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PhD Book Club

The best reads about PhD life. Meets twice each semester.

Photograph of book shelves in a library filled with lots of different coloured books

PhD Book Club meets 3:30-5pm on Fridays every six weeks, with Revd Dr Harriet Harris and Dr Kitty Wheater (both PhD veterans!). Open to all PhD students, we’ll read books that cast light on the trials, tribulations, and mundanities of PhD life, offering perspective and inspiration for the time ahead. Past books have included Educated, by Tara Westover, Night Waking, by Sarah Moss, and On Beauty, by Zadie Smith.

Read more about PhD Book Club in this blog post by Harriet and Kitty for Teaching Matters.

For our last book before Christmas, we turn back to fiction, with Susanna Clarke's prizewinning Piranesi. This extraordinary dark-academia-cum-fantasy novel won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2021 - join us for (Ph)estive Book Club on Friday 8th December, 3.30-5pm, to talk dangerous supervision, perilous memory, and the joy of the scientific method, over mince pies. 

Email kitty.wheater@ed.ac.uk to register for PhD Book Club. Copies of our books (current and previous) are available for members to borrow from the PhD Book Club Library.

Photograph of an open book sitting on top of a wooden tray. On top of the book is a pair of brown reading glasses. Beside the bo