Navigating Intellectual Disagreements on the PhD Journey with Laurajane Smith

The PhD Life Raft Podcast

Professor Laurajane Smith completed her PhD part-time between 1990 and 1996 while working as a full time teaching and research academic at both Charles Sturt University and the University of New South Wales. She is currently Director of the Centre of Heritage and Museum Studies, Research School of Humanities and the Arts, the Australian National University. She is also a fellow of the Society for the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. In 2010-12, she worked to establish the Association of Critical Heritage Studies; she is editor of the International Journal of Heritage Studies and is co-general editor with Dr Gönül Bozoğlu of Routledge’s Key Issues in Cultural Heritage. Her books include Uses of Heritage (2006) and Emotional Heritage (2021), and she has edited numerous collections most notably Intangible Heritage (2009) and Safeguarding Intangible Heritage (2019), both with Natsuko Akagawa, and Emotion, Affective Practices, and the Past in the Present (2018, with Margret Wetherell and Gary Campbell) and Heritage, Labour and the Working Class (2011, with Paul A. Shackel and Gary Campbell).

In this podcast episode, recorded at the South West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership Summer Festival, we discuss the challenges of pursuing a PhD when there are differences in approach and perspectives between the student and the supervisor.

Laurajane shares her personal journey into the PhD and the tensions she faced in the 1980s while exploring indigenous and archaeological relationships.

We explore the importance of engaging in critical debate, developing supportive peer networks, and believing in one's own research.

We also reflect on the significance of self-reflection and being open to constructive criticism.

Short Coda from Laurajane:

“In 1996 my PhD was finally turned into a book (after having 2 children in between times): Smith, L. (2004). Archaeological theory and the politics of cultural heritage with Routledge. The text was well received and currently has over 770 citations…so yes, when I was being told and yelled at by senior male academics that I had it ‘wrong’ in the end it was because I did have something to say.”

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