This post is part of our Research Initiation Scheme for 2020-2021.

On Wednesday 14^th April 2021, I had the pleasure of interviewing Queen’s PhD student in Spanish, Ciaran Harty. Ciaran completed his undergraduate degree in French and Spanish at QUB and then proceeded to do an MRes on the Representation of Madrid in the Artículos de Costumbre by the 19^th century Spanish writer, Mariano José de Larra. Whilst undertaking a PhD was not initially on the cards, Ciaran discovered a true passion for this particular area of studies, and so, in 2018 he began his PhD with the QUB Spanish department. The current working title of his thesis is: Precursors of Costumbrismo: The creation of a genre at the end of Spanish Enlightenment.

Ciaran described the Masters as a “stepping-stone” to the PhD, because although there are many similarities, the PhD unsurprisingly involves considerably more reading, researching and writing. I was particularly interested in finding out how his writing style had changed over time. Many undergraduate students believe the common misconception that in order to be successful in your degree, you must produce work with a high-brow, overly-academic style of writing. He assured me that while feeling this pressure was normal, and indeed something that he had experienced too, it was ultimately unnecessary. The most important thing is finding your own writing style and this is something that the PhD has allowed him to do. Through extensive reading, constructive feedback from peers and supervisors and consistently practising writing, he found that he was able to develop his own style and allow it to flow more naturally. This made the process more enjoyable for him and the content more digestible for his readers.