It’s time for a brief reflection as I’ve just passed one month into the fellowship. I’ve been busy planning my experiments, drafting a data management plan, and preparing an application for ethical approval – in addition to more generally finding my feet, moving house for the second time, and getting to know Cambridge a little better.
I went to the Postdoc Academy induction today – my first time at Eddington – and met another new postdoc who happened to study their undergraduate at the University of Glasgow at around the same time as me! I then hurried back to Sidgwick Site to put the finishing touches to my talk this afternoon.
I just gave my first talk of the fellowship today as part of the Cambridge Phonetics and Phonology Laboratory seminar series, using the title of my fellowship ‘Building choral sound from the ground up: phonetic accommodation in choral singing’ as a starting point. I’m really grateful to the P&P community for humouring me as I laid out my planned research at this stage. Preparing for this talk has helped crystalize a lot of the thoughts I’ve had floating about – and it has been a great way to officially introduce myself to the lab. I had some excellent questions and contributions that will help firm up my design as I prepare my pre-registration.
I’m also very pleased to report that Rachel Smith and I have been accepted to present a poster ‘Rapid adaptation of pitch and vowel quality in trained choral singers’ at the Cambridge Centre for Language Sciences Annual Symposium on 19 November – you can find me at poster #44.
It was a busy weekend as I managed to make it up (briefly) for Dr Kevin Bowyer’s retirement celebration at the University of Glasgow Memorial Chapel. A massed choir of people from years back numbering 80, including faces I’ve not seen since my first year of undergrad. A rich and heavenly sound (even from the tenors and basses in Wesley’s Blessed be the God and Father, IYKYK). Glasgow was looking resplendent in Autumn – and here’s a little spooky shot from my old haunt.
Alas, no rest for the wicked. Back at Queens’ for evensong on Sunday and here’s a photo of me at formal hall for the first time in my Glasgow PhD gown on the first ‘Scarlet Day’ of this academic year. Crimson silk (or as everybody else calls it, Hot Pink) and what I now know is called a flap-collar, courtesy of Shaw’s Academical Dress of Great Britain and Ireland – no (old) Music Room is complete without one!
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