Spade & the Grave

death and burial through an archaeological lens

Category Archives: #PhDlife

Posts about grad school and working on projects related to my school life.


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My PhD Defense: August 14th, 2024

This is just a short blog post to let all my readers know, in case you haven’t seen it on my social media yet, that on Wed, August 14th, I successfully defended my PhD Dissertation. Pass with minor corrections!

Let me reintroduce myself to you all, I’m Dr. Robyn Lacy, PhD in Archaeology!

Popped a bottle of Veuve Clicquot to celebrate right after my defence was over!

Of course, this was just the defence and I do have some corrections to make before officially submitting to my university for graduation, but when you pass your defence they call you ‘Doctor’ right away, so I’m rolling with it. I’m partway through the corrections at the moment, and if all goes well, I’ll get to convocate in October this year with my husband, parents, and best friend in the audience!

I wanted to write this short blog post to sort of go over the defence process (defense? writing it either way looks wrong at this point), now that I’m on the other side and it doesn’t look like quite as huge and scary of a monster. And because I’ve been away from my computer for a bit now and a blog post is a good way to get back into the writing mindset.

I completed the first draft of my dissertation in pieces, submitting each chapter to my supervisors as I went as early as February 2023. They sent them back with edits as I went as well, and I made changes. The full second draft was completed before Christmas 2023 I believe, and I sent it off for more edits before finishing my Hexfoil book edits and sending that manuscript back to my publisher as well. More edits came for the dissertation in the new year from my two supervisors (bless them for reading my behemoth of a dissertation so many times), and I got all those changes and tweeks done. Then we sent it off to my external supervisory committee member, and once their comments were back and changes were made, I officially submitted my dissertation for examination in May 2024. Date unknown, everything is a blue and my brain may have leaked out of my ears at this point.

In June I indexed my hexfoil book and approved copy edits, while waiting for examiners to be lined up, given my dissertation, and for a defence date to be set by the School of Graduate Studies. I’d heard horror stories about students having to organize their own defences, so I’m really glad that at this point, it was all out of my hands! Then I went on holiday with my husband and my parents around Shetland, Orkney, and the Highlands of Scotland for three weeks (blog posts to come!).

After we got back from holiday, there were a scant 1.5 weeks to go over my presentation and review my dissertation before it was time to defend! I rehearsed my presentation once a day, not on the weekend, leading up to my defence, and tried to make sure I was getting lots of good food and lots of sleep in the days leading up. I’m not someone who can cram work into the last minute, so I had my presentation 99% done before we left for Scotland, so I wouldn’t be stressing about it too much on our holiday.

I didn’t know who my examiners were going into the defence. Apparently some places they tell you that beforehand, but at MUNL it’s *meant* to be a secret. I was really excited to see some familiar faces examining my work, scholars’ whose work I really admire, which made me less nervous immediately. I was also so fortunate to have a bunch of friends and family who took time out of their day to watch my defence, and that was so special. I felt really supported, thank you everyone!! I signed onto my Webex defence at 1pm, and my presentation wouldn’t share! Great start! I could feel my eyes prickling a little with the frustration, and one of my examiners stepped in to suggest I log off, double check any settings, and log in again. That was a good chance to take a few deep breaths, and when I logged in again it was working fine! Phew.

Post defence! Hurray!

My presentation was about 25 minutes (it had to be under 30), and then the examiners each got time to ask me questions in two rounds, with a 15 minute break between them where I ran to the washroom and then paced around my house nervously. The entire thing took 2.5 hrs, and my cats were not impressed to be locked out of the office. Guests were all kicked off before the deliberation, and I was put into a breakout room to wait. I had time to stand up and leave the room for about a minute, and then they called me back and told me “Well, that was a short deliberation! Congratulations, Dr. Lacy!”

There was a bunch of grinning, lots of thank yous, we took a screenshot with the examination committee which I’d love to get set to me by whomever took it, and then it was over! The second I exited the meeting, I burst into tears! What a ridiculously huge milestone, and two weeks later as I’m writing this, it still doesn’t really feel real! I’m in the middle of my minor revisions at the moment, and once those are finished I’ll be able to apply for convocation this fall, but the huge step is really the defence.

The best advice I got before my defence was the same as my comps, once you are in that room, you’re the expert on your topic and for the most part the questions people are going to ask you are out of interest. They are not trying to trip you up or humiliate you. I got a fair amount of questions about my literal writing style which I wasn’t expected at all, but overall the questions were really interesting, and I took a bunch of notes to apply to my final revisions now that everything is finished. It was overall less stressful than I was expecting, while also being the most stressful thing at the same time, but now it’s done!

#PhDone!


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PhD Updates: Writing Process & Next Steps

Hello friends, apparently it has been a little while since I did a blog post! It’s been quite a busy summer, so I’ll do my best to fill you in. Last post I talked about the presentation I gave in New Perlican at the end of May, about my fieldwork and that portion of my dissertation research to the community, and we had a lovely time! Since then it has been a whorl wind of activity! My brother and sibling-in-law visited, my husband’s parents came out to visit, my parents were here visiting, and between everyone in our families being in the house, we did a lot of fieldwork for Black Cat, and even managed to squeeze in a little camping trip to Terra Nova National Park with some of our friends, which was a lovely break! Also of course, there was a lot of writing happening in there too, which is mostly what I’d like to chat about today.

Lovely fall pumpkins at Lester’s Farmers Market (for ambience) (photo by author 2023).
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Burial Ground Surveying in Historic New Perlican: Public Talk & Maps

Hi friends, we’re back! This past Saturday we went out to New Perlican so I could give a little presentation to the community on my research in their burial grounds! It’s important for public archaeology that you actually tell the community you worked in about your research, so I was very excited to show off the maps and conclusions about my fieldwork surveys from the past 2 summers. I put together a little presentation showing the maps of the sides as well as several gravestone examples from each site to show everyone, and was able to tell them that we are going to be back in September to attempt GPR survey around St. Mark’s Cemetery to try and location the first Anglican church that was built in New Perlican. Stay tuned for that!

The purpose of my fieldwork and studying of these burial spaces was to take a closer look at the development of the burial landscape within a singular community, and how it has grown and evolved over the years, reflecting the community’s relationship with these spaces and mortality as a whole. We’ll also see some larger trends in burial spaces organization that are reflections of what we see in the rest of North America in the late 18th and 19th centuries. I also wanted to map these sites for the community, so that they would have a better record of gravestone location and site boundaries for future research and development.

View of New Perlican from Bloody Point (photo by author 2023)
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Dissertation Writing Updates: April 2023

We’re nearly through April suddenly, friends, and as I look out my office window at the snow drifts covering the old wooden boats in my neighbour’s backyard, which is slowly melting away, I decided to do a little update on how my dissertation writing is going! Lets start with a summary of what I’ve been up to, and then how I’ve been structuring my work and project going forward!

I think this picture encapsulates how excited I was in Boston during my research trip.

My blog has been all conference travel and research trips recently, and I feel like it’s been a very hectic last few months. In September 2022, we attended the Death & Culture IV conference in York (& went on our belated honeymoon), then in October I visited Halifax, Nova Scotia, to do some research at the provincial archives and so a site visit out in Annapolis Royal where I had a great meeting with Parks Canada and Mapannapolis staff! In November, I was doing research at home, and then we travelled to Arizona to visit my inlaws and their new house, and we got to see a few very interesting 19th-century burial grounds in the desert! We didn’t go anywhere in December, but I was frantically finishing my 2nd book manuscript which is now with my editor, and resting over the holidays. In the first week of January, we were packed back up and off to Lisbon, Portugal, for the Society for Historical Archaeology’s annual conference and a few days of exploring post-conference! Portugal was amazing, Ian and I both want to go back asap.

Finally, I had a second research trip in February to Boston, Massachussets and the Hudson River Valley, New York! I went to the Boston Public Library’s Special Collections which was just an amazing experience (both for research and for seeing cool archives), and the Mass Historical Society’s archives while in the city, then site visits to Sleepy Hollow and Albany, NY, as well as a meeting with the archaeology staff at the New York State Museum in Albany. Travel is done for the next little bit, and I’m pretty excited to not be in the Toronto airport for a few months!

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Post-Medieval Coffin Depictions at St. Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney

A watercolour I did of the cathedral (2022)

Last September 2022, My husband Ian and I went on our very-belated honeymoon to Edinburgh and the Orkney Islands. One of the sites that we visited that we were totally in awe of was St. Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, the largest town on Mainland Orkney. The original cathedral was constructed in the 12th century, when the islands were under Norse rule, and was named for Magnus Erlendsson, Earl of Orkney. It was constructed in the Romanesque style with examples of Norman architecture as well, and was built with local red sandstone from Kirkwall and yellow sandstone from the island of Eday (where the memoir ‘Close to Where the Heart Gives Out’ is set. Here is an interview with the author!).

We had the chance to visit the cathedral twice, and I still don’t think we saw everything! There were amazing examples of late and post-medieval funerary sculpture throughout the church, with beautiful memento mori designs throughout. On our second visit, I noticed that some of the ledgers that had been set upright against the walls of the church had coffins as part of the designs, and that not all of the coffin styles were the same. I pulled out my sketchbook and raced around the cathedral as it was about to close, quickly writing down the dates and coffin styles on all the ledgers that had one, to conduct a quick survey on coffin styles depicted in 17th-century Orkney funerary monuments!

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PhD Research Trip 2: Site Visits to Sleepy Hollow, Kingston, & Albany, New York

I know you’ve all been on the edge of your seats, waiting for the site visit portion of my research trip blogs, right? Right?? Well don’t you worry at all, I’ve got all that fieldwork goodness for you here! (is this a weird way to start a research blog? haha)

The second half of my research trip consisted of site visits to three of ‘my’ Dutch settlements that I’m looking at for the landscape analysis portion of my dissertation research. Those sites are the infamous Sleepy Hollow, NY, as well as the town of Kingston, and Albany, NY. You might be familiar with Albany from the Broadway Hamilton, as the city where Philip Schuyler and the Schuyler sisters lived (coincidently we did go see Hamilton live in Boston, and it was amazing, 100/10), and you likely already know a little bit about Sleepy Hollow, so lets get into what I was doing there, and what I’m looking at for these sites!

Old Dutch Reformed Church, Sleepy Hollow, NY (photo by author 2023)
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PhD Research Trip 2: Boston Public Library’s Special Collections & the Massachusetts Historical Society

The PhD research is rolling along, dear reader! It has its ups and downs, and I’m currently both researching some parts while writing others that are further along the research pipeline, and I’m having a pretty good time with it so far! Writing took a pause at the beginning of February so I could take my second research trip to New England and New York State, in order to conduct several site visits of Dutch burial grounds in the Hudson River Valley, as well as the archives in Boston. So far I’ve found some very interesting materials, and would love to share a little about the process with you today!

Boston Public Library, original entrance (photo by author 2023)
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SHA 2023 Conference, Lisbon, Portugal

It’s time for another travel blog, coming to you live from…my home office where I am writing this very jetlagged, because we got home at 2am yesterday after 27 hrs of travelling! This year, the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA) hosted their annual general meeting and conference in Lisbon, and over 900 archaeologists descended on the city to attend the event. This conference was meant to be held in Jan 2021 originally, but for some weird reason that I couldn’t possibly remember, they had to push it forward by two years, and thankfully were able to go ahead with Lisbon 2023 instead! So here we are, drinking vinho verde and talking about archaeology in a gorgeous city of colourful tiles and Moorish castle ruins.

The conference ran from January 4-7, 2023 and was hosted at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. We were able to volunteer as grad students this year to help with registration and monitoring sessions in exchange for not being charged the registration fee for the conference, which is a great initiative that the SHA always has at their conferences. We spent about 8 hrs each (me and my husband, Ian), volunteering over two of the conference days, and attended a load of talks and some events as well! This is going to be a lot of conference stuff, as well as a lot of talking about food and wine, as you do.

Overlooking the city and river from a viewpoint in Alfama, Lisbon (photo by author)
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PhD Research Trip: Halifax & Annapolis Royal, NS

Happy November, readers! It’s been a hectic last few weeks in our house, and I think I’ve spent just as much time living out of a suitcase this fall as I have at home… still not unpacking my suitcase. Whoops. Early in October, I travelled to Nova Scotia for a week for my PhD research. I visited the Nova Scotia Archives, the Old Burial Ground, the Nova Scotia Museums offsite storage, and travelled out to Annapolis Royal to visit the Garrison Burying Ground and meet with Parks Canada and Mapannapolis staff in order to discuss the history of the site. It was a really amazing trip, and I got to stay with my dear friends in Dartmouth as well, which is just a research trip bonus!

Lets go!

Fort Anne, Annapolis Royal, from the site of the church looking towards the centre of the site over the earthworks (photo by author 2022).
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Conference Trip: Death & Culture IV, York, UK

There is no such thing as a posting schedule when you’re doing your PhD and running a business part time, and writing a book! I do these things to myself, and it’s great! We have just returned from a trip to the UK, where I presented some of my ongoing research at the Death & Culture IV conference, held at the York St. John Campus in the heart of York. York is definitely one of my favourite cities in the UK that I’ve gotten the chance to spend time in, so returning this fall to meet up with friends and talk about research was a huge treat! The rest of the trip was our honeymoon (belated by covid for 2 years, whoops), and I’ll do a separate post about the death-related things we saw on that trip later on! It was a very eventful trip overall, so lets get into it!

The conference, held every 2 years, was put on by the Death & Culture Network (DaCNet) through the University of York, describes itself as promoting “the continuing engagement with the study of death, and acts as a forum for networking and the sharing of multidisciplinary death scholarship”. I presented my ongoing research on the burial grounds of New Perlican, the mapping that has been carried out through our surveys, and what that can tell us about the burial landscape of the community.

View of Old Town, Edinburgh, Scotland (photo by author 2022)
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