integral part of the public service.  This was once considered to be more appropriate to the wake, and aspects of this public/private division of events and activities at funerals are in the process of change in response to new conditions.  These conditions include technologies facilitating the use of media elements in funerals, structural freedom in shaping the service, and changing perspectives on the meaning and significance of the death of a loved one.  What intrigues me about slideshows of personal photographs at funerals is how this might relate to longer traditions of representing the dead as part of funeral rites.


The downside of how I've proceeded over the last year is that I've unplugged from a few networks I was in.  This isn't difficult to fix -- it's just a matter of making time to gate-crash the odd seminar or two!  The advantage is that I've been able to read more widely and develop some paths for interdisciplinary work.  Given that this is meant to be the next big thing in academic life, it's no bad thing.

But, oh how tedious is the paperwork....