Writing up status

I haven’t kept up with my monthly blog over the last three months, but I have been busy. I am spending more time now in Paris, where I hope to continue my research after the PhD. Over the last few months I have been researching how musical patronage of London concert life changed over the course of the eighteenth-century. 

In January the rubber hit the road… I have now moved to writing up status and have just a year to finalise my dissertation. Although I have already produced a lot of text, I am painfully aware that there is a substantial amount of revision ahead. Revision not only of the text itself, but of the themes that I want to convey and the way in which I want to present them. I am now eliminating interesting but ultimately ancillary topics so that I present arguments that stick to the core task of answering my research questions. But of course, it isn’t that straightforward. The process is iterative, a back and forth discussion with myself, and as I try to finetune the messaging I find myself drawn to new lines of argument. I suppose the key is to accept that no dissertation can ever be the final word on a subject, and that I can only hope to produce a line of argument that contributes something, however modest, to what is already out there. 

I am also working on materials for further conferences- I will write more on that later.