Pue's Occurrences

By Lisa Marie Griffith

When we started Pue’s two years ago we were all based in Trinity and saw each other, if not every day, then every other day. Cosseted in the post graduate community within the School of Histories and Humanities it was sometimes difficult to appreciate that research and academia really can be a lonely place. In the last two years I have moved on to a far smaller humanities department, with just one other historian (a medievalist), outside of Dublin. In fact we have pretty much all moved on to a different institution or even city. What I have begun to appreciate most about blogging for Pue’s is how it brings people who are far away, but who have a common interest, together on a regular basis, it’s certainly the most important thing I take from Pue’s! Whether it is through our editorial meetings, our blogging symposiums or through the posts themselves I get to meet, engage and learn.

Within academia there are a number of issues which I have often felt were not discussed openly, and in particular (or perhaps because of the stage that I am at myself) these seem to relate to early career issues. Read more

By Kevin O’Sullivan

Ever wondered what everyone is actually reading on Pue’s? If you’re a stat-addict like me, then the answer is probably yes. If you haven’t, then you probably live a healthier, more carefree life, but at least you might find something in this list that you might have missed. Here, in order of their publication, are the fifteen most-read pieces that have been posted on Pue’s over the past two years. (You’ll notice that most of them are from 2009 and 2010 and have therefore had more time to accumulate hits. It would be more accurate, of course, to come up with some way of averaging the views per day or something entirely more elaborate, but I don’t have the time for that, so this will have do…)

A few of my favourites, 3 July 2009
Tina introduces us to the best in eighteenth-century fiction.

Not quite Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, 20 July 2009
Lisa discovers Max Fleischer’s animated classic.

How to turn your PhD into a book: Part 1, prepare a book proposal, 17 September 2009
The first in Juliana’s guide to getting your PhD published.  Read More

By Kevin O’Sullivan

It’s a funny thing this, sitting down to reflect on a life with Pue’s. Being an historian, two years doesn’t really seem that long. But then we didn’t really know what to expect when we started out twenty-four months ago, scribbling ideas on a notepad, wondering what template and what colours to use, noting what we did and didn’t like in a website, and going through the arduous process of finding a suitable banner image. (Note to Juliana, Lisa and the people we dragged in with a loaded request for their opinion: remember the hours we spent discussing this?) Don’t get me wrong, we had a feeling the blog was a good idea – we’d have been fools to start it if we didn’t. And we reckoned that we might get one or two of you to drop in and say hello from time to time (you did, and thanks). But we had no idea how long it would last. Or what form it would take if it did. Or how you would respond to it.

When we started out just over two years ago – we had a month of what you might call foostering about (we’d call it creative freedom) before we hit the button and went ‘live’ – we came with the idea of doing something different, something that would constantly evolve rather than remain static. Read More

By Juliana Adelman

It’s hard to believe that this little project we started is now two years old.  In celebration we thought we would share a view from ‘behind the scenes’.  Throughout the next few weeks we will each post on our experience of writing for Pue’s and at the end of the month we are going to give a list of the most read Pue’s posts and the strangest search terms that have brought people to the site.  We hope you enjoy it!

I should start by admitting that I have repeatedly wondered if I should keep doing this blog at all or simply pass the baton to a more willing and able newbie.  Do I really have anything interesting to say?  Should I be devoting my precious ‘spare’ time to writing 600 words on why a horse is not a car (or soon to come: how cattle plague is like cholera! I bet you can hardly wait)?  Then I remember that this blog at least serves the purpose of keeping my dad informed of what I do and I probably owe him at least that after the investment he made in my education.  Aside from filial responsibility, however, I get a lot out of writing for Pue’s. Read more